Health doesn't regenerate, shield does. Health requires pick ups.
Eck, I guess that's better than full on regen...can you turn off the shield in 1999 mode?
And the weapons? One of the few things I dug about BioShock's combat was that old school FPS arsenal you carried around, vs the modern-controller oriented approach of "hey lets conveniently materialize the specific gun they need for this specific room to take out these specific foes!!!". Would be a major bummer to see that they eliminated one of the few remaining gameplay modifiers that actually resulted in some form of emergent gameplay that was left over in BS1 after they ripped all the character building out from SS2.
Also FoW, I remember you being involved with the project in some part. Can you tell me how involved the Canberra guys were in the gameplay after they started working on the project? I loved the gameplay in BS2, so if they had heavy input on this game it would set my mind to ease a little.