Clearly I need to do another post or two on some of these game design subjects from SS2. It's wonderful to hear people's anecdotes and analysis of the decisions we made on SS2. I certainly agree that the difficulty added a lot to the experience; the question is how to maintain that when that very tension is unpleasant for some people. I have some thoughts on that maybe I'll try and write up soon. Anyways, thanks theraf and Kyle for your well thought out comments (and everyone else in this thread)!