By Craig Pearson on March 16th, 2012 at 6:00 pm.
There’s definitely room for a simplified but not simplistic Arma II; big, intense, multi-layered battles but maybe a bit easier to pick up and play. I’m hoping that’s the route Iron Front – Liberation 1944 is taking, although the more I read about it the more Arma-ish it seems. It uses the Arma II: Operation Arrowhead engine to set the battles between the German and Russian forces in motion. I can be disappointing and excited at the same time, right?
So there will be big battles, infantry to air and all inbetween, using all of Bohemia‘s engine’s nuances, the damage models, ballistics, crumbly environments, to build their conflict on. The player will ascend the command chain, eventually ordering the troops that they were part of around the combat. It really does sound very closely related to its engine daddy.
We’ll see in May the 25th if it’s just a reskin of the rewardingly obtuse Arma II, or something that runs along its own track.
16/03/2012 at 18:07 DogKiller says:
The closer is sticks to ARMA, the better, IMO. There’s plenty of arcade WW2 shooters already. I’m hoping this will be good and the developers don’t drop the ball.
16/03/2012 at 18:07 Unaco says:
“It really does sound very closely related to”To what? To nothing?It’s going to be ArmA2/OA on the Eastern Front. Labelling that as just a ‘reskin’ would be a little unfair… Was FONV ‘just a reskin’ of FO3? It used the same engine and the like, but brought in new models, textures, animations, assets, story, missions, characters etc. It’ll be along the same lines with this… Using the OA Engine, but entirely new assets and campaign(s) etc.
Probably a day 1 purchase for myself, barring any complete disasters with it.
16/03/2012 at 18:11 Unaco says:
Also, obligatory mention of ARPS, the RPS ArmA community. As well as our regular (and sporadic) contemporary wargames, we have also been indulging in some ‘Invasion ’44′ recently… an Operation Arrowhead mod/total conversion, focussing on the Western Front of the 2nd World War.
If anyone is interested, check out the subforum, or hop onto the RPS Steam Chat and declare your desire to play ArmA in a relaxed, slightly serious, slightly organised group.
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?12-Arma-Forum
17/03/2012 at 03:26 malkav11 says:
I am super interested, as even just kind of screwing around in an incompetent fashion with Qt3-ites was great fun. Unfortunately, your regularly scheduled play sessions appear to be optimized for your strange and exotic “British and/or European” time zones, whereas I live in the colonies, and, alas, can’t stay up and play videogames at all hours.
16/03/2012 at 18:08 Echo Black says:
“I can be disappointing and excited at the same time, right?”
Yes, you can. Have this cheezburgar
16/03/2012 at 18:10 absolofdoom says:
Aw, I wanted to be the first to catch that.
But, here’s another cheezburgar.
16/03/2012 at 18:09 Adriaan says:
Perhaps check out the Project Reality mod for BF2. It’s definitely not as sim-like as ArmA (partially due to engine limitations), but it offers similar style multi-layered combat with a focus on teamwork on still quite large a scale.
I’m looking forward to seeing what this one’s going to be like, and how much it actually changes gameplay wise. I’ve definitely interest for a sim style FPS on the Eastern Front.
17/03/2012 at 04:18 dsi1 says:
Why not check out the Project Reality mod for ArmA2? :p
18/03/2012 at 12:55 CPLDANABD says:
Because the Arma 2 version of PR lacks the refinement of PR:BF2, its good but the years of development and tweaking of the original show, it is at the present anyway a load more fun…
18/03/2012 at 22:29 tigershuffle says:
You might as well try Project Normandy then……. the minimod of the mod ;) 1944 n all that :)
16/03/2012 at 18:11 rockman29 says:
Frigging awesome! This is the exact thing I wanted from Bohemia, but I’m fine if someone else takes the charge.
I like the more limited scale (at least in technology) sort of sense of WWII. It seems like it would be really amazing in this setting!
17/03/2012 at 04:19 dsi1 says:
Yeah, I can’t help but be a little disappointed by the long ranges in Vanilla ArmA2, scopes just get boring after a while.
16/03/2012 at 18:17 Arkh says:
Arma II isn’t complicated, damn it.
16/03/2012 at 18:58 Shinan says:
I don’t know how complicated it is, but I wish there was a preset set of keybindings for left-handed people out there. I once tried to play the game but… there were so many buttons and some of them had multiple functions attached to them. And most of them I didn’t know how much I would use.
I basically never got past that keyboard setup screen.
17/03/2012 at 00:47 Mattressi says:
I admit to being one of the ones who said it was complicated. I think the real issue was I had no machine that could run it properly for a very long time; so every single action seemed impossible to work out and execute at 5 FPS. Now that I’ve got a rig that can mostly run it, I’ve spent some time learning it and I absolutely love it.
Still, I wish it modelled supported positions for small arms, like Red orchestra does (by that, I mean that when you’re near something that you can rest your gun on, you can actually do that). Also, I still don’t like that it feels like I’m controlling some kind of vehicle when I’m just playing as a soldier – every movement feels so clunky and not fluid. It’d be nice if that could be fixed.
Anyway, I’m really looking forward to this game. I just hope it’s a mix of RO2 and Arma 2 – fluid movement, but with huge, open world maps and more things to do.
16/03/2012 at 18:21 MajorManiac says:
If this is just ARMA 2 set during WW2 I’d be happy.
And please make city map the size of a city. If they recreated Berlin, Stalingrad or Paris that would be amazing.
17/03/2012 at 08:40 Njordsk says:
you want your CPU or GPU to die right?
19/03/2012 at 11:17 Lord Byte says:
Actually, if there’s an engine that “could” do it, it’s the Arma engine. They’ve done larger sized maps, granted, not with as many buildings, but lots more trees, and nature and such.
I think the biggest hurdle would be pathing, especially if you should be able to enter every building.
18/03/2012 at 15:20 wodin says:
Your joking right? Exaclty how many players would you need to fill Stalingrad…hmm lest see, about 350 to 400 thousand! Aswell as modeling a city thats 20km long!,
19/03/2012 at 03:52 wengart says:
I thought it would be obvious that you wouldn’t fill the city. It simply allows a group of players to recreate combat in that city. It could be 10-15 players pushing down a city street or 40+ fighting down a couple blocks. Beyond that it would allow for recreation of some famous battles (Pavlov’s House, Teirgarten, etc…).
16/03/2012 at 18:27 Mavvvy says:
hmm or get the I44 mod for free for some western front goodness
16/03/2012 at 18:36 Jason Moyer says:
I want something more hardcore than ArmA. Although simply having WWII infantry battles that aren’t 2 guys shooting each other from 50feet away in an urban setting would be hot too.
17/03/2012 at 00:18 Torgen says:
Harcore? WWII Online. The server tracks the kinetic energy of every projectile in the game, and all the pieces and subsystems are present in all the vehicles, with appropriate hardness and thicknesses.
16/03/2012 at 18:50 JB says:
Alt-text recycling? Good to see you doing your part against global warming ;)
16/03/2012 at 18:54 JerreyRough says:
You seem rather negative about Arma II.
16/03/2012 at 18:57 Megadyptes says:
Dunno why you’re disappointed, this was announced ages ago and they never really hid the fact that it would be pretty much Arma II in WW2. There’s plenty of other WW2 FPS’ already that are less realistic than what this could be, and Red Orchestra fills in the gap nicely, the second RO will do really well if they actually fixed it up (which they are promising to do but it seems to be a bit late now, what a shame)
16/03/2012 at 19:08 asshibbitty says:
How can you reskin a modern soldier sim into a WW2 soldier sim, be reasonable. It uses the same tech that’s it. Looking good.
16/03/2012 at 19:12 EOT says:
Eastern front again? SNOOZE.
16/03/2012 at 22:28 timmyvos says:
Better than the hundredth Normandy-1944-USA-wins-the-war-single-handedly simulator.
17/03/2012 at 00:46 EOT says:
I want North Africa. Or the campaigns in the East. I’m bored of Europe on both fronts.
Slightly nationalistic as it is I’d like to play as the UK or at least the Commonwealth.
17/03/2012 at 05:01 westyfield says:
Loved the north Africa missions in Medal of Honour: Allied Assault and Call of Duty 2. More of that, please, but let me play as the Afrika Korps.
16/03/2012 at 19:24 One Pigeon says:
Great. I’m looking forward to ITV’s use of “actual World War 2 footage” very much.
17/03/2012 at 01:25 squirrel says:
They do know the trick of picking year 1944 to make a shooter.
Not 1942, 1943 and 1945, just 1944. In years other than 1944 we would see that 200 tanks on each side crashing their opponents. Yeah, 200 tanks ON EACH SIDE. I wonder if any household computer can handle this setting. Such will not only be demanding on GPU. By ARMA standard this will also be extremely demanding on CPU since for ARMA style we are expecting each tank to be a competent bot, not just some background for you to gun blazing on.
And if they make each tank in this game operating like other tank sims or RO2, wah, you probably need a supercomputer (as least a personal supercomputer from Cray) to play it, not to mention the bandwidth you need to play online.
I want Battle of Kursk, fighting against the heroic SS 2nd Armor Corp!!
17/03/2012 at 02:08 Snuffy the Evil says:
Looks like an Arma 2 mod, which is okay because Arma 2 is fantastic.
17/03/2012 at 04:15 dsi1 says:
FYI there is a mod along similar (the same?) lines called Invasion 1944
17/03/2012 at 18:08 jiushi says:
http://ppt.cc/7mA7
17/03/2012 at 19:10 ThaneSolus says:
This looks awesome, me wants! Lets hope for interesting campaigns.
I found my self identifying the tanks from the videos, knew them all by model name and what they do, probably because i played way too many WWII games, now replaying PZ II the 1000th time.
me wants cheezburgerz too!
17/03/2012 at 21:26 neofit says:
Awesome news. The more long-range one-shot-one-kills games the better.
Edit: and I hope Domination will be ported asap ;)
17/03/2012 at 22:09 linzhanz says:
http://15.cc/3zal8
18/03/2012 at 15:17 wodin says:
You want a simplified AMRA 2 game? Surely we have loads of them already? Red orchestra 2 being the latest and look whats happened to that.
I for one am very pleased we may have here what RO2 should have been in the first place.
It’s not a mod but a stand alone game using the ARMA 2 engine..
18/03/2012 at 17:21 linzhanaa says:
http://redir.is/aSc
22/04/2012 at 03:17 LJFHutch says:
Hopefully this will be more authentic and realistic than the ArmA series which was somewhat lacking in those areas, despite it’s pace and reputation as a “sim”.