Bohemia, the Road to Flashpoint

[Pave Low]

a very interesting article over at Rock, Paper, Shotgun

it's called Making Of: Operation Flashpoint but I guess more accurately it's the "early days" of Bohemia Interactive

well worth a read for those of you not familiar with Bohemia's roots (and still worth it for those who are )

[krise madsen]

I've always had tremendous respect for the Bohemia boys and their ambitions and mindset. I'm quite the tac-sim fanatic and OFP ought to have been the game of my wettest of wet dreams. But it wasn't. As far as I'm concerned, it had some fondamental conceptual flaws (I'm talking single player here, never tried MP).

It was obscenely difficult, so much so that it hurt the learning process. The command & control system was a mess: I either raced around like a madman trying to follow the orders of my squad leader or punched random buttons in semi-confusement trying to command the squad myself. I think I actually spent more time learning how to play the game than actually playing it.

And while the infantry part was extremely realistic, the vehicle and (especially) aircraft parts were overly simplified, a natural consequence of essentially being an FPS with pretensions perhaps, but still.

Given that ArmA is (alledgedly) simply OFP with improved graphics, I've never really felt the urge to try it.

I really, really, really wanted to like this game, maybe more so than any other game. But to do so, it had to have a simple command interface, no hero character (soul switching instead), and have tanks and aircraft operate as more separate entities.

I don't really have high hopes for "Game2" (same goes for Codemasters [OFP: DR]), because I don't think Bohemia and I are on the same page (which is only fair, they're not supposed to make the game just for me after all ). I do wish them the best of luck though.

Respectfully

krise madsen

[Malleus]

Excellent read! Thanks for posting.