The Campaign: How can you put up with it?

[schurem 0]

fiddle with the editor, play single missions, download some missions, dabble with mp, maybe join a squad. plenty of things to do besides playing the campaign until it gets properly debugged.

[sic-disaster 311]

I have gotten to the Manhattan mission but performance on my older machine is piss poor, so i cant continue.

But so far i have had no troubles with it, its great.

[frederf 0]

On the other, BI seems terrified of being in the "sim" as opposed to "game" category so they use their powerful Editor to produce a Campaign that is all cinematics and no tactics, with excessive, inept voice-acting, bad cut-scenes and unreliable triggers designed not to present the player with tactical challenges but to initiate cinematics.

So sad, so true. The briefings have been getting better though. I was so pissed when I was doing the escape and evasion mission and simply passed some invisible line in the dirt in the middle of nowhere and the screen faded dark and I was suddenly at some friendly outpost in a cut scene. I was really enjoying using my brain and feeling connected to the world... and then plop.

I finished the OFP campaign. I think I finished the ArmA1 campaign. ArmA1 Queen's Gambit? Hahahaha... no. That was soooo bad. ArmA2 comes around and the 5th mission in or so is a SP warfare mission where you can't reinforce your squads, the AI is braindead, and the command interface is like trying to knit with boxing gloves on. Yeah, no.

[Zombie_Mod 0]

This is not a whine or a troll as the game justifies itself for me with the Editor and MP but, really, how do you put up with the Campaign? Excessive scripting, constant dodgy triggers, bad voice acting, lots of travelling and no real tactics?

You don't. I could not complete any mission after "Manhattan" in the campaign without using ENDMISSION. And I'm a very, very patient player.

Conventional wisdom dictates you create your own missions, make your own entertainment given the alternative (the bin)

Great if you know how to script and have plenty of free time to do so.

Shit if you wanted an "off the shelf" game to entertain you.

I'm getting back into scripting because otherwise I'd get banned from here for saying what I really think. I know it's only a game, but still.... have you ever heard of Dick Turpin? :D

[Jack-UK 0]

lol well i've only played the demo but i lost all immersion as soon as i heard Kozlowski say 'mate' in the chopper.

Oh dear......

[doakwolf 10]

Uh, I like playing singleplayer in Arma 2...

Me too. The voices are annoying as hell but I just put up with it. And the scripting.. Well, I just press "+" twice to speed up to 4x and it passes quickly and then I'm back into the 'gaming'.

Jero.

[mrcash2009 0]

Shit if you wanted an "off the shelf" game to entertain you.

Has to be said that very fast you realise this isn't what Arma is about. As much as its geared toward that with the campaign. I often wonder why BIS dont just ignore the campaign and simply have scenarios and focus on everywhere else. Just with Arma2 you can see that reviews, reports show campaign is the main turn off and yet not the main focus of Arma's existence. I sometimes think of the campaign as "what can be done" massive example.

I guess its needed to sell it and promote the entire thing. They should out source the tools to a dedicated party and get them to create the campaigns for Arma and the actual BIS team focus on building its guts and focus on the tech aspect and all the other areas.

Its like George Lucas inventing the tools along the way with Star Wars. Then letting him make the last 3 episodes ... didn't mean he would do it well, and he didn't. Yet other directors with the tools do a much better job.

Me too. The voices are annoying as hell but I just put up with it.

you dont have to, simply use this no voice mod which kills all the robot chatter :

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?t=75720

Edited July 21, 2009 by mrcash2009

[cjph 0]

I agree - the campaign is essentially just a showcase for some of the capabilities, and also good for getting to grips with the various control aspects. I remember all the early feedback on COD4 was about the short campaign, which was all over too soon (only to be replaced by manic spawn-die-respawn frenzies).

I think of ArmaII as Lego compared to toys such as metal vehicles - it will never look better but will be played with for much much longer and is only really limited by our imaginations and the mods/addons the community produce (much like the specialised Lego bricks and sets). True, you have to overlook some of the joins, but you sacrifice perfect visuals for the flexibility it offers you.

You just have to decide if you are a Lego or 'static' toy person - me, I'm a Lego man and always will be.

cjph

[mrcash2009 0]

You just have to decide if you are a Lego or 'static' toy person - me, I'm a Lego man and always will be.

Nah I was more a stickle-brick man myself :)

[Malleus 0]

I don't know, looks like I'm in the minority here, but I totally loved the campaign, even though I played it at 15 fps average on the lowest settings, and I couldn't finish the last mission due to bugs. The story, characters and missions were all fine. I'm looking forward to replaying it once I have a better PC.

Though I agree that the campaign is just one among the many things the game offer, but I'm still glad they took their time to make it.

[BobbyDylan 10]

I don't know, looks like I'm in the minority here, but I totally loved the campaign, even though I played it at 15 fps average on the lowest settings, and I couldn't finish the last mission due to bugs. The story, characters and missions were all fine. I'm looking forward to replaying it once I have a better PC.

Though I agree that the campaign is just one among the many things the game offer, but I'm still glad they took their time to make it.

Yeah, I'm loving it too. I'm on the Badland mission now. I've had a few buggs, I had to play Razor two about twenty two times to get it right, and still didn;t get 100%, but that's fine. I'm gonnna finish the campaign and then play with the editor. :bb:

[nominesine 0]

I spend most of my days in the editor: Building, watching and learning. Can sit for weeks if my wife allows me. I nevertheless found some time to start the campaign in MP mode wth a friend last week and we've played through the first six missions during three evenings. It totally rocks.

:bounce3:

But I am also amazed at all self appointed experts who claims to know how ArmA2 should really have been designed to begin with. Can't you see the irony here? You have a game that let's you do everything you want wth it. You can affect every setting, change every model, tweak AI behaviour, etc etc. Remember Nike's classic slogan from the late 1980's: "Just do it!"

Instead, my hat goes off to the person who compared ArmA2 to LEGO a few posts up, claiming it "is only really limited by our imagination". Well spoken. I'm a LEGO-kind of guy myself. Never cared much for shiny action figures back when was a kid.

[MPBR 10]

Again, A2 has a campaign ? Wha ?

Really, grab 20 of you mates or join a clan / squad and really experiance what A2 is about.

Use some player made CO-op missions, get a good squad setup and comms and enjoy working as a close nit team with specific roles and duties.

Again, a good squad working its way through mission objectives really makes A2 come to life, it really is like a completly different game to the single player part.

[Bahger 10]

So last night I tried the "Welcome to the War" mission. It's BI scenario design at its silliest. It's just so fussy, so jury-rigged. You get an array of objectives but you are not in command and the squad does not follow you anywhere and somehow melts away, no matter which objective you have chosen from the "Tasks" menu. Thus you find yourself Rambo-ing your way through the objectives, which the player chooses but, in the process, cannot command a squad to help him assault. The triggers are broken. A looping reminder that you can buy arms -- where does this belong in a proper military sim?? -- never stops playing throughout the mission. Ditto idiotic reminders of money earned by salvaging things, seemingly disconnected from any action taken by the player. Everywhere, the AI is either failing or succeeeding in taking objectives, independent of the player. Radio messages are out of synch with triggers. Finally, all objectives are taken yet the player gets multiple failure messages.

It's quite insane. It's as though BI hired PhDs to design the Editor and kindergardeners to make make missions with it (with 5th-graders marketing the product). Can they not see the massive disconnect between the capabilities of their own Editor and the shoddy, non-military, non-tactical output that issues from it in their own name? All they have to do is understand that, in any sim with this kind of scenario design capability, not only are excessive contrivances and cinematics unneccessary, they also undermine the product's credibility with the most devoted military gamers? It would be like if I used the "Steel Beasts" scenario editor to recreate "Die Hard". With a voice track badly translated from a Russian script into pseudo-American English. What a mess!

Edited July 21, 2009 by Bahger

[cjph 0]

Lego, stickle bricks, meccano - those were the days.

For the record, I am also enjoying the campaign, though I am not yet very far into it.

cjph

[stun 5]

I gave up on the campaign particularly when the Warefare style missions kicked in. Pity as I like SP, I don't have the time or energy for MP any more. I've been getting on with the editor. I'm just praying that BIS fix high command mode as the suicidal engage-any-thing-that-mores subordinate AI have ruined one of the best new features in A2.

[mosh 0]

This is not a whine or a troll as the game justifies itself for me with the Editor and MP but, really, how do you put up with the Campaign? Excessive scripting, constant dodgy triggers, bad voice acting, lots of travelling and no real tactics?

Just like you said, MP and editor are why I own this game... the campaign is just fluff, like the crap chefs put on your plate to make it look pretty, but you're really not supposed to eat it.

[trickster1982 10]

I dunno why they event spent so much work on another broken campaign like ARMA 1 it was a big waste of their time that could have been spent making the multiplayer a total knockout, instead they fell majorly short in the campaign and also fell short of amazing multiplayer experiences...

Not everybody likes playing in multiplayer though, i much prefer the single player in ArmA 2! Ive given up on the campaign for now, but I cant get enough of some of the awesome single player missions that have been released by the community!

I spent roughly 2 years playing online games when I finally afforded a decent PC to run them on a few years back, but got tired of the trolls,hackers,cheats,abusive kids & snotty servers & have gone back to preferring single player games now

[icedz 10]

All we get is 1 mediocre campaign? Only a handful of missions were fun to play, 2-3 were bugged to death and the last mission was just the same thing for hours..

Anyway really disappointed with the campaign

[Dallas 9]

No, you also get the world's greatest mission editor.

[DrGonzo 10]

I haven't played past 'Manhattan' or whatever it's called. Still, what I've seen of the campaign thus far is pretty good, bugs aside.

For the most part, the voice acting seems fine too, except for the guy the does the antagonist. It'd be funny if it wasn't so irritating. Sounds like that guy from police academy.

I may get round to finishing it at some point but nevertheless, as far as I'm concerned, I think the original FP will remain the Magnum Opus.

[Dreossk 10]

It's fine for you to hear most of the characters sound like if they were talking from inside a box ?

[Rogue_Trooper 10]

what campaign..........:don 14:

[galzohar 31]

what campaign..........:don 14:

Exactly.

Though I may try it again with forcing a lower FOV so I can actually see that guy that keeps killing me without me getting a chance to find him when playing on expert (so when squadmates report his position I still can't see him).

[Decerto 10]

I enjoy the campaign, it seems more suited to a Middle East setting as it portrays what our soldier are doing over their daily (tracking intel, clearing caches and patrolling hot spots).

I enjoyed OfP for the big battles where it was do or die, it really doesn't matter what you do in this campaign and it doesn't convey the immediate life and death urgency that made OfP so nerve shattering as you clung on just trying to survive in a hostil world.

The best thing about it is that it shows the complexity of a living warzone that the editor can let you create. People will get ideas of what you can do in the editor from the campaign and use them in really compeling projects for our enjoyment in the near future.