"We never announced a trilogy" - CliffyB

Epic never confirmed Gears of War as a trilogy, Cliff Bleszinski told Eurogamer this week, but a third game in the series certainly isn't out of the question.

"We never announced a trilogy, I don't know why everybody's cramming those words into my mouth. They're like, 'You said Gears would be a trilogy.' I'm like, 'I didn't say sh**! That wasn't me! You're putting words in my mouth, journalists!'" he explained with mock-exasperation in an interview following our first look at the single-player campaign.

"But I love this universe, and if Gears 2 has a wonderful ship-in, if gamers buy it, then we'll consider a sequel."

So if Bleszinski didn't say Gears was going to be a trilogy, who did? The answer can be found all the way back in November 2006, when Microsoft's Jeff Bell said that the game's advertising push was being engineered "to establish Marcus Fenix as the hero of the Gears of War trilogy".

Obviously it's been on Bleszinski's mind, since we didn't actually use the 't' word. After the Gears designer mentioned in his presentation that Epic had "started working on it the moment the first one shipped", all we wanted to know was if any preparatory work had begun for a third game.

For more on Gears of War 2's development, check out our Cliff Bleszinski interview.