November 20th, 2008. ign.com preview.

[Snake Man]

ign.com has posted preview of ArmA 2.

In ArmA you could be hit with a miracle shot, but you could still wipe out 30 enemies beforehand" admits Marek Spanel. "In ArmA II that won't be possible without really careful preparation because the AI is more cautious.". Spanel says soldiers will now take cover behind corners and provide suppression for each other, not moving until they know the other guys in their AI team are providing suppression in turn. This time the AI is capable of finding cover with centimeter precision, like at corners of a building," says Spanel, "And they act dynamically and cooperate as a team; provide suppressive fire and trying to avoid it from the enemy. It's a big advancement in terms of AI."

Topical though the campaign is, the most impressive aspect of the game right now is the visual impact of the units and the terrain over which they fight. The vehicles, nearly 150 of them, running the technological spectrum from a bicycle to modern strike aircraft, are spectacularly detailed both inside and out. A more significant evolution however is that the all the characters actually look more like a star cast rather than a pool of expendable extras that in the past were digitized and duplicated members of the design team.

Sound is one area that the team has been spending a lot of time working on, and it's designed to be the most realistic audio experience in a game of this type. When you consider that you'll be fighting at ranges measured in hundreds of meters, where you'll be seeing muzzle flashes from the enemy before hearing the bullet ping past your ear, you'll have some idea what to expect.
Sound design went even further: if you know your war films you might recall in Battle of the Bulge how the American GIs heard the distant sound of squeaking tank treads before the deep growl of Tiger engines. In ArmaA II Bohemia claim to have created more than 40 independent sounds per vehicle, from different parts of each engine to the sound of each wheel on a variety of surfaces, with each sound spatialised. Impressive, even if such detail might be lost in the heat of battle.

Read the full preview in ign.com pages. News source Armaholic.com.