Today’s stream announced that Arma Reforger is available now in early access on Steam and is bringing the series to console for the first time through Game Preview on Xbox Series X/S. Arma 4 is coming, by the way, but Bohemia have yet to set a real date for when that will be, telling RPS that development is “ongoing”. They also describe Arma Reforger as a “work-in-progress”. In its just-released early access version, there are two multiplayer modes to battle in across the 164 square kilometres of map: team-versus-team in ‘Conflict’ and a scenario editor that operates in real-time called ‘Game Master’. Bohemia say Arma Reforger is a standalone platform with a twofold purpose. On the one hand, it allows the Arma community explore their new Enfusion engine for modding, while also letting the devs working on Arma 4 gather intel and feedback ahead of that game’s eventual release. Reforger’s setting is Everon, the same island featured in Arma: Cold War Assault, originally published in 2001. You can play as the United States or Soviet Russia during the tail-end of the Cold War in the 1980s. Today’s reveal does seem to be about sending Bohemia’s snazzy new-fangled engine down the catwalk more than anything else. Bohemia first let the world know that they were working on a new engine in December last year, and said they’d be using it for any future Arma games. It is a nifty-looking improvement over the Real Virtuality engine Arma’s been using ever since it used to be Operation: Flashpoint, and my desktop fainted every time I tried to run it. See for yourself in the trailer above. Arma Reforger is out now in Early Access on Steam. Arma 4 will be out when it’s done.
