There's a thrilling sort of freedom about Bohemia
Interactive's Arma series. It places you into huge, open battlefields
and gives you a colossal amount of gear and vehicles to toy around with.
It's a military nerd's childhood fantasy that lets you command soldiers
to assault enemy facilities, pilot attack helicopters and rumble
through hostile streets in tanks. With an incredible attention to
detail, extensive mod support, and a dedicated fan base, there's a lot
to admire about Arma when you're not frustrated by its occasional
artificial intelligence issues, complicated interface and demanding
hardware requirements.
Bohemia is looking to change some of that with Arma 3. One of the main goals of the project is to deliver a more accessible single-player story campaign that gradually ramps up the challenge instead of tossing you into the deep end and expecting you to stay afloat. Gradually new elements will be introduced, from squad commands in the field to meticulously modeled tanks and personnel carriers. Woven throughout all of this will be a reworked interface that Bohemia is promising will be more intuitive to use for ordering teammates in the field or controlling the action from an overhead map, real-time strategy style. Bohemia also wants to deliver multiple endings and branching mission structures in Arma 3' s story mode, where you'll need to make decisions about helping or ignoring certain factions encountered while in the field.
Though the game is still early on, the visuals already look
incredible. It's not a flashy kind of game that stuns with style, but
one that consistently impresses thanks to the fidelity of its
environments and vehicle models. When attack helicopters fire off
rockets in midair, you can rotate the camera and actually see the empty
space on the helicopter the rocket so recently vacated. From the air
you'll see vast landscapes of rectangular patches of farmland mixed in
with outcropping of white rock, making for striking scenes of natural
beauty contrasted with the sleek, efficiently designed military
vehicles. There's no word on performance yet – that's something nobody
can say for sure until launch – but it looks as though there'll be a
great graphical reward for those with high end systems.
There'll be more to in battle in Arma 3, as the game lets you swim underwater to infiltrate enemy positions or sabotage submarines. Bohemia says you can't actually enter or control the submarines, but they are in the game, humming along underwater as you swim alongside in dive equipment. You'll also be able to speed across waves in transport boats, realistically rising up and down the crests and valleys of the water. Though it's not in right now, Bohemia is hoping to put hovercraft into the game prior to its release date.
With planned mod support, a full multiplayer suite and competitive scenarios, it sounds like there's going to be an enormous amount of content included in the game when it's ready in the summer of 2012. If you've never played Arma before, from what Bohemia's saying it sounds like this might be a good entry point for the series.
Bohemia is looking to change some of that with Arma 3. One of the main goals of the project is to deliver a more accessible single-player story campaign that gradually ramps up the challenge instead of tossing you into the deep end and expecting you to stay afloat. Gradually new elements will be introduced, from squad commands in the field to meticulously modeled tanks and personnel carriers. Woven throughout all of this will be a reworked interface that Bohemia is promising will be more intuitive to use for ordering teammates in the field or controlling the action from an overhead map, real-time strategy style. Bohemia also wants to deliver multiple endings and branching mission structures in Arma 3' s story mode, where you'll need to make decisions about helping or ignoring certain factions encountered while in the field.
ARMA III
There'll be more to in battle in Arma 3, as the game lets you swim underwater to infiltrate enemy positions or sabotage submarines. Bohemia says you can't actually enter or control the submarines, but they are in the game, humming along underwater as you swim alongside in dive equipment. You'll also be able to speed across waves in transport boats, realistically rising up and down the crests and valleys of the water. Though it's not in right now, Bohemia is hoping to put hovercraft into the game prior to its release date.
With planned mod support, a full multiplayer suite and competitive scenarios, it sounds like there's going to be an enormous amount of content included in the game when it's ready in the summer of 2012. If you've never played Arma before, from what Bohemia's saying it sounds like this might be a good entry point for the series.
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