Everon is back, BABY! This is one of the islands from the original Operation Flashpoint.
It’s also a real place, called… krk, situated just off the coast of Croatia. I can’t believe
I’ve probably flown over Operation Flashpoint without even realising it.
But today I’ll be revisiting the area! -in Arma Reforger- to see how it’s all grown up.
I’m hoping you’ll be able to share in this nostalgia with me. But given how many of you told
me you weren’t even born when this guy got stuck in the door in 2007, I’m not hopeful. So instead,
try to imagine your favourite places from a game. Where was it, and why? And how foolish would YOU
feel if you flew over it without realising? So when it comes to comparing Operation
Flashpoint with Arma Reforger, some places look better. Others,
better but also entirely different. And some now have so much vegetation everywhere that it makes
meaningful comparisons between the two versions impossible. But I’m still going to try it!
While I say I’m nostalgic about Everon, I will admit now that I frequently mix it up with Malden,
which was the other main island in Operation Flashpoint. So before you ask me ‘why didn’t
you show the steal the car mission’, if you look it up, you’ll realise it’s from Malden instead.
Which, now looking at it, does have a different colour palette and style to it,
which I guess at the time I must have just seen as being the ‘depressing bits’ of the same island.
And then there’s the third island of Kolgugev, which does look very
different and really IS depressing. And don’t even get me started on the
desert island. This place had so little stuff on it that if you accidentally loaded it up
with the view distance turned up too high then it presumably tried to load a billion
miles of water and just crashed the game. And then you’d find yourself locked out
because the main menu would also try to load it to display in the background.
And of course, the young’uns among you- likely approaching your 30th birthday now-
will recall the incredible island of Nogova. Introduced later on in Operation Flashpoint’s
lifespan as part of the Resistance expansion pack, this island was the biggest, most detailed, had
the tallest mountains, and most PINK of the lot. Look at me, side-tracked already. So let’s do
a few brief comparisons of different types of scenery.
Here, is a beach.
Here, is a town. And these ARE the same places, before and after. But the towns in Reforger appear
to have been rebuilt from the ground up. Which isn’t much of a surprise, given that in Operation
Flashpoint, a town was 4 buildings plonked onto a hill, with a drawn-on road leading up to it.
The towns now appear bigger, better developed, and with a lot more fences and walls everywhere.
Some have cranes and docks, giving them a bit more character than they had in the original.
One area the original was always lacking were with its interiors. Half of the houses couldn’t
be entered, while the other half were barren, glitchy affairs. So I don’t want to spend long
talking about this, as Arma Reforger totally overhauls the interiors, making them all look
great! Even if the fashions are soooo last year. Props to this pub in Operation Flashpoint for
being half-decent, though. It even has a toilet. But you couldn’t enter this church,
whereas Arma’s can be fully explored, right up to the belltower! Big win to the new game here.
Here, are some fields. This in my opinion is one of the biggest changes. The island of
Everon used to be 50 shades of grass with objects sprinkled around it, but now different fields have
different crops and different types of plant life. This, in conjunction with the 3D world editor,
has helped me learn the island a lot better and it really gives everywhere a distinctive feel,
instead of you having to rely on fond memories and approaches of attack to help give these places
character. I was never really sure if the original was sunlit or shaded, but this time around,
I know when a cloud passes overhead because it suddenly feels really dark and miserable!
…but in a good way.
Here, are some mountains. As something of an expert on fake mountains, the big turning point
came in 2011 when Skyrim was released. Before this point, any mountain in a game was essentially just
a big mound- like you can see here in Operation Flashpoint-, and if the developers could be
bothered, then they might perhaps sprinkle a few rocks over the top of it. But Skyrim was the first
open world game that I recall where the mountain’s surface comprised MORE of the rock models, than of
the big moundy base layer. I couldn’t believe how good they looked in that first trailer,
and Reforger is still using the same technique. In fact, it’s probably not using it quite so much
as Skyrim did- it’s reserving its rock placement for the really steep rocky bits, with the rest of
it happy to use the base layer but with lots of grass sprouting out from it. Whatever it’s doing,
it’s working. But if I push the camera through some of these rocks, you can still see the moundy
base layer beneath, and not looking so great. So this moundy base layer is… limited in what
it can achieve. You can’t tear holes in it, which is why caves are rare in open-world games.
The Rockstar engine (the one powering Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption), I believe, can do
it- but in games like Skyrim, you won’t find any caves. Anything that looks remotely cave-like is
merely an illusion, formed by surrounding that area with models which stick out beyond the
base layer. Once you see the transition between base layer and rock models, you can’t unsee it.
This limitation of the base layer is one of several reasons for why there’s a loading
screen as you enter any underground region in Skyrim. What are the other
reasons? I’m glad you asked. But I’m not going to go on a tangent inside a tangent.
Again.
So let’s return to Operation Flashpoint, where there’s ANOTHER great example of how rubbish the
base layer is! When its mesh isn’t detailed enough, any abrupt angle changes will appear
spikey. There’s an infamous case of this in Operation Flashpoint’s Malden just here.
THIS is the sort of place that’s in dire need of proper rock models detailing the top of it!
While I’m bragging about my knowledge of a 20 year old videogame that nobody plays any more,
the game later got a detail slider, which made this mound more ‘complex’.
It effectively turned EVERYWHERE in the game into Tellytubby land,
with lumps and bumps everywhere, for no real meaning, all just in the name of ‘adding detail’.
But did I use it? You bet I did.
Did I enjoy it? Hell yeah.
Do you see something missing from Operation Flashpoint?
Obviously, you won’t see it, cos it’s missing. But here’s a clue.
RIVERS. Lakes. Operation Flashpoint ONLY has an ocean plane. Nothing else can exist.
But now, Arma has all sorts of stuff, decorating the valleys. You know how?
With MODELS! And they come with some surprising… limitations. See where this river meets this pond?
See these rocks here? That isn’t a coincidence. It’s masking where the river joins with the pond.
Let’s dive on in, and investigate its dark secrets! If we pass through the surface
you can see that there’s one river, beneath another. A lot has changed in the last 20 years,
but apparently, we still can’t do a smooth transition into still water!
Where it joins with the sea is a bit different, as the waves are constantly changing their height.
To be honest, I think this is one of the better water transitions in the game.
And another, here as well. You get the idea.
So there’s no point in comparing the games since one doesn’t have any, but here are
some nice bodies of water for you to admire. Which gets us onto the other thing that will
ruin these aquatic delights for you, FOREVER. Screenspace reflections means
that if you can’t see the things the water’s reflecting, then… neither can the water. You
can also make out the cut-off around the edge of the screen, which is another place
where it has no information on what to reflect. Raytracing would help with this kind of stuff.
And here’s the good old castle ruins. The models have changed ever so slightly, and the castle has
been turned more into a tourist attraction. But I still love it. But nothing’s ever simple, is it.
Because then I discovered… THIS.
LOOK AT THIS! Actual RAIN. Particles of rain, all of which seem to be accurately simulated.
They never pass-through anything they shouldn’t! Operation Flashpoint’s rain
was a very subtle effect, like it was drawn on the screen as a kind of overlay. Because
that’s probably what it was. It wasn’t great, though I did like the stormy-coloured lighting.
But this? This is nice!
But not only that. Where this rain lands, gets wet. And puddles begin to form. I kid you not!
And then rain lands on these puddles, and makes RIPPLES. It’s like Morrowind
all over again! No… better than that. This is almost up there with TRESPASSER.
And then I turned the taps off, and watched things begin to dry.
I even caught it happening in real-time, just here.
*Great music*
And again, in this scene, but sped up 16x.
The last time I had this much fun was when I was watching paint dry.
*OFP*
Despite their best efforts, it doesn’t seem like they’ve got the wet appearance right just yet.
Again, Rockstar games seem to be the golden standard for this kind of thing. But at least
Arma Reforger is better than Operation Flashpoint, where getting wet would turn your character RED.
I want to give the forests a run-through, because this is a type of environment that
the Arma series has always done very well at simulating. Yes, I know the ones in Operation
Flashpoint look bad by today’s standards. And did, 10 years ago. But you have to remember that,
back when this game was released, most games were just rooms and corridors. Or a field,
if you were lucky! But Operation Flashpoint had TREES. Hundreds of them!
Enough to make it feel like a proper forest, which no other game of the era could match.
Just look at it- there are enough tree trunks here to limit your sightlines, and with
lots of other thick vegetation dotted around! 11 year old me was obsessed with these sorts of
places. I realised that they were all copy+pasted in large square chunks. Firstly, because if you
caught it at just the right angle you’d see all the trees repeating out into the distance.
And second, because… just look at it. Individual trees in Operation Flashpoint could be run over,
but these forests were a no-go area, stopping even the heaviest of cars in their tracks!
*Smack*
But of course, compared to this, Arma Reforger looks absolutely beautiful.
I seem to recall Arma 2 being when they got serious about making forests in this series look
really special. But you know another game series that did them well? Yup, Elder Scrolls again!
In 2006, back when Arma 1 first came out, was Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion! And they claimed the
game would have the most beautiful forests ever seen. And indeed, they were lush. Thick grass,
lots of trees. Very big trees. And variety! Different kinds of forests in every section
of the map. Just as long as you didn’t look up and realise they were fake speedtrees. But then,
Oblivion also claimed to have beautiful looking waterfalls, and then everybody saw them and didn’t
know what all the fuss was about. But you do now, don’t you. Because it meant they were actually
taking the time to model flowing water, rather than to simply rely on the ocean’s base layer to
represent all the water on the map. But yeah, Oblivion’s waterfalls did look a bit rubbish.
I think that’s enough talking. This video has reached the critical monetisation threshold,
so let’s pack it up, smash that subscribe button and so on.
Let’s see how Everon compares with the real island. Is it more like the real thing,
or is it more like Operation Flashpoint’s?
This is Saint Pierre in Operation Flashpoint. This is Saint Pierre,
in Reforger. And here is ‘Saint Pierre’ in real life.
…yeah. I don’t think the Reforger’s quite reached that scale yet.
Nor is OFP’s highest point of 352 metres, nor Arma’s 378, any match for Krk’s maximum height of…
eh.
568 metres!
Plus, while the airfield dominates the North of the game islands,
it’s but a slight skidmark on the backside of Krk’s enormous behind.
And, most easily of all, the internet says Everon is 51 km²,
while the real island of Krk is just over 400 km². Plus, the real thing has barren desert-like
mountains in the South, and the rest looks like… this. Or this.
Which Everon certainly doesn’t look like. So Arma Reforger is very much a remake of
Operation Flashpoint, as opposed to being a more faithful representation of the real place.
But I’m fine with that. In fact, I’m more than fine: I’m ecstatic!
I can’t tell you how nice it is to have revisited all the same places again. To
see them with fresh eyes, and to be shocked by how different the ‘same’ places can feel,
when remade with modern technology. *Oh no… 2, is down! Damn, 4, is down!*
But as far as we’ve come, the original will always hold a special place in my heart,
*3, injured!* and the sheer scale of Operation
Flashpoint’s voids still leave me awestruck in ways that kids these days just won’t understand.
So thank you for sharing in my nostalgia. Leave a like, post a nice comment. And have a nice day.
*Just a load of dead ruskies up here, Bravo. Cover us while we hold the hill, out’