There are no plans to support OpenAL. All effects were are using are real-time DSP effects, or reverb. That provides the same sound quality to everyone on any platform (like Vista) with any sound card. FarCry used FMOD 3.x as a 3rd Party library, actually it was renamed into CrySound.dll. For Crysis we significantly evolved. I can tell you, that we are working with the EX version of FMOD, but cant give any further details. Nevertheless, you control the soundsystem via code or lua and dont deal with FMOD directly. You can also easily replace sounds, add variations or sound effects.