Excitement is riding high for "Gears of War 3" as the clock ticks down toward its September 20 release. With the multiplayer beta set to kick off at the end of this month, players will get a temporary fix... until it all stops a few weeks later, and the long wait for fall begins again. While all of us can safely assume that Epic Games plans to continue telling stories set in the "Gears" universe, you might be pleased to learn that the coming came will indeed close the book on this particular story in some definitive way.

"We're not blowing up the world so Sera and the 'Gears' universe will live on, but for us we didn't want to betray our customers and community by having a cliff-hanger ending where you're like 'argh I just got duped, now I've gotta wait until the next game,'" Epic executive producer Rod Fergusson told CVG in an interview.

"We wanted to have closure, we wanted people to have some satisfaction that they were along for this ride and they lived through a story."

This could be a nod to another massively successful Microsoft-published franchise; "Halo 3" didn't quite end on a cliffhanger, but -- no spoilers, don't worry -- there were definitely sizable WTF moments both before and after the game's credits rolled, scenes which left fans pondering the possibilities of what might be coming next. What came next was developer Bungie Studios' departure from the Microsoft family and a pair of follow-up spin-off games that left fans wondering exactly when we might finally learn what's become of Master Chief.

That said, don't expect complete closure from "Gears 3." "We're not going to reveal everything," Fergusson said, "because we want some mystique left in our universe, but this is the Marcus Fenix story and people should feel satisfied after playing through that."