Quite possibly the biggest piss-off about Gears of War 2. Four player co-op is something I was dying for when i was playing the first game. Gears 2 will be amazing, but I will def. always have the "what if" factor in mind.

Gears of War 2 will be fantastic. 5 Player Co op on horde mode also sounds fantastic

That one would be Meat Flag .  Wingman is the one with the teams of 2.

And I kinda wanted 4-5-player coop, but I can understand its' omission from a storytelling point of view.  In Halo, I was always wondering who the hell those other two elites were when I played 3 or 4 player coop.  But, I'm VERY excited for Horde mode

What Cliff should of said is:

"We don't have the ability to write a quality narrative for 4 player. It's just not in our realm of quality storytelling. So we hacked that off, and threw 2 players because a less savy mind can do that. Look no further than EA's 'Army of Two'.

You CAN write a quality narrative with 4 or more players. Ever play a JRPG? Japanese writers have been building quality storylines with 4+ player characters for years now. They become too watered down at the 10+ player mark...Why is it then that Epic has an issue with 4 players? Even Mass Effect managed Shep, Tali, Wrex, Liara, Ashley and Kaiden as PCs, rest of the cast & crew with an exemplary narrative, despite having 3 players on screen. The quality narrative of ME would not have changed with Co-Op.

What does having 3-4 players change about the narrative? It could still be there. Lets face facts: Epic was just too lazy to write a good narrative for Cole, Baird and the rest of the crew, and do it in a way that could be interacted with by 4 players. Bioware could do it, because they care about narrative. But I think it's outside of the realm in what Cliff and the rest of the crew can do.

While it is true more effort could likely have been put in.
You are using RPGS as a comparison, which are usually the more story-driven and character heavy games.

I'm not too sad it's not four player co-op. Hell, 2 player co-op, that's local is good enough for me, especially when it almost never happens nowadays.

So why can't Gears incorporate it? Bioshock did. It's not like when you build a TPS game you automatically have to force the game to not be story-driven or have good character interaction.