Project Reality (Video Game)

Project Reality is a modification for Battlefield 2 that incorporates new game modes, classes, factions, methods of organization, interface changes and much, much more in order to attempt to create a more realistic Battlefield 2 experience. It was the winner of ModDB's 2008 "Mod of the Year" award. A Project Reality mod for ARMA was released in 2011, and Vietnam- and Falklands-based versions were released in April and October 2012. A World War II mod is also available, and as off 0.98 all three mods have been merged with the original PR. As of 1.3, Project Reality is stand alone, Battlefield 2 is not required to play.

Not to be confused with the Nintendo 64, a video game console codenamed "Project Reality".

A sequel, Project Reality 2, was in development, but has been cancelled. Most of the developers moved onto a new project known as Squad, which acts as the Spiritual Successor of Project Reality.

Thus far, the game features the following factions:

Vanilla

New

Under Development

Australian Defence Force
Norwegian Armed Forces
Private Security Contractors
Czech Armed Forces
New Zealand Defense Force
Brazilian Armed Forces
FARC
Venezuelan Armed Forces

Project Reality provides examples of the following tropes:

Acceptable Breaks from Reality: Tried to avert as much as possible. And those that do exist are often the result of the Battlefield 2 engine's limitations rather than the developers' own intentions. Hence why they're working on the ARMA version and are ultimately pushing towards a stand-alone Project Reality 2, which became Squad.
A.K.A.-47: Averted for the most part, though the "M16A2" used by the Hamas faction is really an M16A1 with a different handguard.
Anonymous Ringer: Averted with the Chechnya and Taliban factions. Certain patches have the Chechens become the "Militia", and several maps also showing the US and UK fighting them, so played straight.
Anti-Air: Some US & German bases will have M61 vulcan cannons filling this role, while various maps will have KPV heavy machine guns in a ZPU-4 quad anti-aircraft mounting. There is even an Anti-Air class which carries a shoulder-launched missile such as the American FIM-92A Stinger or the Russian SA-7 Grail. There are also mobile anti-aircraft vehicles such as the Avenger humvee, SA-13 Gopher, ZSU-23-4 Shilka, and ZSU-57-2.
Anti-Armor: The game has several varieties of anti-tank weaponry; the Light and Heavy Anti-Tank classes which carry shoulder-fired rocket launchers and man-portable missile launchers, as well as tripod and vehicle-mounted anti-tank missiles such as the TOW and HJ-8. Most regular factions (and some irregular ones) also have dedicated anti-tank vehicles armed solely with ATGM's, such as the Russian-made 9P148 Konkurs & 9P149 Shturm and humvees with roof-mounted TOW launchers.
Artificial Stupidity: The bots are just like the ones in vanilla Battlefield 2, unresponsive to player commands, thus it is not recommended to play Project Reality without player-controlled allies.
As Long as It Sounds Foreign:
- The North Vietnamese Army faction in PR: Vietnam actually speak Chinese. Possibly justified in that Chinese is the only Asian language in the game so far and the developers didn't have any native speakers to provide voice-overs. This was later averted when version 1.0 added proper Vietnamese dialogue.
- A similar case with the Taliban, who speak Arabic (lifted out of vanilla BF2's MEC faction) even though realistically the majority of their members would speak Pashto. (Justified, sort of; being the language in which the Quran is written, Arabic is something of a lingua franca among devout Muslims, and a non-trivial number of Al-Qaeda personnel in Afghanistan grew up elsewhere.)
- Even worse with the new African Resistance faction, who speak Arabic instead of any kind of African language such as Somali, Nigerian, or any of the Bantu dialects.
A-Team Firing: You have to wait several seconds between bringing the weapon's sights up and firing in order to ensure an accurate shot, otherwise your rounds will spray everywhere.
Artistic License – Medicine: Medics revive unconscious allied troops (from nearly any cause that doesn't result in instant death) with an EpiPen (or Syringe in the case of the Vietnam mode) and can heal any wound with a Medical Pack. Anyone can be a medic by simply swapping their kit with a Medic Kit, even one from a downed medic. Justified, as requiring all medics to get a full medical degree is not fun, and not allowing the latter would make medics pretty much unable to do anything but stay in cover nearly 100% of the time.
Awesome Personnel Carrier: Generally comes in two flavors; the Armored Personnel Carriers which have comparatively light armor and weaponry and the Infantry Fighting Vehicles which have heavier armor (although weaker than tanks) and more powerful weaponry including 25 & 30mm autocannons and anti-tank missiles. Both APC's and IFV's can each carry a full infantry squad.
Badass Bandolier: The US Army & Marines' Automatic Rifleman class in PR: Vietnam don two of these, crossed over the torso.
Bayonet Ya: Many rifles in the game (sniper & marksman rifles not included) can be fitted with bayonets for melee combat. The SKS even comes with one permanently attached that is simply flipped out into position when needed. However, the catch is that the weapon can not be fired with the bayonet attached and vice-versa.
Black Screen of Death: Or critical wounds, for that matter. You will get a black screen if you are killed or critically wounded. Some varieties of surprise attack will therefore cause true examples of the trope.
Booby Trap: Many of the irregular factions can set these up with an assortment of Improvised Explosive Devices ranging in size and sophistication from a hand grenade in a tin can with a tripwire across a doorway to pipe bombs & artillery shells rigged so that they can be set off remotely with a cell phone. The regular forces can also deploy anti-personnel and anti-tank landmines, the former of which can be command-detonated.
Bottomless Magazines: Averted. All weapons from the original game that exhibited this trait have been redesigned to have finite ammo supplies.
Bullet Sparks: Subverted; bullets will spark when they hit metal surfaces, but not on other surfaces such as the ground, building walls, trees, etc.
Calling Your Attacks: When the player is using a grenade, the commo rose will replace all the other commands/phrases with a single option; shouting that you're about to chuck said grenade at the enemy. The grenade launchers in previous versions used to do this too, but now it's been replaced by using the commo rose to adjust the range on the launcher's sights.
Cold Sniper: Most factions have 2 versions of this; the 'Marksman' class which comes with a scoped semi-automatic rifle that's generally a more accurate version of the standard infantry rifles used by that faction and the 'Sniper' class which uses a bolt-action sniper rifle. Both classes are well-versed in dealing one-shot death from a distance.
Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Played with; friendlies will have blue or green names above them, but unlike BF2, enemies will only have their names (in red) visible over them on very rare occasions, such as when you've been engaging an enemy vehicle at close range for a protracted period of time.
Cool Shades: Several factions have classes that don these, notably the US Army & Marines, Insurgents, and Militia.
Combat Medic: Rule of Fun for the most part (most medics are not combat-ready in the real world, but an unarmed medic would be no fun to play otherwise), but US Marine Corpsmen are in-game in maps involving the US Marines.
The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: While the player must equip a pilot or crewman kit to operate aircraft or heavy vehicles, the AI bots in single-player and co-op mode do not have this restriction and can operate any vehicle regardless of what class they are.
Crew of One: Averted, when compared to the original Battlefield games. The driver no longer mans the main gun on heavy attack vehicles. In order for a vehicle to be fully combat effective, one player must drive while another must gun. Of course, a person could simply just switch positions from driver to gunner, but this would give the enemy a time advantage. All vehicles, except for cars and FAVs, now require a crewman kit (or pilot for air vehicles) to be driven.
Critical Annoyance:
- As in BF2, aircraft and heavy vehicles will have flashing lights and alarms go off when they take critical damage, warning the player to get out before the vehicle explodes.
- Members of the losing team will hear an air-raid siren start wailing moments before the round ends.
Critical Existence Failure: Battlefield 2 plays it straight, but it is averted in this mod surprisingly, seeing that its aim is realism.
Death from Above: Attack helicopters, fighters & attack jets, JDAM & mortar strikes, the game is replete with examples of devastation from on high.
Difficult, but Awesome: The dirt bikes on some maps can be tricky to operate, but once one gets the hang of them, they can zip about from place to place and go places larger vehicles could never manage, plus they're one of the few vehicles that are generally exempt to the Unusable Enemy Equipment rule.
Do Not Run with a Gun: Played straight; you cannot run and fire your weapon at the same time. Even vehicle-mounted weapons suffer from reduced accuracy when on the move. You can fire your weapon while walking, but your accuracy will suffer.
Easy Logistics: Zig-Zagged.
- When an objective is captured, the player cannot spawn on it unless they build firebases. These bases require an ammunition crate, which must be transported by truck or helicopter. And when enough ammunition is taken, the crates self-destruct.
  - However, these same crates also contain ammunition for EVERY single weapon in the game, and will self-destruct after three loads of ammunition is taken. That's three assault rifle magazines, three sniper rifle magazines, three machine gun belts, three RPG rockets, or a combination of three different magazines.
- Played straight with vehicles however. When they run out of ammunition or need to be repaired, they must return to base - you can't jump out and click on it with a wrench for a few seconds. Trucks can drop a repair station, though.
Elites Are More Glamorous: Intentionally averted. While Special Forces and even dedicated Sniper kits existed in earlier versions of the mod prior to 1.0 release, they were eventually excised due to player complaints over this trope being played to its expected outcome—with 'SF' players running off alone, without coordinating with the rest of the team, and generally their mere presence and mechanics not gelling with what is supposed to be a heavily teamwork focused on conventional military forces anyway; thusly, there are there are no plans to reintroduce them.
- There is one map where the standard Bundeswehr gets replaced by Fallschirmjäger, who also have spawn points set in the air and come equipped with Parachutes. Otherwise, they behave the same when on the ground.
- Version 1.2 appears to have included the Korps Commandotroepen as part of the Dutch faction, as indicated by the use of HK416 and HK417 rifles that are not issued to regular units in the Dutch military.
Epic Tank-on-Tank Action: some of the largest maps are particularly suited for this, as teams have enough personnel and vehicles to have entire squads on both sides made up entirely of tanks and APC's.
Everything Breaks: Subverted; while this game does make use of destructible environments, it's played realistically so that you can't, say, kill holed-up enemies by lobbing a tank round at the concrete-reinforced bunker they're hiding in.
Every Car Is a Pinto: All vehicles and most mounted weapons explode when they're destroyed. The heavy vehicles actually explode in stages; several disabling explosions followed by a large final explosion when it's actually killed.
Freeware Games: Due to Battlefield 2 status being abandoned by EA, the Battlefield 2 version of Project Reality is free to download and play.
- Averted with the ArmA2 version, as the core game is still up and maintained.
Gatling Good: The Blackhawk and Little Bird helicopters come equipped with Miniguns and of course you can't forget the GAU-8 Avenger on the A-10A Thunderbolt II. PR: Vietnam also has Huey gunships outfitted with these.
Goggles Do Nothing: Several factions have classes with goggles as part of their wardrobe, but they're purely aesthetic.
Good Old Fisticuffs: Some classes' kits forego the options of pistol-whipping or stabbing an enemy for melee combat and have the player simply put up their dukes and punch the other guy's lights out.
Grenade Launcher: The Grenadier class, as the name implies, wields an assault rifle with an underslung grenade launcher which can fire both high-explosive fragmentation and smoke rounds (with the exception of the French Grenadiers, who use rifle grenades fired off of the muzzle of their rifles). The tanks and APC's also feature smoke grenade launchers which can be used to quickly create a temporary smoke screen.
Guns Do Not Work That Way: The FGM-172 SRAW missile launcher used by the US & British Armies requires the player to keep the target in the crosshairs until the missile hits it, despite the real SRAW being a fire and forget weapon.
Hand Guns: The Officer, Sniper, and Pilot classes of the regular forces factions and some classes of the irregular forces factions carry semi-auto pistols as a secondary weapon.
Idle Animation: Various ones which differ from weapon to weapon. Ranges from twirling a shovel and taking up a fighting pose with it (despite the player not being able to use it as a weapon) to a MEC soldier kissing his rifle.
Instant Death Bullet: Averted. 80 - 90% of bullets will not kill the player, but simply incapacitate him, dooming him to game limbo until a medic revives him or he bleeds to death (or ends his own suffering).
Interface Screw: When wounded, the screen will have blood splatter across your vision repeatedly (along with the player-character groaning in pain and coughing & hacking) and eventually your vision will lose color and blur out moments before you keel over dead.
Invaded States of America: A single-player map pack includes refurbished versions of BF2 maps set on US soil (Operation Road Rage, Operation Harvest, and Midnight Sun), with the Russian Army facing off against the US Army & Marines.
It's Raining Men: A few maps will have an airborne spawn point, meaning the player will parachute onto the battlefield.
Joke Item:
- Some of the Insurgent classes can throw rocks.
- Also the forklifts on Muttrah and certain other maps.
Kill It with Fire:
- Previous versions of PR had Molotov cocktails as weapons for some of the irregular factions, while the regular factions used thermite incendiary grenades.
- PR: Vietnam has A-1 "Sandy" ground-attack planes carrying napalm and M67 "Zippo" flamethrower tanks.
La Résistance: The Syrian rebel faction, which represents irregular forces fighting against the government of Bashar al-Assad (represented by the MEC in-game). The other irregular factions in the game can also count as this.
Let's Fight Like Gentlemen: The game implements several rules of engagement; attacking unarmed collaborators in insurgency mode (or aiding other insurgents while playing a collaborator) will get offenders penalized by longer respawn times and extra tickets being deducted from their team when they die. Friendly fire carries similar penalties as well.
Machete Mayhem: The African Resistance comes with a machete as an available melee weapon.
Macross Missile Massacre: The gunship helicopters in the game have a version of this; spamming targets with volleys of unguided rockets to increase the odds of a hit on entrenched or evasive targets or to do massive damage on an easy to hit target. The anti-aircraft vehicles in the game can (and usually do) fire multiple SAMs at a target to overwhelm the countermeasures used to fend them off.
Make the Bear Angry Again: Several maps featuring the Russian Army appear to play to this, particularly the ones where the Russians are fighting with factions they'd normally be on friendly terms with.
Missile Lock-On: The anti-aircraft missiles in the game, both ground-fired and launched from other aircraft, require several seconds to acquire a lock on their target. The targeted aircraft will subsequently have an alarm tone go off and have a few moments to launch a volley of flares to try and defeat the threat, which makes it extremely hard to shoot down a helicopter or jet with one SAM.
More Dakka: The BMP-3 infantry fighting vehicle used by the MEC and Russian Army factions is the vehicular incarnation of this; having more firepower than most tanks in the game with 3 machine guns, a 30mm autocannon, and a 100mm main gun firing both regular explosive shells and anti-tank missiles, and being able to carry a full infantry squad to boot!
Night-Vision Goggles: The targeting systems of some vehicle-mounted weapons and most stationary anti-armor weapons can use a thermal imaging mode.
Nose Art: The American A-10 Thunderbolts sport a warthog face on the nose of the aircraft. Some of the UH-1 Hueys in PR: Vietnam have a huge shark mouth painted on the nose of the chopper as well.
One-Hit-Point Wonder: Unlike BF2, if you get wounded but aren't killed outright, your health will deteriorate until you either get properly treated by a medic or finally expire.
One-Man Army: Averted. The cornerstone of the game is teamwork and cooperation. This is reinforced by control points requiring a minimum 2-man team to capture, making it impossible for Commando wannabes to capture them alone. Furthermore, many vehicles require more than one person to fully operate (one to drive and one or more to man the weapons).
Overheating: Firing prolonged bursts with machine guns or the autocannons on IFV's & attack helicopters will cause them to overheat and become inoperable for a period of time until they cool down.
Pistol Whip: The kits that don't have a knife or other form of melee combat for you will usually allow you to smack the enemy with the butt of your rifle.
Player-Guided Missile: The heavy anti-tank missiles (both the man-portable and tripod & vehicle-mounted versions) use this. Justified in that most of these systems are manually guided to the target by the operator in real life, such as the American TOW missile.
Qurac: Subverted; while most of the middle-eastern locations in the game are based on real locations, there are a few such as Ramiel that don't exist in real life. A single-player map pack includes a few nondescript middle-eastern locations.
Reverse Grip: Most classes that don't have a bayonet mounted on their main weapon will usually still carry a knife, and use it in this fashion upon taking it out.
Ring Menu: Comes in 2 versions; one accessed with the Q button that has standard orders/phrases, and another accessed with the T button that turns night-vision on & off for applicable weapon systems and instructs members of your squad to perform area-specific actions such as attacking, defending, building, destroying, etc.
Semper Fi: Averted. The USMC function similarly to their Army counterparts, and are not treated as particularly special.
Shoot the Medic First
Shotguns Are Just Better: Averted. While each faction has at least one class packing a shotgun, these are usually secondary weapons and while incredibly lethal at close range, are practically useless for targets more than a dozen or so feet away.
- Shotguns are useless against body-armor (typically worn by regular factions). Shotguns have a much tighter spread than other video games and taking out an insurgent with a shotgun counts as capturing alive (simulating the use of beanbag and other less lethal ammunition), giving more intelligence points. Shotguns are also capable of destroying certain environment objects: padlocks, locks on doors or supply crates.
Spent Shells Shower: Most of the machine guns in the game naturally play to this, dumping spent brass at the rate of hundreds (or thousands, depending on the weapon) of rounds per minute.
Sprint Meter: The player has one of these that is worn down not just by running, but jumping will take chunks out of it as well.
Steel Eardrums: Averted. Standing too close to any loud noise, including gunfire, will cause your character to lose his hearing and have blurred vision. The length of this varies depending on the explosions intensity, maxing out at around 10 seconds with high explosives. Also happens when enemy fire barely misses you, regardless of the distance the shot was fired from. One of the more controversial aspects of the mod, as many players did not like going blind for 10 seconds whenever a bullet landed 10 feet away from them.
- This includes not only explosions, but the smoke launchers used by vehicles.
Stuff Blowing Up: Pretty much par for the course, given that it's a modern military shooter game.
Suicide Attack: Some of the irregular factions have bomb-laden civilian vehicles available to them which are intended to be used in this fashion. Especially nasty for tanks and APC's in insurgency.
Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors: Just as in BF2, each class and vehicle has another that they are weak against. Aircraft for instance are obscenely lethal against most ground targets but anti-air assets can obliterate them quite efficiently, while said anti-air assets amount to little more than a light snack for any tanks or IFV's that should happen upon them.
- Infantry caught in the open are dead meat, but when entrenched, they are very hard to dislodge. They are also the eyes and ears for heavy vehicles (CAS, tanks).
Tank Goodness:
- M1A2 Abrams, T-62, T-72, T-90, Challenger 2, Merkava Mk IV, Type 98, Leopard 2A6, Leclerc, take your pick!
- PR: Vietnam adds the T-34 for the NVA and M48A1 Patton for the US.
Translation Convention: Averted. All factions speak their native languages, including in the commands that can be given by the player.
Universal Driver's License: Averted. While all soldiers can use the jeeps and trucks, only the Crewman class can use armored vehicles, and aircraft are restricted to the Pilot class.
Unusable Enemy Equipment: Unlike BF2, the opposing factions cannot jack each others' vehicles, and can only grab the basic kits from slain opponents; picking up an enemy Medic kit for example will result in you being killed if you don't drop it in less than a minute.
Urban Warfare: Many maps are set in urban areas, including real-world cities such as Beirut, Basrah, Fallujah, Karbala, and Muttrah.
Walkie-Talkie Static: Averted. There is static, but no distinctive beep at the end, only at the beginning.
Weaponized Car: The technicals used by the irregular forces factions such as the Insurgent, Taliban, Hamas, African Resistance, and Militia; pickup trucks with machine guns or recoilless rifles mounted on them.
- The British Land Rover jeeps could count, too.
Weapons Understudies:
- While the game strives to avert this and give each faction an arsenal as close to what they carry in real life as possible, there are a few exceptions to this, such as the anachronistic PKM machine gun in PR: Vietnam.
- The RHIB boats for all sides — including the Chinese and Russians—use a mounted American-made M60 machine gun as their primary weapon. Earlier versions had them use the M249.
- Version 1.0 added the Russian-made PKP Pecheneg machine gun for the PLA as a placeholder for the Chinese-made QJY-88.
World War III: Many of the game's maps are based on or inspired by real-life conflicts, but when you have scenarios such as British incursions into China or a Russian amphibious assault on Israeli-occupied Beirut, it makes you wonder...

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Project Reality provides examples of the following tropes:

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Project Reality provides examples of the following tropes:

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