Army of Two heroes Salem and Rios may live by the “Bros before…well, everything else” philosophy, but gamers live by the “execution before ideas” mantra. The pair’s 2008 action-adventure debut brought a lot of interesting concepts to the table — namely, 100 percent cooperative play from start to finish — but failed to execute on a lot of the little things, miring EA Montreal’s effort with repetitive action, static environments, and numerous interface problems. Not to mention a grating attempt at humor.

Still, the game sold well enough to warrant a sequel, so executive producer Reid Schneider and his team have taken player feedback to heart for the mysteriously subtitled follow-up, The 40th Day. “It’s all about layers and choice,” he told us during our visit to EA’s Montreal studio.

Their choice of location seems like a good one, for starters. The game’s set in the Chinese city of Shanghai over a short time frame (probably two to three days), and the exotic Eastern city already goes a long way toward making good on creative director Alex Hutchinson’s promise that Day will feature “no docks or warehouses” and that “80 percent of [its locations] have never been seen in a shooter.”

In the segment we were shown, Salem and Rios (the former having been trimmed down to more realistic, less-cartoony proportions to help differentiate him from the latter) started down an alley. Wind swirled around them, kicking up garbage and debris. Laundry danced on clotheslines, and NPC citizens milled about. With this living, breathing backdrop, the sequel has already improved upon the lifeless locales of its predecessor — and nary a bullet has been fired.

Our optimism heightened again when the profanity-proficient duo made their first enemy contact. The A.I.-controlled Rios (of course, a friend can always join you for co-op action) automatically took cover behind a corner, while Schneider, controlling Salem, did the same. Introducing a new feature, Schneider called up the “co-op playbook,” a GPS-style, green-tinged overlay that assesses threats in your view and offers co-op moves you can pull off at any time, including “hostage hold,” “mock surrender,” and “co-op snipe.” Schneider selected “hostage hold,” sneaking up on one of the evildoers and grabbing him, pitting Salem and his meatshield against the enemy and his innocent captive. In this scenario, you must act fast to prevent your foe from growing impatient and shooting his hostage. A quick bullet to the baddie’s brain from Rios took care of that problem. Schneider suggests that you can also choose to shoot your opponent’s hostage (bullets go through objects as they would in real life), and hinted at a new morality system that will alter the game in some way based on your actions.

The coup de grace of the demo took place on a rooftop, where you must split up to disable a satellite. That part’s easy enough, but then the “co-op setpiece” happens — an unexplained attack by fighter jets that detonates and levels all of the buildings around you and many others along the skyline, sending an adjacent building tumbling into the one you’re on — with Rios trapped on a collapsing ledge. You’ll have to find a way to get to him quickly, before his sliver of building slides away and dumps your partner to the pavement 30 stories below.

It’s a tense moment, and EA Montreal promises the game will have plenty of others. With the team also “investing way bigger in multiplayer,” as Schneider hinted, and toning down the force-fed sense of humor (it’s “still a part of the game,” studio head Alain Tascan clarified, but “we don’t want it to be a distraction”), we’re optimistic that The 40th Day can realize its predecessor’s unmet potential. [Insert fistbump here]