Hopefully. More complex AI is never a bad thing. I've had moments like you describe with them bearing down on me when they shouldn't know exactly where I am. When sneaking, I've had a decent time feeling like the AI is competent where their vision was as it should be and I couldn't pull any sort of nonsense off.
I wish they would implement things like I've talked about before as well. Traits, basically. Randomly generated each time you go in whee some guys are gung-ho about assaulting your position/fight back when you try to hold them up. Cowards who really do stay down the whole time when you make them lie down, instead of the average AI who should have the sense to get up not long after you've left the area. Guys who gang up on other soldiers for...reasons. Just a little livelier hub you waltz into. Different personalities bouncing around that really extend the gameplay even farther. That's my dream, anyway. We're one step closer to them seeming like real people, rather than the masked goofballs they've always been.
IIRC, MGS4 tried, to some extent, to make the battlefield seem a little more diverse as far as NPC reactions go. Rebels would often faint after seeing their comrades decimated (not entirely sure about that part though), or taking a bullet themselves, and you would even see foam coming from their mouths.
But that might also just have been implemented to stress the difference between nanomachine controlled PMC soldiers and 100% robot free humans.
About weapon holstering ... it didn't really bother me at first, but the more I play the more I wish it'd be back. CQC moves with an assault rifle were also pretty neat in MGS 4
One more thing I don't really get is why BB can rotate with some weapons equipped while prone, and can't with others ... I'd like to throw a grenade or empty mag while lying on my back instead of being forced to flip around.
I realize this can be considered as nitpicking. So many people are saying the gameplay is more fluid compared to previous iterations(excluding PW), but with so many moves gone, I feel like I'm playing MGS2 again. What am I saying, even MGS2 had more thought put into its gameplay
The only thing that is more fluid is a CQC system for people who can't push more than three buttons at a time. No combinations at all anymore, no knife, you have to get up and kick a ko'ed enemy in the face, at the expense of being seen, if you want to interrogate him again or just abuse the new hold-up system ... and the list goes on.
While the game remains really enjoyable from a stealth perspective, I have the feeling that it doesn't really make you say : "wow! I need this", like it was the case for every numbered game in the series. Except maybe for BB's new animations. With this finally being "The game Kojima has always wanted to make", I was expecting more than that gameplay wise. One button CQC was fine for a PSP game.
