Gears of War 2: Details and Differences

Over the past month many new features have been revealed about Epic's next mega-hit Gears of War 2 but you need to search around for all the little nuggets. Here we've collected all the information we could find that has been revealed so far including new reveals from E308.

STORY

Gears of War 2 takes place 6 months after the events of Gears of War 1. Locusts are back with city sinking technology. The city Jocinto is the last safe haven for humanity as the cities around it have all fallen. The COG must hit the Locust horde at it’s heart, underground where they live and breed. Meanwhile Dom is searching for his wife Maria and has a lead on her location at the start of the game. The 15 hour campaign story mode will be played as Marcus Fenix, the returning anti-hero from Gears of War 1.

CAMPAIGN GAMEPLAY CHANGES

Multiple save files
Two new difficulty levels, one easier than “Casual” and one harder than “Insane”
Downed enemy executions expanded, now there are four choices based on equipped weapon and character
Blood trails on walls and on the ground if players (or meatshield) are injured and bleeding
Meatshield, pick up a downed Locust or opponent and use them as a shield. The meatshield will deteriorate as it takes bullets. In Meatshield mode you can only use the Gorgon Burst Pistol to defend yourself. Meatshield also works in multiplayer modes.
Roady running has been tweaked so you don’t get stuck in cover as often, also applies to multiplayer.
You can now hit X to cancel out of radio message narratives and cutscenes
Collectables are back and will help the story narrative such as journals, newspapers and posters.
New bigger boss fights to wrap up chapters
Chapter checkpoint system is back

NEW COG CHARACTERS

Dizzy, a former stranded Truck Driver forced to join the COG to save his family
Tai Kaliso, the spiritual warrior

RETURNING COG CHARACTERS

Marcus Fenix
Dominic Santiago
Baird
Cole
Carmine

(Col. Hoffman so far has not been talked about or seen in videos. He may be K.I.A.)

VEHICLES

Centaur Tank complete with active reload enhanced cannon fire
Derrick which is huge truck with platform shown in trailers, rideable only.
Brumak , you can saddle one and ride it
Reavers, Marcus and Dom talk about riding one but it has not been shown or confirmed by Epic as actually doable in-game.

NEW LOCUSTS:

Brumak, you will fight them as well as saddle them as a vehicle
Kantus Monks who can heal fallen Locusts, has a sonic attack and can summon Tickers
Tickers, mobile explosive creature. They scurry around like roaches trying to stay out of your line of site and explode when they get close. They make a clicking noise.
Acheron, a gargantuan Locust used to take out vehicles is one of the boss fights
Mauler is a Boomer sized Locus equipped with a shield and an explosive flail
Blood Mounts are a Locust troop transport creature
Reavers now land and walk and will shoot rockets and stab at you with their tentacles
Scorch Drone carries the flame thrower and has an explosive back pack
Grapple Drones have a grappling hook to help them climb up to areas, you can shoot the hooks to send them falling to their death
Mulcher Boomer has different armor and wields the new Mulcher chain gun
Hammerhead Grunt Locust named after it’s shark looking helmet

NEW AND CHANGED WEAPONS (all original weapons will return)

Gorgon Burst Pistol, has multiple clips and shoots in full auto bursts
Ink Poison grenades spew poison gas that will kill if you linger around it
Chainsaw Duels which is an A button mashing mini-game
Scorcher is a flamethrower that increases range with an active reload
Boltok Pistol is back and gets a speed boost with an active reload
Mortar Cannon shoots a mortar into the air that rains down on top of enemies
Hammer of Dawn usable only 3 times, 4th time will make it explode killing you
Boomshot now gets 3 rockets but they’re weakened. With 2 rockets left and an active reload, you can shoot both at once.
Shotgun has been changed to be more consistent and eliminate ‘host’ advantage
Mulcher is a chain gun, it’s heavy and will slow you down but you can shoot it from the hip or it’s deployable or you can mount it on cover which increases it’s accuracy. Will overheat, you need to balance the barrel spinning with cooling
Iron Shield is a deployable shield you get off the Mauler. Can be planted in the ground for portable cover or strapped to your arm.
Grenades can now be stuck to walls and they turn into proximity mines
Hammerburst requires trigger pumping to fire with the recoil increasing with firing speed
Smoke Grenades now have a stun effect if a player is in the blast radius

MAPS, more than 12 available out of the box

Gridlock 2.0 is a slight variant of the original mostly to do with lighting
Subway 2.0 is back also re-worked for gears 2 and will have running trains
Dusk is a smaller map, similar size to Raven Down
Avalanche, snowy map with a horn that signals an impending avalanche to come down and wipe out everything in it’s path. This opens new areas of the map with new weapons
Day One is a downtown location with a Seeder that pops up out of the ground to mess with your aiming when you try and shoot from one side of the map to another
Security has laser barriers that will require buttons to be pressed to get to other parts of the map.
River, symmertrical map with a house and sniper tower with a river through it
Plus more will be added via DLC later

CAMPAIGN CO-OP

Pop-in pop-out co-op is back but it is still limited to only two players. This if or story telling reasons.
Special cut-scenes specifically for co-op play throughs

HORDE CO-OP

5 player survival game
Features 50 waves of increasingly more bad-ass Locust Horde attacks
Continue checkpoint system every 5 levels
Horde mode will be playable on every single map available in the game

VERSUS MULTIPLAYER

Expanded to 5 vs 5
Character models expanded to 12 COG and 12 Locust in Gears 2
AI Bots will be available to round out lopsided teams
Party System added, works in ranked and unranked games
TrueSkill will be used to match parties together, skills will be averaged and matched
No clan support planned for release but could possibly be added later
Host advantage being nullified by network code tweaks that will give people an equal connection experience
Voice chat handling is being offloaded from the host to other clients in the game
No more ‘god mode’ while chainsawing, you can be killed during the animation but the second the animation starts, the opponent is also dead.
Chainsaw randomness being addressed by Chainsaw Dueling mini-game
Stopping Power is being introduced to counter the Shotgun Roll. Now if someone is charging you, your bullets will slow them down preventing them from rolling and giving you a shotty to the face.
New bleed-out feature allows players the chance to crawl to safety for revival
Kill while you’re down. If you had grenades equipped when you got downed, wait for the enemy to come close for an execution and pull RT to blow you both up.
Time to chainsaw alone is equal to the duel plus the chainsawing finish
New stamina bar which affects your running and fighting skill (tough we have yet to see this in any multi-player demos so far. This might have been pulled from production)
Random weapon location respawns for some weapons
Players can choose to spawn with Hammerburst or Lancer

VERSUS GAME MODES

Execution makes a return unmodified
Warzone makes a return unmodified
Annex makes a return unmodified
Assassination returns as “Guardian”, teammates can respawn as long as the leader lives
*Wanted, is a 9 v 1 mode. Each player takes turns as the 1 and their survival longevity is timed
Ordeal, team game has teams battling to be the first to 100 enemy kills (we assume this will be two teams of COGs vs AI Locusts. Otherwise it’s just Team DM to 100 points which is frankly below Epic’s standards)
Wingman, is a 5 teams of 2 last man standing game with 6 revivals per player possible
Submission aka “Meatflag”, center flag game where the flag is a Stranded who you must down and drag to the score point but the Stranded AI player will not go willingly.

VERSUS DEAD BOX

More interactive features while you wait for the game to end
Photo feature lets you take battle pictures and share them with friends
Photo’s get scored based on different criteria
No video recording is planned for launch
Chase camera so you can see what pathway players took
Full exploring of maps with flying camera so you can lean the maps while dead

MATCHMAKING

Party system will allow your party of 5 to jump into a ranked or unraked match together
Matching will be based on Truskill as an average of your party vs another party
There will be playlists for both ranked and unranked matches
Map choice will be picked by voting, two options will be shown and the map that is played will be the one that gets the most votes. If no one votes, a random third map will be picked.
Online web based stats are planned for the future

ACHIEVEMENTS

To prevent players from being tunnel versioned, you can only earn one credit towards a specific achievement per match.
There will be achievement tracking so you can see how you’re progressing

This is every piece of information we could find so far about Gears of War 2 to date. We expect there is more to be revealed as the game gets closer to release. The retail packaging will include both a standard edition and a limited edition just like the original. Based on what we’ve learned so far it looks like Epic has addressed many of the concerns of the gamers, they’ve made changes to the game to make it be played the way they intended and they’ve ratcheted up the intensity. This is a much bigger and bad ass game than the original and we can’t wait to pick up the Lancer again and save humanity on November 7th.

Information Sources for this article :

Early Cliff B interview

http://www.gametrailers.com/player/33954.html

EGM Cover Story

http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3167972

Gamepro Cliff B Interview

http://www.gamepro.com/microsoft/xbox360/games/features/193148.shtml

1Up video interview with Cliff B outside Epic Games

http://www.xbox-scene.com/xbox1data/sep/EkEuuEkEuFzinVGXLk.php

Rod Fergusson interview from E3

http://www.gametrailers.com/player/36497.html

Gamespot Cliff B Interview from E3

http://www.gamespot.com/video/938611/6194211/videoplayerpop?