Less expansive environments? Ibstead of copy and pasting the old Citadel they took their time tocreate a new area. Sure it was smaller but the entire Citadel was unneeded everything on their could have been placed on another location. ME1 only had the Citadel, it was big (although small compaired to any city from Oblivion) but it was the only real city area in the game. ME2 has multible cities next to their new Citadel area. So less expansive environments? Perhaps but you should add that there are about 5 times more environments at the same time aswell.

Personally i thought the citadel from ME1 was boring and the missions tedious, ME2 wins hands down for me. As for Gears 3, i suppose it will depend on if they are using a new engine, it will look better then, but by how much is unclear.. I honestly don't mean to sound anti xbox but im just not sure how much more juice the x360 has in it. I guess alan wake and halo 4 will tell us

Despite texture pop and some other minor issues ME1 broke new ground in dialogue presentation and was a beautiful game for it's time. Bioware have improved on what they do best with ME2 but I personally wish exploration had not been removed. Instead we get mineral farming (yawn) and intergalatik gas stations. The little ship thingy isn't fun either. What we needed was an improved Mako, more diverse worlds, less weapon overheating and shorter elevator rides. ME2 may display more expansitory polishosity than it's prevalentatary versimillential prekursotur but at what denominationality. (JKU OP see sig for possible explanation)

I agree with you, there were more environments and they did have to completely redo the Citidel.  However, I was dissapointed with having to take the shuttle to the Embassy and the grand view when walking around in the ME1.  Again, still loved ME2 and thought they improved the elements that really mattered, the inventory system, and adding the engrossing loyalty missions.  As with anything though, there are bound to be some things I would have like to have seen.  And yes, the environments felt more confined, even if there were more of them.  A small gripe.

I give that post a 9.4.

The other things about the game that annoyed me was the mission complete screens after I won a quest. It completely broke my immersion with the game.