When Operation Flashpoint launched in June 2001, it was one of the most ambitious games I’d ever played. One of the earliest military simulators, for me it was significant for being an open world game before the concept of open world games really existed.
Operation Flashpoint’s intensely simulated combined-arms warfare took place across massive, freely explorable islands, all at a time when most other first-person shooters had barely crawled out of their corridors. You could drive tanks, fly helicopters, or command entire squads of soldiers. You could even lie down. It was janky. It was ugly. It was harder than a steel-plated honey badger. But it was also light years ahead of its time.
Now, Operation Flashpoint is 25 years old. It’s no longer called Operation Flashpoint of course, as that license is lying dead in a ditch somewhere near the Codemasters office. Nonetheless, beneath its new title, ArmA: Cold War Assault remains the same game it ever was, and developer Bohemia Interactive has a bunch of plans to celebrate.
For starters, Cold War Assault is getting a remastered edition, with a rebuilt version of the original Poseidon engine bringing features like widescreen support and improved compatibility for modern machines. The full version of this hasn’t been released yet, but there is a demo that offers a “self-contained slice” of the full game. This apparently doubles as a “sanctioned asset pack” that fans are “free to study, modify and build new Arma content from.”
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To that end, Bohemia has also released the full engine source code over on GitHub. Bohemia notes that “the code has been modernized to C++20, built with CMake and Clang, with cross-platform support for Windows x64 and Linux x64.” Bohemia says the license does not extend to the ArmA or Operation Flashpoint trademarks and their logos, so any fork of the engine should clearly define itself as separate from those brands. But otherwise, modders and programmers are free to utilise the code as they wish.
I’m keen to see what the full Remaster looks like. While I’ve enjoyed all the ArmA games up to this point, there’s something about that original Cold War setting that just fits perfectly with the type of game ArmA is, and I don’t think Bohemia has ever bettered it, at least thematically. Players have, of course, had the opportunity to revisit some of Cold War Assault’s locations in ArmA Reforger, which recreates islands like Everon in the developer’s new engine. ArmA Reforger is also designed as a testbed for ArmA 4, which is supposed to release sometime in 2027.
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