Operation Flashpoint 2: Dragon Rising
In the early days, everything you need to slay a dragon was a prince and a sword. Today you need helos, tanks and lots of soldiers.
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We’re rolling our eyes. What did Clive Lindop just say?
Codemaster’s senior designer, a walking library on military, recognizes our disbelief and shrugs his shoulders, just to say we understood him correctly:
A few weeks earlier, the US Army decided to change the pattern of their uniforms and Codemasters adapted them in the game right away, too.
We’re in a gigantic barn, accompanied by a french and english colleague, near Southam in United Kingdoms’s Warwickshire, which is also known as »Shakespeare Country« to tourists. In former times the Darling’s barn (the Darling family founded Codemasters) was filled with cows and tractors, nowadays it’s used to house dozends of computers on two levels. The huge network is used to create a virtual war even William Shakespear himself couldn’t have imagined. It is here where Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising, Codemaster’s biggest project ever, is forged.
The justification for war: resources
Actually, calling Operation Flashpoint 2 a shooter with tactical elements isn’t right.
It’s going to be more: a complex and realisitc military simulation, based on a fictive conflict, that doesn’t seem ficitive at all. Codemasters decided to leave the well known battlefields and concepts of enemy behind and moves it’s game far to the east, right into the northern pacific.
This is where Sachalin is located, a russian island which is used to produce oil and natural gasoline since 1996. Most companys on the island come from the U.S. or Japan, however the russian Gazprom is also present on Sachalin. Some time ago, Russia signed an agreement with China, which said that Gazprom should supply China with natural gas, however Russia hasn’t allowed to complete the pipeline. They say the pipeline may bring ecologial damage to the island, but experts say, Gazprom is just interested in using the resources itself.
And that’s how it really happened.
Codemasters made minor changed to this story and moved the oil and natural gas resources to the island of Skira, which they placed right between the southern end of Sachalin and the russian continent. Skira is part ficitve, part real. For one, it really exists, however it's not named Skira. The developers sighted hundreds of satellite pictures and finally decided for the 220 square km; sized Aleutian Islands. »We found the exact thing we were looking for: sabulous beaches, green hills, sparse cliffs, lots of forrest, swampland, rivers, streams and a real vulcano on the eastern part of the island«, said Lead Designer Mike Smith.
Your enemy: a dragon
The developers placed a small US consulate right on this rural, sparsely populated idyll, as well as a handful of soldiers to guarantee the safety of the U.S. surveyors and their families.
And then Codemasters makes the chinese dragon rise: the people's liberation army (PLA) raids the valuable island and forces the american’s to escape. Soon after the US government receives a call for help from the Russians: Moscow requests military support to fight of the overwhelming PLA forces. The US goverment then sends out the USS Iwo Jima, an assault ship carrying amphibious vehicles and vertical take-off aircrats.
This is when the campaign starts. The campaign itself is divided into 6 days, and each day is made of three to four missions. In the second mission (»Blinding the Dragon«) you’re a grunt arriving on Skira at night. Your objectives are to destroy the chinese anti-air and anti-ship positions to allow more troops to land on the island and move forward to the airport, which is a high priority target.
Permanent collateral damage
Airports, factorys, towns, barns, trees, forrests – everything on Skira is supposed to be fully destructible. If a PLA squad is entrechned in a factory it’s very useful to call in an airstrike and blow the factory into pieces, just so you can engage them much easier.
Mike Smith demostrated the different destruction models used for a bunch of houses.
»Buildings include multiple damage levels, making it possible to bomb them until only the foundation walls are still intact.« Like in Crysis, you will also be able to fully destroy trees.
Also, if you destroy something once, it won’t reappear magically on the next mission – it’ll be destroyed permanetly. So after the war is over, you’ll able to retrace your movement by following the ruins and destroyed forrests you left behind.
A dirty war
Operation Flashpoint does not only include day and night cycle but a dynamic weather system. That means, it’ll be raining sometimes. Rain means there’ll be mud. And mud means dirty vehicles. »The vehicles may arrive clean on the island, but that doesn’t mean they’ll stay that way. Dirt is going to be churn up by tank tracks, mud is going to splash onto the vehicles. Those of you who played Colin McRae: Dirt know what I’m talking about.«, said senior producer Brant Nicholas. Codemaster’s in-house Ego engine was first used in Codemaster’s last Rallye-Game and again in Race Driver: GRID. The cars, shiny at first, had scrachtes, dirt on them and didn’t shine anymore when the race was over.
Individual missions
The fighting will move forwards and backwards and the whole front is always on the move.«, Nicholas promises. We ask him if the campaign will be dynamic.
»No, or let’s rephrase that, partially. There’ll be sub missions, which, once completed, will make the mission easier. However, if the player fails to complete a sub mission, the mission itself will become more difficult.«. And that’s how we know it from it’s predecessor Operation Flashpoint.
Within the missions there’ll be mostly no scripts at all. The main objective will be clear at any time, but what happens between the mission's start and it’s end will be individual to every player[‘s action]. You most likely won’t change the big picture when you’re a simple grunt , but that’ll change as soon as you hop into a tank or helicopter.
Easier warfare
»Yep, the player can move away from his squad and have a little fact-finding tour, but this is going to be suicide. There’ll be plenty of PLA squads all over the island. Your chance to surive alone is equal to zero.«, said Nicholas when asked about the freedom of movement in the game. »And moving away when you’re the squadleader is even more dumb, as the success of your mission depends to 100% on your decisions.«
While it was a real pain in the back to commandeer in Operation Flashpoint, having to use dozends of menus just to give a simple order to a soldier, Operation Flashpoint 2 will have a few extras to make commandeering easier. Still, you will have the same commanding menu as in Operation Flashpoint 2, but on top of that you’ll also be supplied with a commander perspective like in Battlefield 2 which sould make things a lot easier. However, if you’re in the middle of the fight, you might also want to use the new commanding menu, which will be a lot like the one in Rainbow Six: Vegas. You’ll have a menu in the shape of a circle which can be used to quickly give simple orders to your soldiers. »And the good thing about that is that your soldiers won’t just move out and suicide when you tell them to advance. Thanks to our complex AI the soldiers will make use of the terrain and engage the enemy according to military tactics. «, said Clive Lindop.
Intelligent forces
»The AI uses multiple layers. It checks the terrain, notices noises and movements and also uses real military tactics. Fighting will always be unique and develope dynamically according to the player’s actions, his orders and the environment the fighting is taking place in.«
To point this out to the audience, Brant Nicholas told us a little story about a simple mission he played earlier. »Recently, when I experimented with the editor at 1 am, I picked a forrest area and placed a Marine and a PLA soldier on each side, telling them to advance into each other’s direction. Then I hopped right into the game beeing an US soldier myself and looked at what happened. As soon as both soldiers spotted each other, they tried to get into a good position to shoot without trying to become a target themselves. I wasn’t careful enough though and the PLA soldier killed me. I then replayed the same mission and tried surrounding the PLA soldier with my AI buddy. However, the PLA guy took a stand at a tree and tried not to get into the line of fire. The whole thing seemed almost real to me.«
Real gears of war
Realistic! Make it realistic! That seems to be the mantra the developers are praying every day.
And they try to stick with it wherever and whenever they can. »We did research on PLA’s military equipment for two years. Even though it is said that the Chinese have the biggest army in the world, there’s not much information about them at all. So we dug through a lot of archives, interviewed a lot of people, ... I think the whole research we committed on the PLA was worth it and now we should be pretty close to the real thing. « said Clive Lindop, commenting on Codemaster’s efforts to unravel the PLA and their equipment.
Codemasters made the same efforts when researching the U.S. equipment, but things were a lot easier for them – which resulted in an enormous love to details.
»This is the average Black Hawk. And this is the modified one with an electronic missile detection system.«, said Clive Lindop when presenting two render models of helos to us.
We couldn’t tell any difference at all, but lead designer Lindop pointed at a small piece on the helicopter’s roof. »That’s the radar. « After having seen some of the vehicles, we’re beeing shown some of the 70 weapons that will be included in the final version of the game.
»We tried to not only make the weapons look different, but tried to e.g. have the sights as real as possible. However, we had to adjust the FGM-148. The control panel was simply boring and it wasn’t really possible to port it to the game 1:1.«, said Mike Smith, justifying the modification of the weapon. »Still, you have to assemble the launcher first. That’s going to be a pretty hard decision as it’ll take quite some time before it’s ready to shoot. And the time you’re using to do that might be all the enemy needs to kill you.«
To proof his statement, he showed the animation to us which shows a soldier assembling the launcher – and it’s really taking time.
Try to survice
Living or better surviving will be as difficult in Operation Flashpoint 2 as it was in it’s predecessor. »If you get shot and don’t get treated, you’ll bleed to death.«, said Brant Nicholas, showing us a soldier shot in the leg, with the blood slowly dyeing the soldier’s pants. »Depending on the caliber you’re getting shot at you might die immediatley, wherever the bullet hits you. To implement that, we will include limb dismemberment, so you might lose a leg or arm if you’re not beeing carefull enough. Most likely this isn’t going to be included in the German version.«. We didn’t expect anything else and asked Nicholas what kind of save system the game will use. »A part of the stress Operation Flashpoint put the player into was based on the fact that you could only save once per mission. On the other hand, it was also frustrating to a lot of people. If you’d saved too soon, you were screwed. Currently our team is not sure what system will be used, or if the saving options will be somewhat limited to keep the tension high.« We counter and say they should use the system which will guarantee having fun with the game. Brant Nicholas laughs and said that’s a good idea.
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Translation of Petra Schmitz's GameStar article on Operation Flahspoint 2: Dragon Rising.
The original article can be found here (German only)
ZWAME Jogos: Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth já se encontra disponível para a PlayStation 5. Podem ler a nossa análise no Portal Jogos.
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