RO1 had somewhat "stiff" controls because it was on the UE2.5 engine, which didn't support any kind of animation blending, so anims could not really be interrupted or aborted, or morphed into another anim sequence.
It's emphasis on realism was never really the problem, rather, it was when technical limitations prevented things from getting real enough, that it just coulden't simulate movement propperly, a lot of things that would be easy enough to do in real life where too hard, because you had to wait for animations to stop playing before a new one could be started, so you allways had to make unrealistic tactical choices about things you where doing, like aiming, once you pressed the aim key you would be unable to fire untill the aim animation was done playing, you coulden't just let off a panic shot mid-aim if you really needed to, nor could you try a melee attack if you where in the middle of reloading, everything was so sepperated, like locked into a grid, not fluid at all.
RO2 will be on a modified version of UE3.5 however, which does support a whole bunch of delicious animations stuffs (TM), which means they can do a ton of things with RO2 that just wassen't in the cards for the first game, and by the looks of the PAX videos, it seems they are doing just that, it looks so much more fluid and intuitive than the first game, more realistic, less stiff, less frustrating.
Of course, it's hard to judge by video alone, without having actually played it, i can only make educated guesses, but i didn't notice any of that stiffness from the first game in thouse vids, infact it looks very nice and smooth.
