Raven's Nathan Albury updated his .plan with what he modestly describes as a "sad attempt" at clarifying what he refers to as some of the more controversial issues in Soldier of Fortune. Here's the poop:

It seems like there's still a fair amount of confusion on some of the more controvertial issues in Soldier of Fortune, so here's my sad attempt to clear it up a bit.

In regards to enemy spawning and limited saves, these two attributes of the game are dictated by the difficultly level. HOWEVER, in addition to our 5 preset difficultly levels, we have a custom difficultly level submenu that will allow you to adjust the game more to your liking if you aren't pleased with our defaults. So, for example, if you like smart enemies but can't stand spawning, you can set up the game to accomodate that. Or, if you are more interested in a higher intensity, more Doom-style shooter, you can crank up the spawning and drop the enemy ai down. The game can be played according to your tastes.

With that said, I'm extremely hopeful that once people get a hold of our demo they'll at least give our vision of the game a chance. We've taken the feedback we've gotten into account, and honestly we've now had the chance to play the game a lot more. The amount of tweaks that have occured since our last OEM and the present demo are quite vast.

In particular, the AI has come a long way since our previous version. It's finally to the point where playing the game stealthily can be entertaining, if that's what you're looking for. I'm still of the opinion that maxing out enemy AI to inhuman levels isn't a good approach to game creation, but I do think that our guys are reacting in a much more believeable, enjoyable fashion.

As far as the spawning is concerned, we've greatly refined and adjusted the play mechanics behind it so that it enhances rather than confuses the gameplay. Probably the most common complaint about spawning is that it invalidates stealthy play... and I think that's a fair point. In our current system, the spawning exists in large part to ENHANCE the stealth. There are no more instances where you can wander around quietly, taking great care to lean around corners and pick people off, only to get shot in the back by some wandering punk. If guys are spawning, it's exclusively because you're making a whole lot of noise and carnage. In fact, our challenging difficultly level (4 out of 5) is almost impossible if you don't rely on stealth - the enemies are quick enough and powerful enough that if you draw a crowd, you will fall over. And, once again, if you really don't like spawning to the point of religiousness, you can turn it off.

Hopefully (fingers crossed) this will help clear up a few things that seem to be distressing a lot of you. Well, back to work, I suppose...