You can't take my remarks here terribly serious since I haven't played SH4 yet (and won't be til I get a better system) but it looks to me as if SH4 hasn't added anything to the game engine, graphics aside, that couldn't have been done by a dedicated modding team with an SH3 SDK.
Most of the things that sound really refreshing were mod ideas from the early days of SH3 before we figured out that we couldn't change the hard code. Automated crew management, more intersting dynamic campaign, etc. So far the non-Pacific related changes seem as though they are lost patches for SH3. Then theres the fact that theres alot of stock SH3 features actually missing.
Its all a bit weird and confusing.
