Immersion, propaganda and a clean story.

[MengJiao 10]

That's a really good point. I do kind of miss that but I don't think that type of stuff would ever happen on the modern battlefield. That is kind of why I want a WWII or Korean war game. Or an all out Cold War 1985 style.

I think for a good campaign you want to have the player be part of anything at all except a modern army. The world of a mercenary or tribal innovator or 3rd world soldier or drug lord make much better settings for good stories and that would work for any time period from say 1900 til now, though with the current weapon set probably 1960 to now would work better.

[Crunchie 10]

MW2 anyone? This isn't that kind of game. Games depicting the 'dark' side of human nature have to be done 'humorously' or be a 'send-up'. Remember the game is based on military training software and that's how it must be seen. There also has to be in this day and age (possibly unfortunately) an amount of politcal correctness.

[ryguy 10]

I like being the good guys. Too many other games turn it around.

[MengJiao 10]

Games depicting the 'dark' side of human nature have to be done 'humorously' or be a 'send-up'.

Well you do have a choice of humorous modes. You can do a farce, as most games do, or you can do an ironic satire, as I think OpFlash Resistance seems to have done.

Yes, I agree, some kind of humorously dark mode would be a good way to think of writing a campaign, but in any case, you'd want your player to get to build up his low tech evil empire crudely and savagely through treachery and assassination, not by arriving with a huge high tech army.

[Katrician 0]

Exactly.

Think about this.

- In Operation Flashpoint getting a weapon with full auto capabilities was an achievement.

- Getting binoculars was a major reward.

- GPS unheard of

- Scoped weapons were rare.

- M4 + Aimpoint? or a SILENCED mp5? and all of the above? man you were REALLY SF.

Compare this to a normal game of arma2...

-k

To rebound on your post I must say iron sights were perfectly rendered in OFP, as in ARMAII they rendered a 3D model, but this is not what the eye see it corresponds at looking at iron sights and not looking through them. Thus there is no interest in for no optics weapons sadly; it's like the AIMPOINT isn't the optic too far from the eye to make it effective?

[nkenny 1051]

Arma2 doesn't seem like a game designed FOR ironsights. Its seems a game where ironsights were added as an afterthought. (and indeed this was an added feature of Arma1)

Thusly. Had Arma2 been designed from the ground up to work with Ironsights -- rather than crosshairs. We would probably have a much smoother/intuitive animation/controller layout.

-k

(I also liked the simple 2d ironsights of opf. If the option was made available I'd go back in a heartbeat! They were simply that much more effective. Compare how easy it is to aim with scoped weapons (despite the zoom) to ironsights... )

Edited July 25, 2010 by NkEnNy

[rekrul 7]

The thing with OFP et al was that you could feel their hatred for the commies. Here they're just there to do the job and move on which might have been what they were going for. It's not like Takis or Chernos were a threat to the US anyways and I think BIS are a bit too scared to pull religion into the picture (as opposed to east vs west). We need a North Korea/Iran campaign. ;)

[GoOB 0]

There is a scenario in ARMA II which, in my opinion has more "soul" to it than the entire Harvest Red campaign, it is the one where you and three other NAPA fighters are set to destroy a BRDM in a village - I sincerely hope that a future DLC will give us a NAPA (or ChKDZ) themed campaign, I'd even settle for a straight port of the Resistance campaign to ARMA II and Chernarus!

[Guest]

Eat led commie scum!

I <3 Flashpoint.

[MengJiao 10]

The thing with OFP et al was that you could feel their hatred for the commies.

That's the irony and satire angle: the game comes out in the early 21st century and you have to mentally go back 30 years and look at

really feeling hatred for commies. It's much easier to write a good story

with that kind of irony and satire.

It would be hard to get the same effect with religion, unless say the player was the 13th Messiah or the Mahdi (the expected one) or something.

[Zipper5 74]

You've also got to factor in the current-day potential consequences for writing a story like this and factoring religion into it, since said religion would obviously be Islam. I'm sure BIS has had their fair share of... "threats" from Islamic players or non-players about depicting Islam in the game, or the ability to destroy said aspects. It's a touchy subject with potential consequences, as we saw with 6 Days in Fallujah.

[MengJiao 10]

You've also got to factor in the current-day potential consequences for writing a story like this and factoring religion into it, since said religion would obviously be Islam. I'm sure BIS has had their fair share of... "threats" from Islamic players or non-players about depicting Islam in the game, or the ability to destroy said aspects. It's a touchy subject with potential consequences, as we saw with 6 Days in Fallujah.

Even without consequences, it's pretty hard to work a major religious angle into a shoot-'em-up story. A really cool exception is the fine tale in Children of Men, but that sort of thing is rare. You might be able to make it work as some kind of

sequential quest -- maybe the hero has to drink from a sequence of sacred springs to gain the power to mentally direct his infrared signature into innocent shrubs.

[Reimann 10]

Lacking broadband for the time being, I finally went back to finish the SP campaign of Arma II (bugged out too early for me previously to bother). It bugged out on the second-to-last mission still, but it is still ridiculous. How does the knob on the first page on this thread link mujahideen rape and beheading with the US and Russia playing with the UN - where they are both on the permenent Security Council - as they do in this game? How could anybody care about the story when it's such utter BS? Might help if it actually worked from beginning to end, but I gave up on that long ago. Maybe the devs still have something against the Russians?

As said above, the story with the guerillas in one of the single scenarios is far better than the main campaign, but the AI hassles at and after release mean I won't both getting through it.

Best just to accept Arma is a base with which to make your own game - or leech off those in the community that enjoy that sort of thing.

And what games out there "turn it around"?

[rekrul 7]

You've also got to factor in the current-day potential consequences for writing a story like this and factoring religion into it, since said religion would obviously be Islam. I'm sure BIS has had their fair share of... "threats" from Islamic players or non-players about depicting Islam in the game, or the ability to destroy said aspects. It's a touchy subject with potential consequences, as we saw with 6 Days in Fallujah.

That's why North-Korea is perfect. No religion problem and no loss of potential sales! :D But don't call it North-Kareo or something stupid.

[ijozic 9]

That's a really good point. I do kind of miss that but I don't think that type of stuff would ever happen on the modern battlefield. That is kind of why I want a WWII or Korean war game. Or an all out Cold War 1985 style.

Was there ever a poll about all these modern weapons and scenarios? Personally, I don't see anything interesting in modern U.S. military tackling on some insurgents. In OA they had to give lots of tanks to this Takistani "army" just to give you something to shoot at, but these would be decimated by the air power in reality, anyway. And since these conflicts are pretty sensitive topics (civilian casualties, religion issues, etc.), you cannot even represent them realistically because somebody might be offended. That's why I'm a sucker for Cold War scenarios - so many options and most of it hasn't happened, anyway, so anything goes and nobody is offended.

I haven't played an interesting campaign since OFP days (although I found that user-made one called "Retribution" to be the best, the stock campaigns were pretty good and immersive as well; Resistance was great (loved the weapons stockpiling) and my only beef with the Cold War Crisis campaign was that I didn't care much about the tank and helicopter missions and even the spec-op missions; it would have been better if they were optional or separated completely; the infantry missions were awesome).

[MengJiao 10]

That's why North-Korea is perfect. No religion problem and no loss of potential sales! :D But don't call it North-Kareo or something stupid.

North Kareonarus would be perfect, but not with the player as the

triumphant Americans. It seems to me that a better story-setting would

be something like a coup in a Takistani-like state or other failed post-Stalinist

regime. Both sides can have the same crappy equipement and the fight to

get some better technology can be part of the story.

[jakerod 254]

In OA they had to give lots of tanks to this Takistani "army" just to give you something to shoot at, but these would be decimated by the air power in reality, anyway.

I let them slide on that one because of the time frame involved. The enemy was threatening to use SCUDs against their neighboring country and gave a deadline. Therefore, they don't have the time to go and take out every taki tank in the region. They probably used the stealth aircraft to hit command centers, communication centers, known SCUDs and then probably regulated them to tank duty. Other aircraft were probably the same way. They used them to hit more important targets knowing that the M1A1s (sometimes with AH-64 and A-10 support) would be able to take care of the tanks fairly easily.

I view it as a smart plot move. The US Military had a deadline that they had to deal with and so used the aircraft to do the most damage and to prevent major losses in the neighboring country. Also keep in mind the entire (playable) campaign only lasts about 24 hours.

*Didn't spoiler any of this since it can all be found in press releases or the manual. If you feel that it should be feel free to PM me or report it to a mod.

[ijozic 9]

I view it as a smart plot move. The US Military had a deadline that they had to deal with and so used the aircraft to do the most damage and to prevent major losses in the neighboring country. Also keep in mind the entire (playable) campaign only lasts about 24 hours.

I see your point, but how smart is the plot in which you go for the SCUDs in tanks (and thus giving the enemy more time to launch the SCUDs) instead of just wiping them out with the air strikes (after locating their positions with UAVs/satellites/JSTARS/etc.)? It's not like you can hide those in any caves.

But I was not aiming at the plausibility of the campaign - I tried to make the point that I've found the campaigns after OFP uninvolving and boring - I didn't care about their storylines or any of the characters. Perhaps they're trying to mimic real events too much and then the differences between them and reality become too obvious too ignore and the story becomes more like some article you can see in the news every day. Because of that, I'd say that e.g. the Cold War scenarios are like an escape from the grim reality and thus far more involving and less open for criticism.

Edited July 29, 2010 by ijozic

[NoRailgunner 0]

Well for good campaign story you need time and a good plot before you start making missions. Designers/scripters have to make intros/outros and cutscenes to tell more about the characters.

In OFP the characters did have something like a personality. Those little things like cutscenes, chatting ("I spy with my little eyes..."/ "This rifle is perfectly balanced..."/ "Keep your distance at each other I dont want to see..."/ "PapaBear to all units..." etc) and the diary/letters in the notes made a whole better immersion than beeing soldier #647654 following only mission objectives.

Guess that BIS like to show whats possible in A2/OA but they cut for unknown reasons developing characters. Imho developing two or three main characters would be enough for a 10-20 mission campaign. No need to make missions that top each other with action gameplay, though.