I cracked two safes now with the lockpicks and its very rewarding. It takes some time but way less then smashing. I have't failed a lock yet maybe I got lucky. Todays stamina change is a big improvement. Finding water was difficult and the old burnt remnants that guaranteed a cooking pot on day one were nowhere to be found so I had water issues on day 2 and 3. RWG is gorgeous and the roads feel very natural. Combat feels much more rewarding with some dismemberment going on here and there. I got a double barrel and bought the shotgun hobo perk and one shotted a stripper in the face, that felt pretty rewarding.
Knowing there are hundreds of schematics and books out there and that I will need to find a lot of parts to craft a good gun has made looting a lot more interesting. Having freedom to specialize early game feels awesome. I've only bought strength perks so far except the cardio one which is under fortitude now. The POIs are great, lots of remnants but if you want good loot you have to do a dungeon crawl. The remnants help the frame rate. FPS is 60 for me, where A17 was 20-30, and it looks much better than 17.
Loads of new art making the game look amazing, new icons are fantastic. A few need improved but I put notes in on those. I had so many moments that are impossible in static world games. Explosions do massive poi damage now, so when a zombie struck a car in a garage I was in, I was in the loft above it, I fell down into the exploding room and it scared the crap out of me. Another time I was looting the top of a steeple and didn't look above, once I cracked the safe the noise woke up sleepers above me who fell on me and I was in very tight quarters. I switched to pistol and shot frantically and survived. I haven't died yet and I'm on day 4, but its been many close calls.
I do want to thank the community. A lot of the feedback has been hard to swallow, but after lots of tuning, design and balance I feel like this build will be what we had hoped 17 would be. It just plays so cohesive. We've cleaned up a lot of weird systems and things that make no sense from years ago and it just feels right now. I'm sure it will still be months of tuning but this is the beginning of something we're really proud of and I think the community will love.
Oh and lots of new animations too. Its just a lot of polish. Smooth framerate. Unitys incremental garbage collection plus our optimizations seem to have the game never pausing like it was in a17. Now its just smooth.
