Bought this on sale. What is it? Where did it come from? Where does it fit in among the other titles in the series? I'm confused.

[TransgressorOfTheUnspeakableWord]

I have several copies of Operation Flashpoint / ArmA and expansions (both physical and digital) and, while I knew about the issue between Bohemia and Codemasters, the renaming of Bohemia's IP and the unassociated Codemasters developed game named Operation Flashpoint 2, I've never heard of this until I saw it on sale.

At a glance it seemed to be an OpFlash/ArmA port to the ArmA II engine, in order to bring the graphics and mechanics a little more up to date.

However....

none of the three campaigns had a familiar title; with the most likely choice of the three not being a modernised rendition of the original OpFlash single palyer campaign - as I'd expected.

Ergo...

What is it? Where has this game and these new campaigns come from? Why does it look like ArmA II, yet have the OpFlash/ArmA [1] name, merely with "gold" tacked on the end?

[a513497643]

If I get this right, there seems to be some kind of confusion. Which is understandable, since matters are complex.
Let's go through the history of BI titles:
1. Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis (with the addons Red Hammer and Resistance)
published under Codemasters, who later kept the rights for the "Operation Flashpoint" name, as you know.
The game (including both addons) was later released as ArmA: Cold War Assault
Apparently BI retained (or regained) the right to publish the game even though they lost the name rights... don't ask me how these things work.
2. Arma: Armed Assault (US name seems to be ArmA: Combat Operation, which I only learned very recently). This game got an addon named "Queens Gambit", and as these things always go, was later released as a Gold version including the addon. This seems to be what you recently acquired.
3. ArmA II with all its DLCs
4. ArmA III with all its DLCs

So yes, ArmA: Armed Assault/Combat Operations and ArmA: Cold War Assault are entirely different games.
IIRC Operation Flashpoint was only renamed after Armed Assault was released, that's why that one wasn't named ArmA II.
The graphics are also not quite on ArmA II level.

Also if you own the Gold edition, Steam still lets you buy Combat Operations which is ****** up since it's the very same game (without the addon even?), so don't do that.

[TransgressorOfTheUnspeakableWord]

Thanks for the reply.

Seems clear enough, though I feel Bohemia made a slight oversight when they renamed OpFlash, as I always assumed anything labelled solely "ArmA: ..." was merely a copyright-rebranded OpFlash, one of its DLCs or a multi-pack release including the original base game and a combination of DLCs.

I originally owned a hard copy of Operation Flashpoint (which I either lent out or is "stored" in a family member's loft space) before buying the hard copy of Cold War Crisis (double DVD case in a sleeve) and finally also purchasing digital copies of this same complete package on both GOG and Steam.

I had no idea there was another ArmA titled game previous to ArmA II and III.

[neizvestniy3113]

check out the Cold War Rearmed mod for this game.

[TransgressorOfTheUnspeakableWord]

Will do. Thanks.