I must admit thats bloody surprising, I'd not heard anything like those numbers for FNV.

Graphical power? Sure, Unreal 3 is nothing new. But it had visual style. Bioshock is one of the most beautiful games I have ever seen in that regard. Atmosphere and style make a big portion of what I want in a game.

The atmosphere is incredibly thick and I was instantly immersed in that underwater world. I know they went great length to make the water as believable as possible but there was still something off about it. DX10 mode made a little better but still...
And Bioshock used a modified Unreal Engine 2, just like DNF if that hasn't changed since the last time...

Byt he way, did Bioshock 2 feature only 2 selectable weapons or was it carried over as is from its predecessor?
And essentially I'm not against having only few weapons at disposition. In Halo CE it gave gameplay that special twist where you had to take a decision in which gun you are going to carry with you. It makes for funny gameplay sometimes where you switch back and forth between weapons lying on the ground :P
Half-Life had a ridiculous amount of weapons at the time, did you really use all of them? (although I must say that it was fun to experiment different tactics with different weapons, which made it the right decision in the end) Half-Life 2 experienced a regression in this regard.
Many developers aim for more realism by cutting down the amount of stuff you can carry with you, which is not an unknown concept to RPG players.

You had all weapons at once same as the original. Also you had up to six or eight plasmids at once too, and could fire both at once. Combat in Bioshock 2 is awesome and much improved, it just lost a lot in story and atmosphere compared to the original.

So, you'd agree with me that not everything is lost and that the developer's understood the amount of weapon wasn't something that absolutely needed a change because it didn't stand in the middle of or any criticism about the game.
From an artistic standpoint I felt a sequel to Bioshock was not needed at all. Bioshock is the kind of game that doesn't need a sequel except if you desperately need to milk it till it's dead and rotten.
I didn't get the game (BS2) because if the Windows Live requirement but I'm not sure I'd have gotten it anyway if there wasn't that DRM.
The first game came to a beautiful conclusion on its own if you got the good ending, and any sequel would have only hurt the mystical, mythologic side of the game world.

don't get this all muddled up:

the point was: many modern developers have got this myth that the Halo style load-outs are mandatory on console games, but Bioshock's success disproves the myth, so Gear Box's line about why they are dumbing down Duke Nukem's weapon capacity is thus bullshit.

everything else in this thread is just the typical internet internet troll orgy.

That wasn't GearBox's line but George Broussard's from 3DRealms from which the game was taken to be finished by GearBox. And I didn't hear about GearBox cutting down on the amount of weapons available :(

oh, my bad, I kinda lost track of who was saying what on the front page.

either way, the conversation is about the number of weapons you can carry at one time, not the total number of weapons you can carry in game.

I didn't get the impression we were talking about anything other than exactly that?

I took that as an over arching statement about the the games arsenal, not just the number of weapons weapons that can be carried at one time.

All FPSers should let you equip a bag of holding.

Ok, I see I formulated that wrong. By available weapons I really meant the amount you can carry at the same time. Sorry.

I believe that mythical item was usually called "the backpack" in most ID games.

It's a classic case of "dumbing down for console", and it's not just for "previously PC games becoming console games" like DNF it even happens with 100% pure console game like the Final Fantasy series where the combat and even the rest of the gameplay has been dumb it down to a parody of what it once was.

And it has nothing to do with any "PC elitism" or anything it's just that a lot of game designer seems to think that console player are complete morons and that therefore all gameplay mechanics need to be dumbed (or "streamlined" if you want to use the politically correct word) down to a maximum.

Nope.avi