Is there seriously going to be a way that I'm not going to use the see-through walls weapon all the time and kill everybody? Is that really going to happen?

CC: Yes. There will be instances where that weapon will not be effective. It could be probably pretty effective for the occasional encounter, where it might be four or five guys, but if you start getting to [where] the Long Legs are jumping around, like some of those environments that we've catered to those guys, we might not give you those cubby holes to look through. Some of those encounters with the Grims, and the zombies, you might get a couple of them off -- but we're mobbing you at that point, so it'd be a lot harder.

That particular weapon to me was quite an interesting choice because players are more than willing to ruin a game for themselves, if it makes it easier.

CC: Yeah they are, but we've done some tuning to that weapon since it was in R2. We've changed some things. I mean, it's still pretty powerful, right? But there are some nuances to it that aren't as exploitive. That's something that we definitely looked at.

The designers have to figure out a way to kind of nerf things by getting rid of exploits, without making people feel something is worthless. Is that the line you had to toe?

CC: Yeah it was definitely a line we had to toe with the Auger, because it is people's favorite weapon, but it's their favorite weapon because it is super overpowered, and so it's kind of... pulling it back. It's still effective, but there are a couple of things we did to adjust that.

Like what?

CC: We pull back the range on being able to see through walls. So before you could see through walls across a whole entire level, right? And now we pull that back to a significant distance. Also, again, I think the biggest thing we have going for us is our AI. They're a lot more responsive and really aggressive. They will come after you. You might get a couple guys, but the other guys are going to hunt you down and find you.

Once you got the weapon it sort of felt like you were breaking the game, because you would just shoot guys and they would stand there. And then you'd feel like, "Well, I guess what I'm going to do for the next couple hours is just shoot dudes through walls!"

CC: No, I think we definitely varied it up. Environment plays a big part in that, too. It would be those small parts of the game where you'll be able to do that -- wreck the setup -- but there'll be other parts where it will just be completely useless.

With the Chimeran sniper rifle, the Chimera have a laser sight that lets you see them, but you don't have a laser sight that lets them see you. Is there like a narrative reason that that makes sense, or is just for playability reasons?

CC: No, I think the big thing was, it was more about playability. It's like, we don't want to call the player out as much as we want to call the AI out. We want to give the player a chance to find these guys, but still using their cloak, give them a chance to hide too -- so I think that was the tradeoff with that. And it's never too late. We might include a laser beam on the human gun; we don't know yet.

We don't have many strictly hard choices like that. Every weapon is generally effective against anything, but there are degrees of effectiveness. Let's talk about like the Auger and that case with the Hulk fight, right? The Auger is going to be a bad choice, because there is no place for you to hide and shoot through walls. You can hit his weak points, and they'll do damage, but it's not going to be as effective as, say, the Magnum, which can stick to that guy and really do some serious damage to it.