I wonder (just like a certain bet in years past) how much this game will tie back into Ubisoft's greater Tom Clancy's universe? Will Third Echelon make an appearance? What about the Ghosts, or even the enigmatic X of H.A.W.X?

Also, I haven't seen any night vision goggles in the pre-release coverage... I'm just saying.

p.s. Did they give up on the ipad/mobile drone gameplay from the gameplay reveal video? (Probably yes)

Ye, tablet/second screen was completely dropped. No friends giving you boosts or tips while looking at the map on the bus home.

I'm wondering how much of the events get uncovered. There are the collectathons (intel) that should give backstories and we've only seen 2/12(?) missions in the launch game (with 3 more in the DLC plans and who knows about raids and free content) but it doesn't exactly do much to talk about an ongoing story (but then we got to see 2 of the 3 "establishing" missions where you grab an NPC to build a base so I hope some of the other missions will be more about moving the current story forward and maybe uncovering current events that could tie into wider universe stuff). I think it felt reasonable "Clany"-like in the framing of the disaster and so on. Maybe it would be truer to form if the big bad of militia trying to burn the entire place to cook the virus was only for act 1 and act 2 involved some military force coming for a newly-ordered cleanse that you end up trying to resist and then openly fight against.

As for NV: not convinced it'll be there. Thermals would be very interesting because of all the atmospherics that often hamper your vision - might actually be more important in day fog than night for being able to shoot at range. But I also kinda love that sometimes the world is bathed in such fog that you can't see more than a few feet ahead of you. That's a cool dynamic to roll into for short periods of time.

Maybe it was the brightness settings on my computer but I did have some times where I wanted night vision goggles during the beta. Those nights are appropriately dark.

Definitely need something. Having gun fights in these conditions is super hard but the challenge of even being able to see made it fun. The only problem is that the enemies still had perfect vision and aim.

@mrcraggle: Ye, the AI definitely need to be made aware that the players are blind and so their vision cones need changing. But I think that's a bigger issue with the game design. It seemed like once an AI was leashed, they either chose to go for you or try and run away (or run then flank back) with close to perfect info. They did occasionally switch to "searching" mode but it seemed far from consistent or built around recent Splinter Cell implementations (where they even bothered to note the ghost of your last seen position to make it obvious what the AI was working from) - you send a single bullet out from a great distance and the shot leashed all nearby AI and also reported basically your exact position, which is something far more precise than a player gets from the whizz of a single shot and red segment on the minimap.

I do love that it's more than a binary. You have various levels of fog to heavy fog; some atmospheric scattering and dust particles even on the brightest of days: Sun there actually making it worse than high cloud due to the sunbeams picking up the dust; and those big day/night differences. Night with heavy fog is probably the worst with active snowstorm giving slightly better visibility but sometimes not by much.

Gallery

If you looked next to the asian lady with the eye bandage in your base when she gets her desk there you will see a pair of Sam Fisher style 3 lens night vision goggles.

Night division goggles?