Omaha Beach - the undertow, the guns, and the water
New
Fight the current. The drowning sequence is no longer something you watch. When the Higgins goes
over you are under the surface with the air running out - tap Use and keep tapping to claw your
way up. Let up and the current takes you back out. Every player has to make it out for the landing
to count, and a man who runs out of air drowns. Failure is yours alone: nobody else's mission ends
because you did not make it.
Shells find the landing craft. After the landing, rounds start finding the boats coming in
around you. A hit craft takes the list, settles onto the bar and burns where she lies - or, further
out where the water is deep enough, goes under and is gone.
Medics in cover. Rangers with aid kits are working behind the hedgehogs and the obstacles. Get
close to one and he will patch you up. The medics already on the beach do it too now.
Fixed
The guns work all of you at once. The beach MG42s were servicing players one at a time, so the
more of you there were, the less each man was actually being shot at - a squad of four took nearly
four times as long to be in real danger as a man alone. Every player now has his own clock. Solo
play is unchanged; four-player is a very different beach.
Sharper everything. 145 textures across the landing were upscaled 4x - the ground, the
obstacles, the gear, and the Higgins boats inside and out, which had never been upscaled at all. A
further 57 high-resolution textures that were already installed but never actually loading have been
un-shadowed, including the sleeves on your own arms.
Real water into the shore. The open-sea swell was being deleted the moment you surfaced, leaving
a flat sheet in front of you for the whole beach fight. It stays now, it carries real height where
you come ashore, and the broken water arriving at the sand is the same wave you watched come in
rather than a second one running at its own speed.
No more fires burning on open water. Shells falling in the sea were throwing sand and leaving
smoke columns standing on the surface. They throw water now.
Smaller things. Your boat settles the full amount she was always meant to. The quick-draw rifle
no longer points at the sky. Going down but not out is actually reachable on this beach - the
threshold was set higher than anything the beach could ever deal. The concussion ring after a near
miss is audible for the first time. The objective now tells you to push through the smokescreen.
Updates automatically on your next launch.