The upcoming beta update is going to be one that blows our previous updates out of the water in terms of scope, and we wanted to give you guys another quick peek at it. The update notes will likely list something in the range of 700 fixes and changes, and that’s not really factoring in the major changes of adding the Prison area along with several smaller tie-in maps, as well as the re-designed inventory we previewed recently.

The fixes will significantly improve the game in many ways, one good example is in combat. A veritable bevy of tweaks will improve not just how combat feels (think various sound, animation and effects improvements), but also its tactical depth. The Prison is a fairly combat-focused area, and it will be the first area the players will be faced by significant new threats that challenge your tactical decisions, like fast-moving grenadiers that make the placement of your characters that much more important or heavy machine gunners that will whittle down your cover in no time flat.

We’ve also said a few times blocker bugs are a high priority, such as savegame issues and optimization tweaks. To give a more concrete example: we are pretty sure we’ve overcome a significant memory issue that was causing problems for many people running 32-bit OSs, but have also done significant work topping down the memory footprint of the game, as well as its efficiency to transition between levels cleanly. Performance should see a general improvement for everyone with this update.

Thomas Beekers

Producing Your Lines