The breadth of ArmA II's SP campaign

[arewenotmen 10]

It seemed in ArmA, and now it's confirmed for me, that it's largely about selling the engine as a sandbox tool, almost like a home VBS2. However I suspect you can't openly do that and still be met with critical success, so it has to be accompanied by this part-baked game.

That's fine in a way and I'd buy it several times over for the editor alone, but it does disappoint me at the same time. The thing that made OFP so good was not just the immersion but the breadth and scope of the campaign. Apart from playing as the enemy, pretty much everything that the game could do was showcased by the SP missions. Equally, the story made sense and was carried through to its conclusion.

ArmA changed that in some ways, because the story - even after the QG expansion - was so lacking, but it still had a little of everything. ArmA 2 is different again, thanks to Warfare & some of its RTS elements, but by the same measurements it's much worse.

The ArmA 2 story works OK but ends about a third of the way in, and there's little or no use of most of the new units and capabilities. There's barely any armoured missions and potentially no air combat in the campaign at all, which is deeply disappointing since it starts off with such promise. It might have been designed this way from the off, but it looks a bit like a lot of hard work was put in until someone called 'stop!' and it had to be released.

Maybe we've been spoilt before, but I'd love to see future games come bundled with a little more emphasis on the campaign. Even episodic content would be fine, as done quite successfully with Half Life's Episode n, and maybe that is what we'll get. I know I'll upset people with this last bit, but never mind: QA issues can and probably will be fixed, but noone is going to go back and sort out the story. That's the main thing I'd like to see change.

[AliMag 0]

Hi,

I agree with you that the game looks like a sandbox tool. But what a tool...

I could not care less about the original campaign or missions with the community that we have. We'll soon be burried under tons of quality (I hope) missions and campaigns not to mention all the mods and addons.

You are right, the editor alone is worth every penny of it and making your own missions is really what this is all about.

Cheers

[lockjaw-65- 0]

+1 on the editor. For me the campaign has no intrest and I proberbly will never do it.

The game is worth every penny just for all the other aspects :-)

[CuteQA 0]

I hope there will be Cold War Rearm for ARMA2, original OFP and Expansion campaigns are still the best for me :)

[kylania 568]

There's barely any armoured missions and potentially no air combat in the campaign at all, which is deeply disappointing since it starts off with such promise.

So make some. You have the tools to do so. It's impossible for BIS to create all the content you'll ever want for ArmA 2, and it's not needed for them to do so. They gave us the tools and abilities to make these epic sweeping armored missions and air combat missions you want. Use them. :)

ArmA 2 really is a sandbox game, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. It doesn't fail because of that, it's far better than other military games exactly for that reason. In CoD4 if you were missing some sort of action or combat type you'd be out of luck. In ArmA, you can make it happen.

[Joseph Troska 0]

I hope there will be Cold War Rearm for ARMA2, original OFP and Expansion campaigns are still the best for me :)

OMG SAME!!!!!! To be absolutely honest up until a few weeks ago, I didn't know CWR had been released for ArmA1. I thought that the long delay in its release meant it was going to be kept for ArmA2.

I would of dug out my old ArmA1 dvd to install it, if not for the fact I disliked the first ArmA so much and immediately went back to OFP/Res

I hope and pray the final Cold War Rearmed will be released for ArmA2.

Can you imagine exploring Everon with the ArmA2 engine and looks?

Makes me giddy with excitement just thinking about it. :rolleyes:

Edited July 3, 2009 by Joseph Troska

[CuteQA 0]

I saw an ARMA2 Everon video on youtube, and it looks very nice. :)

good old days! I also miss Cessna :P

<object width="560" height="340"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRPH4AX3RFk&hl=en&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRPH4AX3RFk&hl=en&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="560" height="340"></embed></object>

Edited July 4, 2009 by CuteQA

[jakerod 254]

Good chance that they left out armored and air combat because its unrealistic to be a pilot, tank crewmen and special forces. Granted they could've done it the same way they did in OFP but maybe that didn't fit the story they wanted to tell. I haven't received my copy yet so i'm not sure.

[ampeg 0]

It is odd that the tutorial runs you through armour and heli/plane flight, very little of which will be required in the sp campaign. I spose we could get lucky and get expansions based on an armored or air campaign, infact I'd love it if that were the case :D.

[mr_centipede 31]

I hope we get an expansion, play as foot soldier, lowly private or a tanker...

OFP:Resistance storyline was good... so we know BIS can do this... and I think the story of harvest red also good... lets explore more, from the chedaki POV or russian POV... but this time, leave warfare out of the campaign, pls. high command is okay :)

[Heatseeker 0]

I havent touched the campaign for 2 reasons:

1. Warfare in it.

2. People reporting major problems with it (performance and bugs).

I think the campaign was very ambitious, perhaps too much for its own good.

But there is so much content to use, plus the landscape is really big, time to be creative folks :) .

[frederf 0]

I like the cohesive campaign as opposed to the "mixed party favors bag" that they tried to do before. The Warfare elements are really not very well done. They would be fine if they worked well but they don't :/.

[Antichrist 0]

I havent touched the campaign for 2 reasons:

1. Warfare in it.

2. People reporting major problems with it (performance and bugs).

I think the campaign was very ambitious, perhaps too much for its own good.

But there is so much content to use, plus the landscape is really big, time to be creative folks :) .

The biggest problem with the campaign is that the archaic OFP save system doesn't allow proper "open-world" gameplay.

I fully understand limiting the amount of saves for standard missions, but for missions that can last for hours and can involve multiple objectives it doesn't really work.

Scripts bugging out on regular basis, same as in OFP, don't really help either.

BIS will have to make a brand new engine to make a proper military open-world simulator.

[Nazul 10]

Antichrist you can have multiple saves for each mission now, i think its about 6-8 saves, more than enough.

I would've liked to see more single player content. I love SP just as much as online but I'm not very editor inclined and tend to rely on what others make. So more out of the box content I'd like to see.

[frederf 0]

On veteran it's 1 save and I think for expert it is 0 saves. Half way through the campaign I switched from Veteran to Regular so I could get infinite saves (finite slots). There were too many bugs and stupid AI behaviors to play these long missions with just 1 save. I was able to modify the Regular difficulty so that it matches Veteran in all ways except the number of saves.

[Nazul 10]

Thats right, I've changed the settings for regular difficulty to be like that of Veteran but with infinite saves.

[Antichrist 0]

On veteran it's 1 save and I think for expert it is 0 saves. Half way through the campaign I switched from Veteran to Regular so I could get infinite saves (finite slots). There were too many bugs and stupid AI behaviors to play these long missions with just 1 save. I was able to modify the Regular difficulty so that it matches Veteran in all ways except the number of saves.

I might have to do the same then, just leave all other options on hard.

[CzingerX 0]

Arma 2's campaign owns. Still need to be completly dynamic.

[Antichrist 0]

It does still overwrite all the previous saves though, doesn't it?

[frederf 0]

No, you get 6-8 slots and it keeps making new saves until you reach the save limit and then you have to choose which old save you overwrite.

[MBot 0]

Isn't it somehow sad that after 8 years people still need the original OFP and Resistance campaigns? One would think that Arma 2 would stand on its own feet in that regard.

Regarding the saving on veteran. It would already be a lot better if the autosaves would not overwrite the previous ones. A couple of times I had an autosave when a teammate was just mortally wounded or my helicopter was just going down -> Restart mission. Being able to select a previous autosave would already help a lot.

[frederf 0]

Don't play on Expert/Veteran, it's masochism. Play on Recruit and edit the difficulty settings to be like Veteran or Expert. Save frequently and basically ignore the autosaves.