Arma III

Arma III
Developer: Bohemia Interactive Publisher: Bohemia Interactive Platforms: Windows, Mac OS X, Linux Released internationally: September 12, 2013 This game has unused animations. This game has unused areas. This game has unused playable characters. This game has hidden developer credits. This game has unused enemies. This game has unused objects. This game has unused graphics. This game has unused models. This game has unused items. This game has unused sounds. This game has revisional differences. This game has anti-piracy features.

This article is a work in progress. ...Well, all the articles here are, in a way. But this one moreso, and the article may contain incomplete information and editor's notes.

This page or section needs more images. There's a whole lotta words here, but not enough pictures. Please fix this.

This game is receiving new content, by way of Expansion Packs and/or Downloadable Content. Be aware that any unused content you find may become used in the future. If this does happen, please specify as such!

Arma III is a realistic tactical shooter where you go to war (and then some) in a near future setting that's actually far more grounded and close to the present day than most other futuristic settings. The game is known for its comprehensive DLC and large modding community, and has seen use with both actual militaries for tactical training and operation rehearsals, and (unintentionally) disinformation hawks pretending they filmed a war on their phone.

To do: UNFINISHED. ARTICLE. 200 METERS. FRONT. Dig into the game's files to locate models, textures, icons, sounds, etc. for content that is and isn't listed here. Most of this article's content is from the Armed Assault Wiki, but they're not 100% comprehensive, so a deep dive for specifically this article would be ideal. Make sure content listed here and in the sub-pages is actually still in the game, and if not, note that it was removed. Get images, but you knew that already from the other notice at the top. Create a Prerelease sub-page containing prerelease information, comparisons between then and now, etc., and move content where necessary. Note that a lot of stuff, including several things listed in the sub-pages, are prerelease content; I don't think moving them to a Prerelease sub-page is necessary, but they should preferably be mentioned there if possible. See the following sources: For all content in general: "Assets" article from the Bohemia Interactive Community Wiki For unused textures: this video, this custom scenario, this other custom scenario, and this forum thread For unused animations: this video, though be aware it may be outdated For unused accessories: this mod and forum thread

Sub-Pages

Unused Campaign & Story Content Campaigns, showcases, scenarios, and other missions and story elements that didn't get boots on the ground.

Unused Weapons & Equipment Weapons, attachments, equipment, and tools that never saw battle—and boy are there a lot of them.

Unused Vehicles Vehicles and their variants that didn't get to join any motor pools.

Unused Clothing Uniforms, headgear, eyewear, vests, and backpacks that won't be arbitrarily reducing anyone's stamina anytime soon.

Unused Factions and Organizations

Iranian Armed Forces

In the pre-alpha, CSAT was originally the Iranian Armed Forces. This was eventually changed to establish the main REDFOR faction as CSAT, though the Mediterranean CSAT forces on Altis in the final game are still stated to be the Iranian Armed Forces, as Iran is part of CSAT in the game's lore. This still got Arma III banned in Iran in 2012 for depicting their military as the enemy, though it's unclear whether the rename occurred before or after the ban.

Filenames for Mediterranean CSAT configs and groups, visible in the Eden Editor, still refer to them as Iranian Armed Forces.

(Source: Archived "Factions" page from the official Arma III website)

Hellenic Armed Forces

Like CSAT and Iran, the AAF were originally meant to be the Hellenic Armed Forces. When the game's setting of the Greek regional unit of Limnos was changed to the fictional country of Altis in 2012, this was also changed.

Filenames for AAF configs and groups, visible in the Eden Editor, still refer to them as the Hellenic Armed Forces.

Raven Security

In the pre-alpha, the Iranian Armed Forces were supported by "Raven Security", a Russian private military company seemingly based on real Russian PMCs such as Wagner Group. In-game, they would be a REDFOR faction responsible for guarding certain Iranian installations on Limnos, led by a man named Borodin. Raven Security was eventually removed before prerelease screenshots could even be taken, with CSAT installations in the final game instead guarded by, well, CSAT soldiers. A Russian faction, Russian Spetsnaz, would eventually be added in the Contact DLC, though the campaign they appear in isn't canon and they have no relation to Raven Security.

The only remaining asset from Raven Security in the final game is the "Raven Vest", an equippable vest with its own unique model and texture files, though it's scaled slightly incorrectly; gameplay wise, it's just a Tactical Vest with more storage capacity, and cannot be found anywhere in regular gameplay outside the Virtual Arsenal. Some assets relating to Raven Security variants of the CSAT Fatigues, Cap, and Military Cap also remain in the game, but are not used. Interestingly, all of these except the Raven Vest (which is black) and the Military Cap (which has its textures missing) use a slightly brighter version of the Green Digital camouflage that is associated with the AAF in the final game, suggesting the Hellenic Armed Forces and AAF may have used a different camouflage until Green Digital was given to them after Raven Security was cut.

(Source: Interview with developers Ivan Buchta and Scott Alsworth)

Pro-Altis militias

An unnamed pro-Altis militia was intended to appear in the game as the AAF and CSAT's non-state actor equivalent to the FIA. Though their role compared to the FIA isn't entirely clear, pre-alpha screenshots suggest they would at some point confront The East Wind character Nikos Panagopoulos, who is the FIA's arms dealer, suggesting they would be in direct conflict with each other and play a significant role in that campaign. The concept of pro-AAF paramilitaries was eventually reused for the Tac-Ops DLC's Beyond Hope mini-campaign, in which similar groups are combatants in the Altian Civil War.

All that remains of them in the final game is a uniform which is not used anywhere in the game and is inaccessible without mods or scripting.

Bandits?

A large number of unused camouflages for various clothing items associated with civilians and non-state actors suggest the existence of some sort of "Bandit" group or faction, strongly associated with the color red and a distinctive stylized skull print seen on some of these clothes. Whether they would have been a standalone faction or a civilian unit is unclear, but they were obviously meant to be criminals or looters. In the final game, though there is a civilian unit called the "Fugitive", it is simply a civilian wearing Worn Clothes; the Contact DLC would later add a Looters faction under INDFOR, but they use their own set of clothing.

Red Pegasus Engineering

Early renditions of The East Wind's story mentioned a company called Red Pegasus Engineering that was involved in researching experimental weapons on Limnos. Its CEO was General Ostad Javeed Attar, an Iranian Armed Forces official who was the superior of Colonel Vahid Namar, a major antagonist in early revisions of the campaign. In the final game, this company is never mentioned and Attar does not appear.

A logo patch on the Scientist Clothes, depicting a slightly-altered Pegasus constellation in red, is their only remnant in the final game. Said Scientist Clothes are worn by CSAT and civilian seismic researchers on Altis, but they are never stated to work for Red Pegasus Engineering.

Unused Animations

To do: There are a lot more.

Acts_EpicSplit

The split animation performed by Scott Miller in the Karts DLC's trailer, but does not appear in the game itself. Both the animation and the trailer reference "The Epic Split", a Volvo commercial from 2012 starring Jean Claude van Damme.

Acts_JetsOfficerSpilling

An animation performed by Akhanteros in the Jets DLC's trailer, but does not appear in the game itself. It is a reference to the "buzzing the tower" scene from the 1986 film Top Gun, where protagonist Maverick near-misses an air traffic control tower against his superiors' wishes, prompting a surprised military officer to spill their coffee in the exact same way as this animation.

Acts_Alien_Gesture

An animation of a person holding their hands in front of them in a certain manner. It references the "ALIENS" meme that was popular at the time, based on a screenshot of ufologist Giorgio A. Tsoukalos doing the same gesture in the television series Ancient Aliens. Unlike the other referential animations, this one doesn't seem to have been used anywhere.

Unused Insignias

CTRG Flag Patches

CTRG 15, the protagonists of the Apex DLC's Apex Protocol campaign, was intended to have more flag patches available as unit insignias. Text strings in the game's files refer to several unit insignias with country codes that do not appear in the final game:

String name	Country
str_a3_cfgunitinsignia_ctrg15_ge0	Georgia
str_a3_cfgunitinsignia_ctrg15_ie0	Ireland
str_a3_cfgunitinsignia_ctrg15_pt0	Portugal
str_a3_cfgunitinsignia_ctrg15_uk0	United Kingdom
str_a3_cfgunitinsignia_ctrg15_us0	United States
str_a3_cfgunitinsignia_ctrg15_ca0	Canada

These suggest more nationalities would be represented as part of NATO in Apex Protocol, as in the final game, only the U.S. flag patch is used for Group 15, and the only real NATO member states represented in-game are the United States, United Kingdom, and (partially) France. The inclusion of Georgia and Ireland here is particularly questionable, as neither are part of NATO in real life: Georgia is considered a non-NATO ally seeking membership, while Ireland has never considered joining due to their policy of neutrality.

Anti-Piracy

To do: Find other effects of DEGRADE in this game. Confirm if the "Illegal copies may degrade" message really is an intended, official anti-piracy measure. It's been suggested that it's simply a warning broadcast regularly in some servers, but I (article creator) don't recall ever seeing it for myself—maybe it's in officially-hosted Bohemia servers? Confirm if DEGRADE is even in the game in the first place. A statement released before the game's launch suggests they'd remove DRMs "several months after release", but reports of potential DEGRADE effects have continued over the years.

Arma III seems to use the FADE (now called DEGRADE) anti-piracy measure, just like its predecessors, Arma II and Arma: Combat Operations. For those out of the loop, FADE/DEGRADE is a digital rights management software by Codemasters, the original Operation Flashpoint publishers, that's in pretty much every game Codemasters and Bohemia have released. Upon detecting a cracked copy or invalid CD key (though it can also rarely activate on legitimate copies by mistake), FADE/DEGRADE deliberately plays with the pirate by introducing severe bugs, glitches, interruptions, and difficulty spikes, rendering the game practically unplayable, with the goal of forcing the pirate to give up or ultimately outing the pirate when they report the "bugs" on Bohemia's forums. It was infamous in Arma II and has been lauded as one of the most clever and interesting anti-piracy measures in video games; as it clearly works as pirate-repellent, Bohemia probably decided to keep it going for Arma III.

Arma III's take on DEGRADE isn't as well-documented as its predecessor's, but from what can be picked from both accidental and deliberate DEGRADE activations, it's largely the same thing, albeit a bit more discreet. Reported effects include extremely poor accuracy, the inability to damage enemies, touchy and unusual vehicle controls, lightning striking extremely close to the player even in clear weather, and occasionally spawning as a seagull instead of a human. It may also have to do with a message pop-up when joining multiplayer servers with a cracked copy—the player's set username, followed by text in red reading "Illegal copies may degrade", before they are promptly kicked from the server.

Version Differences

To do: There's probably a lot more post-release version differences in a lot more different areas.

Main Menu

Update 1.60, which introduced content from the Apex DLC, completely redesigned the main menu. The original menu had all of the options in the bottom-left corner similar to the pause menu, and the menu's background consisted of a prerendered video of a drone feed overlooking scenes on Altis to the game's main theme, "This Is War". The new main menu replaced it with a calmer atmosphere—the "world scene" "scenario", a live-rendered shot from the terrain the player most recently played on (for example, if a player plays on Livonia and exits to the main menu, the world scene will display scenery from that terrain), provided this is enabled in the settings—while also replacing the menu music with "Through The Jungle", a calmer, moody track from the Apex DLC's soundtrack. The new main menu was updated shortly after its release, when the Apex DLC's soundtrack was revised, to replace the old version of "Through The Jungle" with the revised version. No other major changes are known to have been made since. The original main menu cannot be reenabled without mods.

Pre-Apex	Post-Apex

Easter Eggs

To do: Add images and videos.

"Invaders" Mini-Game

Whenever Arma III and its DLCs are on sale, the main menu will be slightly modified to have the map icon of the M2A1 Slammer main battle tank slowly drive in from the bottom of the screen. If the key bound to the "Use" action (Space, Enter, and Middle Mouse Btn. by default) is pressed, the tank fires a small white sphere and the logo shakes, activating "Invaders", a Space Invaders-like shoot 'em up minigame.

In "Invaders", the player must defeat the Arma III logo at the top of the screen by shooting it until the Steam discount percentage below it reaches the discount that DLC (or on the first level, the game itself) has during the sale (free DLCs or those not on sale apparently have 100% health), all while destroying other vehicle map icons and dodging projectiles fired by both the logo and said map icons. The minigame was added during the Bohemia Interactive Publisher Sale 2022 and is actually quite comprehensive, comprising 14 levels (one for each DLC, plus the game itself twice) with a sharply increasing difficulty and enemies of a wide variety with different attacks and effects. To exit the minigame, simply lose or click any button or link on the main menu. If completed, the Arma III logo in the menu will remain permanently golden.

"Invaders" does not trigger if there is no sale, mods or DLCs that alter the main menu are installed, or the player has used scripts to opt out of "Invaders". However, it can be enabled even without a sale using the following code:

profileNamespace setVariable ["BIN_ArmaInvadersOfflineBypass", nil];
saveProfileNamespace;

(Source: "Invaders" article from the official Bohemia Interactive Community Wiki, strategy guide from the Armed Assault Wiki)

First Contact Spectrum Frequency Puzzle

The Contact DLC's First Contact campaign revolves around using the Spectrum Device, and one of its functionalities is manipulating electromagnetic frequencies. Said functionality has a hidden puzzle. Use the Spectrum Device to play music to the AFO. When two new frequencies appear, pick one at random; if the correct one is picked, it will disappear. Next, pick the frequency that has been active the longest. Then, three will appear; pick at random again, if it disappears pick another one at random, and if that also disappears pick the oldest frequency. Then, three frequencies will appear again; pick the strongest one.

If done correctly, a sound will play, followed by Scott Miller's model in a rather goofy pose flying toward the player from the AFO before stopping in front of the Spectrum Device and fading away; it's harmless, but to avoid being spooked by it, try doing this in an open area where you can see Miller coming. In his place will be a Tinfoil Hat on top of a yellow-glowing crate containing two Mk18 ABRs, an ASP-1 Kir, a MAAWS Mk 4 Mod 0, an SPMG, and a SPAR-16, as well as their respective ammunition, sets of CTRG uniforms, several different headgears and facewears, weapon attachments, and miscellaneous equipment.

"Gallery" Showcase Hidden Assets

The "Gallery" showcase from the Art of War DLC is, as its name suggests, a non-combat viewing gallery set entirely in the Lars Blanken Gallery in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Attempting to exit the gallery itself simply exits the scenario itself, but by using a freecam, the exterior can be seen, and it has various easter eggs and NPCs that are otherwise difficult to see normally. These include:

• Miller, wearing a Black camouflage Formal Suit and a Wireless Headpiece, looking into the gallery with a Rangefinder from atop a nearby cathedral. Near him is a Black MAR-10 with a Suppressor and a Black AMS scope. The design of the suit and the situation Miller is in seems to be a reference to the Hitman series, whose protagonist, Agent 47, wears a similar outfit and conducts similar assassinations.
• A civilian man conversing with a CSAT soldier wearing a Parade Uniform with a Parade Cap on the balcony of a modern building. Behind the civilian is a pile of luggage that includes two boxes and a bottle of "Arma Eau de Combat", which is itself an easter egg asset consisting of a fictional Arma-branded perfume.
• Two construction workers on scaffolding on a nearby old-looking building.
• A bouquet of white roses. White roses symbolize purity, innocence, forgiveness, and respect. The Art of War DLC was made in cooperation with the Red Cross (like the Laws of War DLC) and has somewhat similar themes.

By the way, the map isn't actually in Amsterdam, or any custom terrain for that matter. It's in Altis, specifically in Almyra, which is flat and barren enough for the gallery to be there without giving away its location. The surrounding buildings were simply placed in the area surrounding the gallery.

Predator References

All of Arma III's terrains have loading screen flavor text that adds some light history and lore to their respective terrains. One line for Tanoa mentions that during hot summers, native Tanoans tend to go missing in the vast jungles of Tanoa. Though this could be brushed off as a minor detail about the jungles' treacherous geography and humidity, or an implication that they were killed by hostile factions like Syndikat or silenced by secretive factions like the CTRG or CSAT's Viper Team, this is in fact a reference to a scene in the 1987 film Predator, in which a captured guerilla tells the film's soldier protagonists that the same thing occurs in the fictional country of Val Verde; as the rest of the film clearly communicates, it's not the environment or humans causing those disappearances.

But the references to Predator aren't limited to text alone. Across Tanoa are four eerie-looking heads made of stone—coordinates 113-122, 099-067, 070-084, and 110-084—that, when approached, emit the Predator's distinct clicking sound. Thankfully for anyone now too afraid to go anywhere in Tanoa, that is the extent of the Predator references, and the Yautja themselves do not appear in the game, nor do any similar creatures.

SCP Foundation Reference

In the First Contact campaign's the fifth mission "Carpe Noctem", there is a house just north of Dolnik that seems unusually fortified, having bars over the windows and all. Inside is a door with a red frame, labeled "173". The door can be opened to reveal a room that contains nothing but an old-looking statue that appears to have a red and green design where its face is, placed in the far corner of the room but positioned to appear as though it's peeking over its "shoulders". If the player looks away, then looks back, the statue will suddenly be placed directly in the doorway, looking at the player. It cannot be interacted with, cannot harm the player, and is not known to have any other functionality past this point.

This directly references the SCP Foundation collaborative franchise, which centers around the titular secret organization as they contain and experiment on various dangerous anomalous entities. One such entity, SCP-173, is a living statue with a similar red and green "face" that moves via teleportation and kills anyone it can get behind, but can only move if no one is actively looking at it.

"TRPASLIK" Initials

To do: Find the coordinates of the letters on Tanoa.

Hidden in the Altis and Tanoa terrains are letters written using rocks that spell out "TRPASLIK". It translates to "dwarf" in Dutch and is the nickname of Radim Vitek, the game's environment designer.

Altis's initials are underwater at coordinates 229-061. Tanoa's initials are scattered across the terrain. Stratis, Malden, and Livonia do not have these initials.

Abducted Furniture

Newspaper assets scattered throughout various terrains can be found with headlines mentioning mass disappearances of furniture. One headline is paired with an image of a flying saucer, suggesting the furniture was stolen by aliens with questionable priorities. This is a tongue-in-cheek reference to how the vast majority of buildings in the game are completely empty and how the game's assets are rather lacking in basic furniture (especially fully-intact ones), which makes sense from a performance perspective, as filling every single house (most of which players may never bother to enter) with furniture would use up a lot of development time and make entering any settlement practically impossible due to the amount of assets loaded in at once. Of course though, this newspaper headline is just a joke, and is never brought up elsewhere.

The Contact DLC uses its extraterrestrial theming to resolve the mystery of the furniture's fate. In the First Contact campaign, on a hill just west of Camp Kresnik, is what appears to be floating furniture just over the treetops. When approached, this is revealed to be an entire pile of assorted furniture, presumably at least part of the vanished furniture mentioned in the newspaper. The furniture cannot be interacted with, and approaching it does nothing.

Oranges and Amsterdam

Hidden in an inaccessible IDAP tent seen in the intro to the Laws of War DLC's Remnants of War campaign are several oranges and flags of the Netherlands. These cannot be seen in normal gameplay and require using freecam. They are a reference to the Laws of War DLC's internal development name, "orange", and the Bohemia Interactive Amsterdam team, who were responsible for developing the DLC.

Tanoa Church Choir

To do: Check if all churches in Tanoa have this behavior, and check if it applies to every church model (there are like five for Tanoa alone). Also, identify the song itself, as well as the sound file it uses.

If the system or mission date is set to any day that falls on a Sunday, some churches in Tanoa will play a looped choir hymn that can be heard from the doors, implying Christian Sunday mass is ongoing. The hymn lasts approximately 1 minute and 30 seconds before looping, is apparently sung in either Latin or French, and will not stop even if a battle is occurring on the church's grounds. The music will reportedly not trigger if the player spawns in close vicinity to the church, and will only occur if the church is approached from a distance away.

Arma: Cold War Assault Callback

One of the game's various decorative assets is an old laptop, classname Land_Laptop_02_unfolded_F. If placed into a mission on Malden with its date set to June 22, 2001, it will have a unique action called "Get Back to Main Menu". If used, it will call the function BIS_fnc_laptopInit, and the display on the laptop will change to the main menu of Arma: Cold War Assault, the name of the 2011 re-release of Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis, which itself was set on Malden and originally released on June 22, 2001.

Galaxy

Sugar cane factories can be found across Tanoa. Part of their structure is a chimney, classname Land_SCF_01_chimney_F. If the chimney is looked into using freecam, a very small, slowly rotating image of what appears to be the Pinwheel Galaxy can be seen.

Christmas Trees

If the system date is set to December 24 or December 25, some pine trees in Livonia will be converted into Christmas trees, with red Christmas ornaments and tinsel placed on them. This is only a visual effect, and they are not known to have alternate functionality in this state.

Oddities

RPG-7V Dynamic Magazines and Sights

The RPG-7V rocket launcher from the Apex DLC was one of 10 weapons that was given the "dynamic magazines" feature in Update 1.98, allowing it to display magazines of different types being loaded. For example, if a SPAR-16 was loaded with a tan drum magazine, that would properly display as such and be loaded like any other type of magazine accepted by the SPAR-16. As the real RPG-7 has different munitions such as high-explosive and thermobaric rounds, the RPG-7V receiving this feature should be a welcome addition...

...Except the RPG-7V only has one munition, a high-explosive anti-tank round, and is only able to load different munitions using mods that add different RPG-7V munitions, or by mounting a Creator DLC (essentially high-quality expansive paid mods with Bohemia's blessing) that adds different RPG-7 munitions such as Global Mobilization - Cold War Germany—but the only reason these Creator DLCs have different RPG-7 munitions is because they already have their own RPG-7s, making the decision to use the RPG-7V in these circumstances questionable, and it's likely those munitions are simply compatible but not intended for use this way. Similarly, The RPG-7V is also capable of equipping sights... except again, it doesn't have any, and can only equip them using mods that add their own RPG-7V sights, or by mounting a Creator DLC that adds an RPG-7 sight.

Though this was likely just designed for mods that add different RPG-7V munitions and sights as Bohemia frequently accommodates for modders in updates, without mods or Creator DLCs this functionality goes unused.

(Source: Patch notes for Update 1.98)

"Elite" Attribute

The Beret headgear has an "Elite" attribute when selected in the Virtual Arsenal, but it doesn't do anything, and the Beret offers no real benefits to its wearer. As berets are usually associated with "elite" military personnel such as officers, commanders, special forces, and formal uniforms, this attribute may have been used to indicate a certain soldier was important, skilled, or higher in the chain of command, though how this would have factored into gameplay is unclear.

Miscellany

Arma Futura

Very early into development, during the concept stages in 2010 shortly after the release of Arma II: Operation Arrowhead, the project that would become Arma III was originally titled Arma Futura, which was an entirely different game to the final product.

Information released on it by Bohemia has been spotty even when the developers were directly discussing it, but based on what's mentioned in interviews and articles about Arma III's development and Bohemia's history, Arma Futura was intended to be a post-apocalyptic science fiction spin-off of the main series, set in an alternate timeline where aliens had invaded Earth; the player would most likely be part of the human military force fighting back against the aliens. Most notably, it was apparently meant to be some combination of the role-playing game and strategy game genres instead of a tactical shooter, though some mentions have suggested it was a real-time strategy game or a tactical RPG. The setting was an unnamed archipelago of islands, possibly fictional ones. It would have been a very different product indeed.

Of course, this changed during the concept stages, apparently after the setting of the Greek islands of Limnos and Agios Efstratios were selected over the archipelago. Still, "Futura" remained the game's internal development name, as evidenced by the postfix "_F" in the names of several files. In the final game, all that remains of the Arma Futura concept is the near future "grounded sci-fi" setting, and that the game is mostly set on various different islands (Altis, Stratis, Malden, and Tanoa; the only official terrain not set on an island is Livonia). The alien invasion theme would be reused for the Contact DLC, which like Arma Futura isn't meant to be considered canon, although that DLC's First Contact campaign featuring extraterrestrials doesn't have the human-against-alien combat that Arma Futura was supposedly intended to have. As for the concept of an Arma strategy game, there would eventually be two, both spin-off mobile games: Arma: Tactics, a 2013 turn-based tactical RPG, and Arma: Mobile Ops, a 2016 base-building strategy game.

(Source: Eurogamer article that mentions Arma Futura, News post from the official Arma III website detailing development up to 2017)

Limnos and Stratis

The original setting of Arma III was Limnos, a regional unit of Greece consisting of the islands of Limnos and Agios Efstratios. Fittingly, the game's storyline and the in-game factions reflected these real-life settings. However, after developers Martin Pezlar and Ivan Buchta were arrested on Limnos in 2012 on charges of espionage (allegedly taking pictures of Greek military installations, which is illegal) and held in a Greek prison for 129 days, sour memories of the incident and fears of further angering Greek authorities led to Bohemia renaming Limnos to "Altis", and changing the country the game was set in to the fictional "Republic of Altis and Stratis"; Agios Efstratios was not renamed as it was already using the name "Stratis", itself taken from "Ai Stratis", an alternate name for the island that the developers probably decided was fictionalized enough to pass. This also prompted renames and reworks of almost all of the factions, as well as a rewrite of the storyline, into what the final game became.

Female Characters

An often-requested addition from the Arma community—which, for reasons we won't get into here, tends to be quite contentious—is female characters. Arma III lacks female heads and bodies entirely, and the only named female character in the game is Katherine Bishop, an AAN News reporter who only appears in a prerendered profile picture in a VoIP call in the Laws of War DLC's Remnants of War campaign; this doesn't make much sense seeing the real world has a lot of female soldiers, non-state combatants and, well, civilians. According to Bohemia, this is based on a development standpoint: they would have to create female heads and bodies on an entirely different skeleton, then remodel and readjust every article of clothing in the game to fit women, then make dedicated female clothing, then readjust and probably retake the animations for women, then hire female voice actors to record every voiceline for each language (there's between 4–6 voice variants for each language mind you), then properly implement female characters into the game, and then moderate players acting rude or inappropriately or making NSFW content. This would be a massive undertaking for something the community is rather divided on, and Bohemia evidently does not want to deal with it, at least not with Arma III. Note that while Arma II had female characters, that was only possible through that game's less-configurable character models, which Arma III doesn't use.

(Source: Bohemia feedback response explaining the lack of female characters)

However, female characters were evidently planned and even existed at one point in development. A pre-alpha screenshot of the diving mechanic shows two frogmen as they swim near, and apparently interact with, a civilian woman wearing a white bikini with white sandals swimming near the surface. However, there are two issues that bring this into question: first, that this is the only official Arma III material that features female characters in-game; and second, that the woman's face is conveniently obscured by her arm, meaning this may have simply been a custom body applied to a male head. Regardless, it does indicate there was some attempt to implement female characters in the vein of Arma II, before efforts ultimately stopped due to the aforementioned development and community concerns. In the final game, the only thing left from this period of development is the Ladies Shades facewear, a pair of sunglasses with a unique design that was meant to be worn by women but is ultimately never worn by anyone for obvious reasons. The lack of female characters is also referenced in the Old Man scenario mini-campaign, where some people can be heard complaining about a nightclub in Lifou lacking women.

Livonia "Enoch"

Internally, Livonia is called "Enoch". Apparently, this isn't just the name of the map: at some point in development, it was the name of the entire country. This is most evident in the Eden Editor, where saved scenarios use "Enoch" as the map identification postfix, and in the filenames of Livonian Defense Force, who are referred to as the "EAF", probably the Enoch Armed Forces.