Along with the various options for single and co-op play, Army of Two also has several competitive online gaming modes. The game supports up to four players at the same time, or two teams of two (keeping with the game's general theme) with modes where you either have to protect or destroy something, not unlike many other similar modes in other titles. Players can also customize their weapons with "bling" and give their arsenals a little bit of personal flavor.

"In terms of the online experience, we had to build a deterministic networking model into our engine Unreal 3," said Schneider. "This deterministic model (of input replication across the network) allowed the team to create some really new types of co-op moves that had not been seen before. The engineers who created this networking system did a great job of not only building it, but fixing all potential 'de-syncs' as we closed the game. This was a huge endeavour, and once again, credit to those guys."

"I think being able to drag your partner to safety (when he's been injured) and recreate the Black Hawk Down type of moment resonated with players," he continued. "Something else that has worked well, was creating a 'live team' that was focused around improving the online experience post-launch. That team has been purely focused around patches, downloadable content, and monitoring forums for fixes. This was something the Battlefield team has been doing for years, so we integrated that into our process in Montreal."

"The weapon customization was especially important because of the core mercenary theme of AO2," added Schneider about the customization options. "We wanted to give the player the feeling that he has contact with dealers all over the globe and can purchase whatever gear and/or firepower he wants. The inspiration from this actually came from a PMC contractor (Woodie Mister) who showed us pictures of equipment they would 'build' in the field. From that meeting, our Concept Designers built a prototype, which demonstrated how far we could take this feature. The amount of gun customization that a player can generate makes the gameplay feel fresh every time a player buys or upgrades a weapon. Again, the team did a great job constructing this feature, and making it relevant in the final product."

We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence... by the military-industrial complex
EA has been heavily promoting Army of Two ever since the game's debut trailer in March 2007, which used Eisenhower's farewell speech to the nation. For the next year, the various trailers filtered out highlighted the game's story, atmosphere and gameplay mechanics. This culminated in a TV campaign that focused on the game's PMC vibe.

When asked which part of the promotional campaign stuck out to him the most, Schneider responded, "Very early in the campaign, we asked gamers to upload their own weapon designs to the Army of Two website, and then allowed other people on the site to view all the submissions and vote for their favorites. After a few weeks, and many submissions, the two top ranked weapons were built by the development team and included in the final game. It was really cool to see gamers get behind Army of Two and want to be involved way before anyone had even played the game."

While most successful games seem destined to produce sequels, it seems doubly so with Army of Two. After all, this is one of the first major new IPs created by EA, and they didn't put all that effort into a one-off title. Plus, the story of the game lends itself heavily to a sequel, and there's no question that the game's protagonists would come back "just for the money."