J.E. Sawyer

Being in first person and just moving behind cover certainly feels more natural, but the FP perspective always has the shortcoming of giving poor spatial awareness of your own body. That's why I like the R6:V approach. Once I get into cover, I can see exactly where my body is positioned relative to the cover and the incoming fire. For a game like DX:HR, the stealth element also benefits from this system because you get the Splinter Cell-style corner peeking mechanic. It's no real surprise that these game elements are set up like this considering the number of ex-Ubi guys at Eidos Montr

First person when not in cover, automatic switch to third person when you enter cover, and you can line up your crosshairs prior to popping out so you don't wind up herky-jerking the stick to adjust for the first second or two. Also, being out of cover was pretty unforgiving, which felt good/appropriate.

Yes, I disagree, especially when they incorporate gameplay elements other than "be in cover" and "shoot from cover". That said, DX:HR is using a core type of cover mechanic I know I enjoy: the one found in Rainbow Six: Vegas. Also, the "line up before you pop out" type crosshairs help alleviate a lot of the potential aiming frustration. Why not play it on PC if you can't get used to console aiming?

Using good cover mechanics for stealth and combat... my god... Deus Ex is truly doomed...

It was pretty fun for FF: Crystal Chronicles and Zelda Four Swords.

I normally don't mind it when devs take new directions, but I find this to be an insult. It is essentially a fantasy about Allied soldiers acting like the Nazis they were fighting. Yes, I have also read the tales of the legendary 23rd S.S. Kettens

It wasn't really a radical shift, but an adjustment to ramp up combat more over the course of the expansion. It was always intended to start out pretty easy (which it did) and get harder. The amount of ramping was what changed, and it changed because I and other people played it and found that the low difficulty got old quickly. MotB still isn't a "hard" expansion, but the final product is harder than it was to begin with. Well no, it does have to do with epic levels. The range of bonuses available to players at that level, and the array of feats and abilities that players may or may not have, is enormous when you get into the 20+ range. At low levels in 3E/3.5, characters can vary, but with a limited range of variance. That range becomes big once you start clocking in above 15th level and outright crazy in the mid-20s. To make things challenging, mathematically, for min-maxing players at that level practically means that there is not much hope for "non-optimizing" players. The difference between an attack bonus between the two could be +10, which starts to eclipse the relevance of the die being rolled. The "solution", such as it was, was not so much to make the probabilistic elements crazy, but to feature more creatures with distinct strengths and weaknesses that required, if not hard counters, a mixed strategy for character prep and mixed tactics for dealing with them round-to-round. Players did have to think a bit more about who was doing what in combat, but it was not essential to min-max characters to win. Of course, those who both min-maxed and used sound tactic would roll the battles anyway.

English-language Xbox 360 patch is up.

You should also see a significant increase in weapon mod and some ammo availability at vendors (most notably, Gun Runners). Some ammo prices have been increased and, of note, ammo like .44 Special, .223, and .38 Special should show up as "standard"/loose rounds in stores instead of as misc boxes.

Reinheart is a cool/fun character to play. His style is a bit tricky, but rewarding.

http://forums.bethsoft.com/index.php?/topi...e-from-bethesda

Some laser weapons have also been tuned for the next patch. Most notably, the Gatling Laser has been tuned up.

Yes, many Explosives are stronger and 40mm Grenade ammo should be significantly more common, especially in stores.

Triss' design in Witcher 2 is pretty great. http://images.wikia.com/witcher/images/2/27/Tw2_triss.png

Same. C=128 supremacy. Here's a frustrating game I recently remembered playing on it (C=64 game but whatever):

Hauer ad-libbed the last few sentences of that sequence.

What sort of melee combat would you like in your open-world RPG? Because if it's at all "actiony", it usually winds up being spastic flailing.

On a lot of higher-end PCs, DS3 will consistently run at 60.

One thing that feedback to F3's DLCs made abundantly clear: people want new weapons and outfits that they can take back to the main game and use. The new weapons fit into the existing structure (e.g. the Police Pistol falls between the .357 Magnum Revolver and the .44 Magnum Revolver in power), but I think people would be pretty annoyed if they a) weren't there and b) if they were outclassed within that DLC setting by core weapons that were also available.

Early on in development the Nightkin Jailer in REPCONN Test Site had a GMG and it was a controller-hurling moment for most of the people on the team. It was also before Nightkin de-cloaking for attacks was implemented, so you just had this invisible dude across a dark room shooting grenades at you. You'd round the corner and in three seconds three or four of your limbs would be crippled and you'd be at 25% health.

Yep. They're no joke. Watch out, though. The bad guys use them, too.

Can't be even a little more specific than that? There may still be adjustments to make before the patch is released, but it's mostly about making sub-standard weapons better and a few conspicuously "too good" weapons a small step less effective. Most of the weapon adjustments in this patch were done to make unattractive weapon options attractive. Usually that meant improving them. In a few cases, it meant that a weapon in the same category that significantly outclassed everything else had to be dialed back. In general, I'd guess the "make better" to "dial back" ratio is about 6:1ish.

There's also a bunch of weapon tuning in it. ^______________________________________^

Legion forces attack the dam from a lot of directions, and if you listen to NCR emergency radio, there are attacks at various other points in the Mojave Wasteland happening concurrently. The Boomers drop conventional incendiary bombs. No way that's destroying Hoover Dam. Most of the dam is solid concrete reinforced by rebar.

I don't know; how much time would it take to fix the companion AI in Fallout: New Vegas?