In ArmA III, you join NATO in the Mediterranean in the year 2030. The problem: Militants from the east—presumably from the fictionalized post-Soviet world that served as the setting for previous ArmA games—are winning the war. It's all NATO can do to hold on to Europe. In a Hail Mary move, the organization secretly sends some troops behind enemy lines, a project it dubs Operation Magnitude. The operation fails horrendously, however, and British Special Forces Captain Scott Miller is left stranded on a hostile land based on the Greek isle of Lemnos.

So, yeah. Basically, you play a guy who kills hundreds of Russians, just like you did in any number of other recent FPSes. But don't worry, because ArmA III—like its bigger-budget competitors in the Russian-killing shooter genre—probably won't rely too much on story to make its point. Instead, the game promises tactical, simulation-style gameplay that accommodates a wide range of styles, as well as the biggest open world the series has ever featured. And even if the story itself feels a little recycled, it features branching paths that lead to different endings—something you won't find in too many other shooters.

The open world measures more than 900 kilometers square, and it's rendered with a stunning amount of detail. The geographic features—including everything from mountains to forests to fifty villages—are based on real-world data. And not only are the graphics high-quality in general, creating a photorealistic look, but the world is living and interactive. If you see a building, you can enter it or blow it up. If you scuba dive in the ocean—by the way, you can scuba dive in the ocean!—you will find fish and plankton.

Past entries in the ArmA series have had solid visuals, but the polished look was always undermined by low-quality physics and animations. This time, the developers promise, things are different thanks to "radical" improvements to the engine. ArmA III will support PhysX, employ ragdoll physics, and feature much-improved animations. Further graphical enhancements include DirectX 11 support and uniform customization. The downside to all of this: The game's system requirements a are quite demanding—there will be no Windows XP support, and the game will need a processor at least as fast as an Intel Core i5 or AMD Athlon Phenom X4.

In terms of gameplay, it doesn't look like developer Bohemia Interactive plans to dumb anything down. This will still be a war simulator rather than an arcade shooter. The fights take place over longer distances, and tactics are paramount. A single bullet can kill you, and the controls will require you to do more than push W to walk forward and click the mouse to shoot. The enemies won't trigger in front of you in predictable waves, but instead will attack you from all angles. The aforementioned scuba diving isn't just a cute feature, but a way to infiltrate enemy positions if you'd rather do that than attack from the front.

That doesn't mean the team has given up on making the series more welcoming to newcomers, however. There will be plenty of tutorials, and the single-player campaign will start simple and gradually become more complicated as more land and missions unlock. At first, you are a lone wolf—and you can keep playing that way if you want. But you can also add recruits and vehicles to your squad—covering the full range of land, sea, and air—and eventually you can command full invasions. The interface will be streamlined relative to those in previous ArmA games. You can also fully customize your weapons as you unlock new options, including everything from silencers to sights.

There's much more to the game than the campaign. Co-op has long been a favorite of ArmA fans, and it will return. There will also be competitive multiplayer, which is sure to be a hit with shooter fans who don't mind thinking a little bit instead of running around aimlessly and gunning down everything in sight. Most interestingly, there will be an improved mission editor, which will allow players to craft their own game, inserting units, objects, waypoints, and even triggered events wherever they want. The developers say there could also be full 3D terrain editing.

One criticism frequently leveled at previous ArmA games is that, while they are truly impressive accomplishments when it comes to simulating warfare, they don't always feel like games. They have typically been intended to satisfy war nerds—the kind of people who are more concerned with meticulous accuracy than with white-knuckle excitement—and this has limited their appeal. We have hopes that ArmA III will be able to win over action-oriented fans without losing the series' sense of realism and prioritizing of tactics over twitching. Barring any unforeseen delays, we'll find out in summer of this year.

By Robert VerBruggen Contributing Writer @RAVerBruggen Date: January 19, 2012