I don't want to go into too much detail now, but the player can be subordinated to an AI leader or command his own AI soldiers. "It allows all units to perform almost independently on the battlefield. "The AI is good," agrees Marek, modestly. Flashpoint is perhaps the first game that truly has NPCs who move and act like real humans, putting so-called advances in AI seen in your Quakes and your Unreal Tournaments to shame. The other remarkable tiling about the game engine is just how believable the AI is.
Strong aspects of freedom and unpredictability still remain in the game, but the campaign itself is just a series of missions with some nonlinear points involved." Fooled me. "Later, we saw it simply wasn't enough fun so we moved to a more conventional method with pre-designed missions. "Originally, we wanted to create just one world with a real war on it," he confides. Believe What You SeeĪstonishingly though, this is actually a bit of a bodge, according to Bohemia's lead designer Marek Spanel. There's a world going on here, regardless of what you're up to and if you want to just hop in a jeep, jump into a passing truck, hitch a lift on a cargo helicopter or even hijack a local farmer's tractor and drive anywhere you want to, you can. You don't even need to take this turning and probably wouldn't have seen any of this if you hadn't actually got lost in the first place.
It's just a training level in the game, learning how to drive a jeep. It's at that point in the demo that the thought hits me - none of this actually needs to be happening. Swerving the jeep off the road, you jump out and dash over to a couple of your comrades, and hit the deck as another shell explodes nearby. You scramble back into the jeep and decide to check it out.Ĭresting the hill, you're surprised to see a couple of friendly tanks, one burning away, guns trained on the horizon, and a squadron of soldiers running about trying to take up positions. 'Total freedom' is one of those claims that game designers are often making and the truth is often less impressive than the boast would have you imagine.īut there you are, getting hopelessly lost in some part of France, stopping every 200 yards or so to hop out of the jeep and check a road sign, when suddenly you hear a loud bang somewhere just over the next hill.
Indeed, nighttime navigation is just one of many training missions and it is odd to think that I'll have less trouble finding the stroppy commanding officer running around in a pitch-black forest than I would were I given a map, a compass and a jeep and told to drive from point A to point B.Īctually, watching the jeep lesson was when the full impact of what Flashpoint is trying to do really hit home.
Which will he great the next time I'm on a weekend yomp, but probably as much use as a salad fork in Texas the next time I'm staggering home from the Cow & Abattoir after a Friday night social engagement.īut that does show how much thought and design Czech-based Bohemia Interactive Studio is putting into the total combat simulator that is Operation Flashpoint (previously known as Flashpoint 1985: Status Quo, in case you were wondering what all the dodgy song references in the intro were about). That is to say, I now know how to locate north by finding the saucepan-shaped Big Dipper constellation.
Thanks to Operation Flashpoint, I now know how to navigate using the stars, although I'm not exactly sure how much use it will ever actually be to me in this real world of A-Zs, late-night taxis, mobile phones and helpful rapists. You learn some useful things playing computer games.