Intel Depot

British paratroopers, French legionaires and an entire western coalition. These are all on the community wishlist, judging from the posts in the BI Forums. So far these requests have all been met with the same answer: "Wait until next week." Bohemia Interactive and Idea Games intend to reveal the full content of the Operation Arrowhead expansion next week. Here is a summary of what has been said until today:

• Operation Arrowhead will take place in Takistan, a fictional Middle Eastern country, and is set three years after Harvest Red (the campaign in ArmA2).
• Two screenshots have been release showing the Apache helicopter and a local woman in a setting that looks to be modeled after a village in the Caucasian mountains.
• The BLUFOR side will be centered around the US Army
• Operation Arrowhead will be standalone - you will not need the original ARMA 2 to play. Think of Half-Life 2's separate Episodes.
• If you do have ARMA 2 you will be able to use all of its content (units, campaign, missions) in one game. Operation Arrowhead will be backwards compatible.
• All improvements made for Operation Arrowhead will be available for ARMA2 in the form of free patch(es), this includes engine bug fixes. Operation Arrowhead will contain unique material in the form of units and worlds (i.e the Takistan map and the US Army).

According to a statement made by Bohemia Interactive's CEO Marek Spanel at ign.com, both ArmA2 and Operation Arrowhead will recieve an equal amount of support and patches in the nearest future. Quoting: "Bohemia Interactive is fully committed to supporting the existing ARMA2 user base whilst also working on the expansion pack, this will not only allow us to introduce a new and original theater of war to the simulation series, but also improve numerous areas of the core game, for both the original game and the expansion, where we can go even further with adding completely new features."

The full content of Operation Arrowhead planned so far will be revealed at the GamesCom that will take place between August 19 and August 23 2009 in Cologne, Germany. BIS will be present in Hall 04.2, booth L034. The expansion pack is developed by IDEA Games and Bohemia Interactive, working with Black Element Software and ALTAR Games. it is speculated that the actual release will be scheduled around October 8 this year, when Codemaster's offspring titled Operation Flashpoint 2: Dragon Rising hits the market.