I think sounds in any game can really enhance the experience more then visual beauty at times. If a game has a great sound engine that really gives me a feel for the environment. I hope the gun sounds give a good representation of how they might sound irl. Not like a laser gun or anything crazy, but the tommy gun we saw was good -- would have loved to see hear it sound a little meatier, but it sounded crisp. This is something I would love to get more info on if anyone has anything.

5 months before release no one really has anything except for what you have already. The only footage of guns we have seen have had music over the top in a trailer or Todd talking over it in footage. Your guess is as good as anyone else on this forum at this point.

Sound engine?

I agree. Bethesda really upped their game with the sound design in Skyrim, and as someone going to school for audio engineering and sound design it's one of the things I'm a huge nerd about. Like, I really love that they're more or less kept the VATS sound effects the same since the original Fallouts; it really is an effective and unique sound.

More like the sound design support within the game engine. Like, with Skyrim they added support for things like reverb in dungeons, and whatnot. They also started packing the music and audio files in more efficient formats. .xwm files instead of .wav and .mp3 files. If I had more time I'd go full nerd in this thread, maybe later tonight I'll explain sample rates and why sound files in older video games are usually missing every frequency above 5kHz (which is a big deal, since humans can hear up to ~20kHz)

I'm definitely excited for some of the weaponry sound effects. In Fallout 3 and New Vegas, I've generally preferred guns over energy weapons, so I really hope they've given the regular guns appropriately forceful sound effects.

And going by the look of the power armor in the E3 footage, I'm really hoping they made it sound as unbelievably powerful as it looks.

I agree. I noticed the older I've gotten the more sounds are a game changer. I think it can add a lot of depth.