Royal Flush Impressions

[Spokesperson 0]

I just played through the royal flush campaign and I must say that the story realisation and mission design is a lot better than what it was in the official campaign. But the story is stereotypic, simplistic, urealistic, fairy-tale-like and stupid. With a good implementation though.

Rebels that fight for some prince? Hah, this ain't the middle ages when people fought for some "King under god" and some stupid religion because they didn't know better or got forced to. In these times people fight to get rid of monarchs and despots.

The original campaign had originality, a clever story but poor implementation. It also took the economy and reasons behind the conflict in consideration realistically. Royal flush ignores the ending of the official campaign. Where it in a genious twist turned out that the people didn't get liberated by the royals and the US. South mass-murdered their own and northern inhabitants. Southerners fled to northern refugee camps (not concentrations camps) and so on. The only realistic follow-up would be a new resistance campaign as seen from the civilian side based on the real campaign.

I also dislike the liberal political propaganda the new designers/developers included. "Free Tibet" pins etc. Tibet has never been free. The Lamas ruled the country with an iron fist before.

[Commie 0]

I too am disappointed at the campaign here. You'd think that after slaughtering their own citizens and turning on their US allies, that the Queens Gambit expansion would have something of a continuation on this plot, but no, instead you end up actually helping the brutal Monarchy to impose its will on the North with the King himself labelled as the 'liberator'!

What happened to the US? They just took it on the chin and left? And even the campaign mentions that the North are poor and disenfranchised, yet you still are cast in the role of a mercenary helping to oppress these people!

Why couldn't it be a campaign from the 'David' point of view, instead of the 'Goliath'? OFP Resistance got it right against a brutal occupier, yet here you are still being on the side of who ultimately were 'bad guys' in the original ArmA campaign!

[Guest Ti0n3r]

I liked everything about Royal Flush

[-Snafu- 77]

You'd think that after slaughtering their own citizens and turning on their US allies,

If I remember right this isn't entirely true. Apparently it was explained in the US version of the campaign that it was SLA troops dressed as RACS soldiers. I think , can't completely remember.

[william1 0]

the only thing i didn't like is that it's too short, or at least it seems to me , maybe because it's so good. well that and the helmet of the mercenary

[NSX 8]

Royal Flush is great campaign. Don't know if it's BES' fresh stream, but it's a good mix of Resistance and beloved JA2.

Look here - change princess for Deidrana, prince for Enrico Chivaldory, Arulco for Sahrani, resistance for partisans.

Damn, everything is well copied from there including storyline (faked crush, princess that took down her competitors on the way to throne, fighting back prince, bright and not like another PMC fighters mercenaries). Even the "private guard" of princess sounds like Deidrana's elite soldiers!

Moreover, Arulco seems to be a spanish speaking country with wide terrain variation. And so is Sahrani!

So, in the end - there our rocket rifles are, I ask?!  

[Spokesperson 0]

They didn't copy anything for sure. The story was that simple and dull that it has been used for everything already. Super Mario, the game you talk about etc.

Doom 3 also has a story. And people like it too.

[alext223 0]

I like it. Played well, didn't feel as buggy as the ArmA camp' (Mind you, still haven't finished that one! Got the shits with it and went back to the editor. ). Story line was ok, and to Spokesperson, sorry if I'm wrong, but you must be a yank. Cause if you were from a country with a monarchy, you would stand up for them. Some of us from Europe are a bit weird like that. Now off to play the SF campaign now.

Later yall.

[Benoist 0]

Wait!

How do you know how the original Armed Assault ends?

In my game i was attaked by the South Kindomg and i reached the refugee camp and i heard but in the end the reporter didn't say anything about the tiranicy of the Souther King and how he killed a lot of civilians.

By the way, snif, want Queen Gambit's, i can't buy it here

I think that BIS don't sell it here

[Spokesperson 0]

I'm from a country with monarchy and I don't stand up for it. I've never talked to anybody that wants to keep it. But once the politicians befriend the monarchs they don't want to remove them anymore.

Quote[/b] ]In my game i was attaked by the South Kindomg and i reached the refugee camp and i heard but in the end the reporter didn't say anything about the tiranicy of the Souther King and how he killed a lot of civilians.

Yea, you're set to liberate a "concentration camp". But when you arrive at the camp you discover that it's a refugee camp. No guards. One civ says that they fled north voluntarily as the south had cleaned the cities out of their population. Probably they were cooperating with the northern liberators.

The royals discovered that you found out the truth (you know too much) so they decided to kill you as fast as possible. You don't make it. Then in the end the official "truth" is explained, as if nothing had happened. The people should know otherwise though.

However, as Commie says, the new devs didn't care about that. They invented some new story out of the blue instead of continuing the old.

The original campaign was pretty much anti-US. Probably influenced by the Iraq war etc. The plot is a masterpiece, but it's very poorly implemented.

[MK1 0]

I just played through the royal flush campaign and I must say that the story realisation and mission design is a lot better than what it was in the official campaign. But the story is stereotypic, simplistic, urealistic, fairy-tale-like and stupid. With a good implementation though.

It does feel a little akward that first you slaughter a base full of "partisans" after which everything is forgiven and you fight along with them.

Another question is that, if indeed the RACS who were presumably under the command of the King and the Prince (since the Queen wanted to get rid of them) attacked you in Arma, why should you now fight along them against the Queen?

Oh it's all very confusing..

[william1 0]

well , war is like that , war only serves to itself

[MK1 0]

well , war is like that , war only serves to itself

yeah, but good storytelling isn't

i think people were expecting a really thrilling story driven campaign with twists and turns. i don't think the campaigns are much of that.. there's a story alright, but it's a really confusing one for the player, thus you can't really take sides or feel for anyone.

[Commie 0]

Spokesperson is right about the original campaign having a neat anti-US or rather a cynically realistic idea behind it, namely the critique of how the US has historically supported anyone against what it saw as threatening (usually communist) regimes, even if those they supported were even worse than the enemies! Often these same dictators the US backed ended up biting the hand that fed them anyway!

I really liked how my impressions went from 'oh no, another US against the 'evil 'commienazis' plot again' to that neat twist at the end that was begging for an expansion from the SLA remnant side ala OFP Resistance.

Shame that instead we get one bunch of Royalists against another in a plot far removed from what the original set up.

Hell, I'd like to get together with you guys that would like to make a 'proper' continuation, for even though my mission making are negligible, I have considerable experience in writing compelling scenarios

[dmitri 0]

beloved JA2.

I thought so too.

[CmdGabriel 0]

I just played through the royal flush campaign and I must say that the story realisation and mission design is a lot better than what it was in the official campaign. But the story is stereotypic, simplistic, urealistic, fairy-tale-like and stupid. With a good implementation though.

Rebels that fight for some prince? Hah, this ain't the middle ages when people fought for some "King under god" and some stupid religion because they didn't know better or got forced to. In these times people fight to get rid of monarchs and despots.

The original campaign had originality, a clever story but poor implementation. It also took the economy and reasons behind the conflict in consideration realistically. Royal flush ignores the ending of the official campaign. Where it in a genious twist turned out that the people didn't get liberated by the royals and the US. South mass-murdered their own and northern inhabitants. Southerners fled to northern refugee camps (not concentrations camps) and so on. The only realistic follow-up would be a new resistance campaign as seen from the civilian side based on the real campaign.

I also dislike the liberal political propaganda the new designers/developers included. "Free Tibet" pins etc. Tibet has never been free. The Lamas ruled the country with an iron fist before.

come on... it depends. the Americans love this kind of fairy tail much more than "hey, we kill them for the oil."

Cool thing is, that they told the rebels use (biological) weapons of mass destruction. like the US told the world before invading and killing innocent Iraq people.

[Benoist 0]

Oooooooooooooooookey, i'm not american and i dislike very much Bush, his fellow politicians and the ultra conservationist people(i don't hate dem, i dislike them), but we don't have to make a political debate here.

We ALL know how it's ends.

I'm know that this is going to sound very Hippie, but, "We are all diferent". That goes too to the North American people, there are people who are against the War in Iraq and othres are in favor. Others thinks that the ilegal inmigrants are being trated properly and other not.

We are all diferent, may be some of you think that i'm an idiot and i say: FU*K YOU

Ok, no but anyways, i'm a Freethinkers, so i don't care, i'm happy as him -->

[nominesine 0]

I think that the Royal Flush campaign is well made. It also introduces some story telling, wich I've been missing since OFP. It has good cut scenes, voice acting and a lot of eye candy. My main gripe is that the story is a bit linear and that players actions have no or little effect the next mission. I.e team members that are killed in front of my eyes in the first mission return as healthy as ever in the second one. There's only one word for that sort of neglect: Crap!

It's fairly easy to make a campaign where the health of your team is carried over between missions, and this also makes it important for me as a player to fight for the well being of my entire team, not only to "beat" the mission at all costs. Yet this is not incorporated into RF. To me it's an important aspect of any military game.

If it were included, it would allow for character development and deeper immersion into the game. The dramaturgical effect I'm missing here is increased willing suspension of disbelief.

The six personalized merc units forms a great backbone for anyone who wants to make a story driven campaign, based around six characters (as oposed to being based around six cool looking units). My point here is very simple: If you take the time to develop a peronality for the AI team members in the players squad, then the player will develop feelings for the characters.

This, in turn, puts everything that happens in the game in a context, wich make every single event that occurs to feel more substantial and more important. That's what I'm missing in all official campaigns except the old OFP masterpieces: Cold War Crisis, Red Hammer and Resistance.

Carefully developed characters are a common element in a lot of well written user made campaigns, though. Take a look at OFP classics such as Retaliation, the FDF-campaign or Abandoned Armies (the longest and best single mission ever made) if you want to see some good examples.

[Guest Ti0n3r]

Quote[/b] ]It's fairly easy to make a campaign where the health of your team is carried over between missions, and this also makes it important for me to fight for the well beiong of my team, not only to "beat" the mission at all costs. Yet it's not incorporated into RF. To me it's an important aspect of any military game.

When any of my team members died they were dead for rest of the campaign

[nominesine 0]

When any of my team members died they were dead for rest of the campaign

I was talking about the very first encounter. Oh, no 1 is down, 2 is down, 3 is down... etc. All of the merc team was vaporized shortly after the chopper went down.

Yet they were present in the next mission and I didn't loose any more team members after that. Hmmm...

I will revert and replay it one more time. Maybe it was just a script or a trigger that didn't fire as intended when I played. In that case I retract my point about character survival. My views on character development still stands though

[whisper 0]

Same for me, but the dead members were not present in the mission after the 2nd one, though, so it's fairly important to keep them all alive, if you can arrange it, knowing you're not SL in the beginning of the campaign.

[Guest Ti0n3r]

Quote[/b] ]Same for me, but the dead members were not present in the mission after the 2nd one

I see, that explains it

[PVT.Killer1 0]

I just played through the royal flush campaign and I must say that the story realisation and mission design is a lot better than what it was in the official campaign. But the story is stereotypic, simplistic, urealistic, fairy-tale-like and stupid. With a good implementation though.

Rebels that fight for some prince? Hah, this ain't the middle ages when people fought for some "King under god" and some stupid religion because they didn't know better or got forced to. In these times people fight to get rid of monarchs and despots.

The original campaign had originality, a clever story but poor implementation. It also took the economy and reasons behind the conflict in consideration realistically. Royal flush ignores the ending of the official campaign. Where it in a genious twist turned out that the people didn't get liberated by the royals and the US. South mass-murdered their own and northern inhabitants. Southerners fled to northern refugee camps (not concentrations camps) and so on. The only realistic follow-up would be a new resistance campaign as seen from the civilian side based on the real campaign.

I also dislike the liberal political propaganda the new designers/developers included. "Free Tibet" pins etc. Tibet has never been free. The Lamas ruled the country with an iron fist before.

come on... it depends. the Americans love this kind of fairy tail much more than "hey, we kill them for the oil."

Cool thing is, that they told the rebels use (biological) weapons of mass destruction. like the US told the world before invading and killing innocent Iraq people.

CMDGabriel... that could not be more wrong.

First off Haliburton lost over $900 million dollars throughout 2003. Also there is no proof of us taking oil. And if we wanted to do that we could have done that in the Gulf war when we were in Kuwait.

Also we could have kept the Food for oil programm up if we wanted to.

Also the WMD thing came from years of quotes from the Democrats saying that Saddam had them. It also came from Saddam having actually used them in history. You know like in Halabja.

Also there was numerous other reasons for invading.

Ties to al-Qaeda. Such as meetings and documents between al-Qaeda and Saddam or him harboring Al-Zarqawi from the King of Jordan. Or the group Ansar-Al-Islam an al-Qaeda group in Kurdistan that actually helped Saddam.

Saddam breaking the cease fires and rules from the surrender he signed from the Gulf War.

Saddam kicking UN weapon inspectors out.

The Oil For Food program taking money from the UN to get palaces and weapons.

And many other things.

[Rocco 0]

" "Free Tibet" pins etc. Tibet has never been free. The Lamas ruled the country with an iron fist before."

oh well, much better then the f**** chinese, who think they own every country with slitted eyed people in...

[Placebo 29]

=- @ Oct. 07 2007,08:41)]oh well, much better then the f**** chinese, who think they own every country with slitted eyed people in...

2 Week PR and WL+3 for offensive racial stereotyping, anything similar in future will be a permanent ban, and before you complain be warned that permanent ban was my first thought for this quote of yours.

Any kind of racism, stereotyping or xenophobic comments will never be tolerated on these forums.

And to the rest of you please stick to the topic and stop the discussion of world politics and other such irrelevant things, further off-topic discussions in here will result in boring things like post restrictions and warning level increases.