Five million copies later, the original Gears of War lived up to massive hype and Bleszinski, design director for North Carolina-based Epic Games, thinks the cinematic sequel will, too. It picks up where the last one left off — with the members of Delta Squad trying to keep the planet Sera and its human inhabitants safe from a malevolent, subterranean alien race known as the Locust Horde — with a bigger war, bigger fight scenes, bigger weapons and a bigger … heart?

Yep, amid all the carnage of taking out alien baddies with your sawtastic Lancer assault rifle (“It kinda became our lightsaber,” Bleszinski says), there is a more personal story at the core of Gears 2, courtesy of novelist Joshua Ortega. One of the supporting characters, Dominic, is searching for his missing wife, Maria, while all heck breaks loose around him, and throughout the game as a subplot, he carries around a photo of the couple with an inscription from her that reads, “You’ll always have me with you.”

“We’re trying to bring a little bit more of that personal human touch to a game that’s about monsters and chainsaws and all that stuff,” Bleszinski explains. The game begins when Dom has a lead on his wife’s whereabouts, “and that hook is planted in the gamer. Here’s a guy, he’s missing his wife, he’s very upset about it — I want to know what happens. And of course, I want to save humanity and kill lots of monsters.”

Bleszinski likens it to Steven Spielberg’s War of the Worlds redo with Tom Cruise: “Yeah, big aliens are attacking, but at the same time it’s a man trying to regroup with his family. The best kinds of science fiction and comic books have always had that kind of thing going on. Spider-Man is a teenager dealing with being awkward as well as having superpowers. The Hulk’s a man dealing with his rage. And Gears, it’s these guys dealing with these creatures and a lot of personal loss.”

He’s always been a film geek, but the first love was always video games. “Ever since I saw Space Invaders, I wanted to make stuff move on my TV,” he says. Even at 33, people mistake Bleszinski for 16 — “I get my ID checked for games and rated-R movies all the time still” — and he knows his violence can’t get too, too gory because of the youngsters out there. He always wanted Gears to have the “mature” rating, since his target audience is the 18-35 gamer demographic, but at the same time he feels his game’s violence isn’t sadistic in the least. “It’s a lot more over-the-top and Gallagher-like,” he says. “When you see the kind of violence in Gears, you’re more inclined to laugh than cringe in horror.” There is always the 360’s parental lock for the concerned mom and dad, however, and kids do get their IDs checked at stores. But more importantly, he says, “parents are hopefully keeping an eye on what their kids are doing. I remember when I was 14, I was struggling trying to sneak a peek at a 2 Live Crew album because my parents always knew what I was up to. That’s a huge factor as well.”