Mercenaries 2: some questions, some answers

So, we're aware that Mercenaries 2 has found a publisher in Electronic Arts, moving away from their original publisher, LucasArts. At least they're staying "Arts"-y. Yeah, that one was bad... apologies. Anyway, a recent Q&A was put into action about the new title. Here's what's worth knowing:

• A completely new next-gen engine was built for this sequel. Also, as Pandemic Studios President Josh Resnick gracefully put it: "Aside from dealing with the scale and detail of next generation games, the engine has a fundamentally different architecture to deliver a much bigger open-world experience. The sheer number of things that you can grab, shoot, drive, fly and blow-the-crap-out-of is astonishing."

• The original "deck of 52" device used in the first game has been set aside, opting for a new story and mission progression system.

• Pandemic Studios is remaining mum on online multiplayer! It hurts!

• Pandemic plans to have a more challenging title this go around and will keep actual gameplay time up to snuff with competing "open-world" titles.

• The setting? Venezuela.

That's it for now. This seems like it'll be a pretty fun title, so long as it doesn't become a generic Grand Theft Auto meets Burnout meets Crackdown meets that atrocious Domino movie. Absolutely awful.