ARMA III: The Alpha and the Omega

Crowe's ultimate hope for grenade handling is to make it fluid and natural--but also to make sure it's simulated in an appropriate way. He's also conscious of how the modding community might further adjust that mechanic, and other ones as well. "This same through-process can be applied to a whole range of new or refined features," he says. "Is it useful? Is it appropriate? Are the community going to try to hijack it?"

Auto-hover is a wonderful, wonderful thing when trying to land your chopper. But if you want an extra challenge, don't use that option, and stay in first-person view.

Controls in general can be a sticking point for ARMA fans and detractors alike. I noted how much more fluid the game felt straight off--and it seems I am not the only one. Says Crowe, "The change hit me when I recently reinstalled Operation Arrowhead on a new PC. At least compared to ARMA III, the first run of OA was not a great experience--the first 15 seconds, the first 15 minutes. For example, I stuck a rifleman in the editor, moved around, and immediately felt somehow…stuck. I hope our players appreciate the difference in ARMA III."

The adjustments to how the game handles go much deeper, however. ARMA III can handle control presets, so if you're enamored with ARMA II's control scheme and have no intention of messing with what works for you, that's fine. But Bohemia Interactive is also pushing forward with a control preset that falls a bit more in line with standard controls in other games--though just what that preset will entail is still up in the air. "Sitting at Alpha, we've still got some way to go, and rancorous disputes within the team yet to be had," says Crowe, "but we're working towards our 'default' controls setup."

This rabbit hole of player control goes deeper still, however. More from Crowe: "The biggest changes are probably combat pace and adjusted stances, and the way that these are controlled. The stances enable an increased range of movement and are controlled using Ctrl as a modifier, together with WASD. Combat pace is where you can maneuver quickly with your weapon raised, making it more useful in closer quarters. Currently it's a toggle, but we're still working on how best to integrate this into the existing controls to make the best use of it."

My favorite of the four scenarios might be the scuba mission. It starts slow, having you swim from one mine to the next to disable them before emerging from the water and stealing a missile launcher from a nearby base. Even if you shy away from third-person views in the ARMA series, it's worth hitting the enter key on your number pad and moving out of first person, if only to admire the way your avatar glides forward. It's a nice, dreamlike introduction to the nail-biting bit of subterfuge that follows. The scuba options are new to the series, and I asked Crowe how they will fit into the overall package.

"First, it's a logical extension of what ARMA always offered, the idea of freedom or opportunity," he says. "It's another option, another tactical choice, that can be made to execute your mission. It, like other choices, comes with its own unique constraints and its own advantages. Giving players more opportunities always leads to good things. Plus, the sea turtle models are exquisite."

"Secondly, I like to think of it as removing an arbitrary barrier," Crowe continues. "It's like when I loaded up Grand Theft Auto III a while ago. I was in a pinch so jumped into the water, and died. I forgot that they only added the ability to dive in later versions. Now, we want to be careful not to make our game too 'arcade'--it comes back to the balance we were talking about before--so, there are constraints about using weapons underwater or how much air you have in your lungs. But we also don't want to unnecessarily frustrate the player when he wants to do something. It's not necessarily what gameplay it brings to the players, as what it's no longer preventing."

Based on what I played, I am not worried that ARMA III in any way represents a dumbing down of ARMA conventions, but I asked Crowe what he would tell anyone who voices those concerns. His response was candid. "Oh, veterans will always have troubled minds whatever I say! That's part of the beauty of being a diehard fan: complain loudly, frequently, but love unreservedly! More seriously, though, our teams are densely populated with ex-community members, and we're certainly keeping the core of ARMA III the same as ever. Once again it comes back to that difference between dumbing down features and trying to design them more effectively."

This relaxing dive is followed by one of the alpha's most difficult tasks.

One thing Crowe isn't worried about is attracting the Modern Warfare-playing masses. Instead, his goal is to support new players and help them realize ARMA III's unique potential. He says, "ARMA will never be an 'easy' game, as it were. Its rewards are found in the mastery of the challenges it presents you--sometimes by design, and sometimes by our own limitations--and the openness of the platform."

So no, ARMA will never be the next Call of Duty or Battlefield. It will never be bombastic, or linear, and Bohemia Interactive has no current plans to bring the series to consoles. The team knows that its games have a unique identity on the PC gaming landscape and is unwilling to compromise its vision for the sake of being more cinematic. In fact, Crowe wants ARMA III to be there for the players exhausted with cinematic shooters. And he hopes that once they experience the kind of war only ARMA can provide, they won't have any need to return. "When I played the original Operation Flashpoint," Crowe says, "it just blew me away, and it totally ruined other critically acclaimed, but more linear, experiences. I've really never recovered. When you have a game set in an enormous world with a huge number of different weapons and vehicles, you'll find--even in some of the very biggest budget games--the odd glitch or imbalance. That's true of ARMA, but the rewards, for me, outweigh that."

Later this year, we will discover whether ARMA III finds that perfect balance of fluidity and authentic challenge. For now, anyone who has preordered the game has access to the alpha, which includes four single-player scenarios, online multiplayer (which we were not able to test, since the alpha wasn't live to the public), and a map editor. It's clear that Bohemia Interactive takes this series seriously. And that's to be expected, given how seriously the ARMA community takes the series, too. And that's as it should be; after all, few games take the subject of war as seriously as ARMA.