Arma 3 Laws of War – Reveal Trailer

Laws of War DLC is a unique project that aims to introduce the subject of laws of armed conflict (LOAC) to Arma 3. This subject is often overlooked in games and its introduction to the authentic military sandbox of Arma 3 presented a lot of unexplored territory.

Aside from the obvious obstacles on the development side, this subject presented a particular challenge from the communication perspective.

Laws of armed conflict is a sensitive subject and it was important to do it justice. At the same time it was paramount not to come across as patronizing or dishonest. After all, the studio’s core IP is war-themed and has been providing revenue for years. Moreover, many among Arma community are veterans of armed conflict themselves. Bluntly critical tone would come across as unfair at best, sanctimonious at worst.

Solution

To tackle the challenges mentioned above, we decided to take an approach quite unique to Arma 3 trailers. While usual DLCs would have trailers that mainly presented new assets and scripted sequences presenting them in gameplay-realistic sandbox scenarios, Laws of War reveal trailer was to mainly introduce the subject. It would also take a more “cinematic” form. While still built and rendered in engine, more creative freedom was allowed since presented situations were not expected to present realistic gameplay, but rather introduce the concepts behind this DLC. Thanks to this we decided it was warranted to use some heavier post-production like compositing some scenes from multiple record passes to achieve effects impossible in Arma’s dated engine.

Formally, the trailer was concieved as a record of soldiers of one of the in-game factions attending a training course on laws of armed conflict held by IDAP, the in-game humanitarian NGO. Through this training course, the trailer presented 4 key rules of LOAC via various combat footage. This footage was styled as declassified footage from helmet cameras and a drone, or a leaked footage from an insurgent attack. This form clearly communicates various combat perspectives – a key concept for the DLC and its singleplayer campaign.

Rule 1: Only Engage Combatants

The first section of the trailer follows a group of soldiers moving through built-up area. This section is styled as a declassified footage from a soldier’s helmet camera. It is recorded as a gameplay footage and the main challenge of this sections is obvious: it is done entirely in one shot. A long virtual set with events triggered by entering various zones was built for this purpose. Close air support aircraft flies by over the soldiers’ heads and at one point, a different squad shoots an enemy in a standoff. These elements explain to the audience that this is, in fact, an active warzone, raising stakes for the final moment of the section. There, our squad comes across an unexpected non-combatant and take aim. As with all other sequences, footage is paused and result of the encounter is left unshown.

Rule 2: Avoid Civilian Casualties

The second section follows a JTAC (joint terminal attack controller) team guiding an airstrike on an insurgent base. During the aircraft approach for attack, the team discovers that humanitarian workers are nearing the town.

Main challenge of this sequence is making sure the audience is clear on what is happening. To make sure of that, we experimented with various combinations of attack aircraft (helicopter/plane) and sequences of events.

Rule 3: Respect Protective Symbols

The third section is styled to look like a leaked footage (including in-universe appropriate watermark) recorded by a home-video style camera. To achieve this effect multiple elements were added in post. These included barrel distortion, additional shake, auto-exposure hunting and image artifacts typical for older DV cassette camcorders.

In this section, we take perspective of insurgent fighters preparing to ambush a military convoy with an improvised explosive device. The sequence ends with the insurgents realizing the convoy bears protective symbols.

Notice the in-game symbol is a red diamond, since usage of red cross on white background is prohibited in media.

Rule 4: Limit Collateral Damage

The fourth and final section is done entirely from the perspective of a drone operator tracking a high-value target and styled as a declassified footage. It was my original intention to capture it entirely using in-game drone to maintain the sequence faithful to gameplay experience, however, it turned out to be almost impossible to execute. In the end this sequence is the only one in the trailer that makes use of scripted (as opposed to live-controlled) camera. After extensive research of available drone strike videos, the footage was captured clean without any UI in two passes, one in normal color and one in in-game WHOT thermal imaging. Both were combined in post and some additional effects like shake, grain and color adjustments were added. Everything was then overlayed with rebuilt drone camera overlay, including redacted sections.

Conclusion

The Laws of War Reveal Trailer took on the uneasy task of introducing players to subject not often included in games and to do it honestly and with respect. It was also a great challenge that requiered us to go beyond the intended capabilities of Arma 3’s engine which was never intended for complex cinematics. However through carefully thought out messaging and some clever behind-the-scenes hacking, both those challenges were tackled succesfully and Laws of War Reveal Trailer received positive reactions from the community and started the DLC on a path of great success.

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