GC 2008: Operation Flashpoint 2: Dragon Rising Impressions

It's hard to believe that the original Operation Flashpoint was released all the way back in 2001. Despite its age, Bohemia's game is still revered by hardcore shooter fans and military buffs alike, who continue to play it to this day. While development of the sequel has switched from Bohemia to an in-house team at Codemasters, the new team seems determined to continue the predecessor's attention to detail and eye for realism. We were some of the first people in the world to see OP2 in action ahead of its showing at the Leipzig Games Convention.

Our visit to Codemasters was comprehensive to say the least, and we were given access to the people behind the art, vehicles, weapons, and characters in the game. So much information was poured into our brains that it's difficult to know where to start. The game's setting is probably as good a place as any. This time the game takes place on a small island called Skira in the Pacific Ocean. The land is being disputed by China, Japan, and Russia, and as a member of the US military drafted in to help Russia, you must help repel some of the Chinese forces. The campaign starts on the west side of Skira, and you'll be pushing onto the beach and moving east to take the offensive on some of the invading forces. The island was built up using NASA satellite imagery, and this data was then fed into a modelling program to add more environmentally interesting details. One of the major points for Codemasters is making the terrain more varied than in the first game, both for visual and tactical purposes. There will be 220 square kilometers of area to explore, and the settings will vary from beaches to small towns and even volcanoes on the east side of the island.

As we'd hoped, Operation Flashpoint 2 is as scarily realistic as its predecessor. The damage system is incredibly realistic and modelled on each individual bullet, so even if you're only shot in the arm, it will be enough to send you into shock unless you haul yourself to a medic. With such a high level of realism, we were concerned about the difficulty and how the developers would make the game accessible, especially to a console audience. The key, they say, is in the squadmate AI, which will mostly take care of itself even if you march your squad into danger. On the PC the command system will be keyboard-based, but on consoles there will be a radial system. This means you'll be able to make quick commands by holding one of the shoulder buttons and using an analogue stick to direct your squad.

Not only is the game looking realistic, but it's also incredibly comprehensive at this stage. There are more than 70 weapons planned, each with realistic ballistic systems, and there will be 30 usable vehicles for the road, sea, and air. These vehicles will be incredibly realistic; for instance, certain tanks will have a limited viewing window. This is something that the developers say will completely change the way shooter fans approach vehicles. Rather than the conventional thinking that you're safer in a vehicle, in Flashpoint you'll be more vulnerable to attack. This means that in Codemasters' game, it's the soldiers who escort the vehicles because of their increased visibility. The team says that its overriding wish for the game is to bring you closer than you ever really want to get to war itself.

The single-player campaign will feature a career advancement system, in which you'll go through the ranks from foot soldier to commander as you progress. There will be specific missions centered around stealth and the use of a sniper rifle, which sounds especially neat since the sniper rifle can actually take out individual passengers in a vehicle. The game will also feature an extensive and persistent damage model so that the buildings you destroy in one mission will stay destroyed upon your return. If you don't want to play through the 20 missions in the campaign, you can jump into the quick fight or fire team engagement modes, which will present you with quick situations to play through.

Because technology has advanced light-years since the first Operation Flashpoint, the multiplayer mode is pretty much a brand-new proposition for fans. The multiplayer support will differ slightly between consoles and the PC, with the home computer having a slight edge in terms of player support. The story mode will be playable in co-op by up to four people on the PC and two people on Xbox Live and the PlayStation Network, while the competitive multiplayer modes will feature 32 players on the PC and eight on consoles. There will be three different multiplayer game types in the finished game--annihilation, which is a straight-up deathmatch; frontline, which is a team-based game for control of the map; and infiltration, which sounds like a more elaborate take on multiplayer shooting. Basically, one team will form a large but not well-equipped team that has to defend a base while the better-equipped but smaller special forces team tries to take over.

The last part of the equation is the mission editor, which we're happy to report makes a return in the sequel. We got to see only the PC version of the editor, but it looks like you will be able to make use of a lot of the same tools as the developers of the game. You'll be able to drag and drop units, objects, and routines and jump straight into the world to play out your missions. We're told that the console versions might not be quite so feature-heavy or easy to use, but the developers are planning to incorporate all the features they can.

We liked what we saw of Operation Flashpoint 2, from the changing day-and-night cycles to the dynamic weather effects. The demo was literally being polished up for the Leipzig convention as we saw it, the final result of which will be on the Codemasters stand from today. The game is still in the pre-alpha stage, but we can expect to see more before it's released on the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and PC in 2009.