Project Reality

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 Arm A was released in 2011, and a Vietnam War-based version, Project Reality: Vietnam was released in April 2012.

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

Thus far, the game features the following factions:

Vanilla

New

Under Development

Tropes used in Project Reality include:
  • 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 Arm A version and are ultimately pushing towards a stand-alone Project Reality 2.
  • Allegedly Free Game: PR itself is free to download and play, but you still have to buy BF2 and ArmA II in order for the mods to work.
  • And the Fandom Rejoiced: The 128 player public server test. The developers plan to make this possible for multiple servers in the future.
    • The ARMA and Vietnam versions were also met with much fanfare upon release.
  • AKA-47 Averted for the most part, though the "M16A2" used by the Hamas faction is really an M16A1 with a different handguard.
  • Anonymous Ringer Recently averted with the Chechenya and Taliban factions
    • The recent patches have the Chechens become the "Militia", and several maps also showing the US and UK fighting them, so played straight.
  • 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.
    • A similar case with the Taliban, who speak Arabic (lifted out of vanilla BF 2'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-Queda personnel in Afghanistan grew up elsewhere.)
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • Black Screen of Death Or critical wounds, for that matter.
  • 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.
  • 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
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • Dodge the Bullet Averted
  • 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.
  • Elites Are More Glamorous Intentionally averted. No special forces units are present in the game, nor are there plans to introduce them.
  • 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.
  • Friend or Foe Oh yeah.
  • Goggles Do Nothing: Several factions have classes with goggles as part of their wardrobe, but they're purely aesthetic.
  • Guns Do Not Work That Way: The FGM-172 SRAW missile launcher used by the US Army & Marines 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.
  • Handguns: The Pilot, Sniper, and Officer classes in the conventional factions and some irregular factions' kits come with semi-auto pistols as secondary weapons.
  • Hyperactive Metabolism Averted
  • 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.
  • 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 recent 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.
  • 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.
    • PR: Vietnam has A-1 "Sandy" ground-attack planes carrying napalm.
  • 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.
  • 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: Subverted; infantry don't have night-vision available to them, but 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: Averted. Unlike BF2, if you get wounded but aren't killed outright, your health will deteriorate until you get properly treated by a medic or finally expire.
  • Semper Fi Averted. The USMC function similarly to their Army counterparts, and are not treated as particularly special.
  • Shoot the Medic First
  • 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.
  • Steel Ear Drums Averted. Standing too close to any loud noise, including gun shot, 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.
  • 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.
  • Tank Goodness M1A2 Abrams, T62, T72, T90, Challenger 2, Merkava Mk IV, Type 98, Leopard 2A6, take your pick!
    • PR: Vietnam adds the T34 for the NVA and M48A1 Patton for the US.
  • The War on Terror The Afghanistan and Iraq levels, naturally. Arguably, some of the Russian levels as well.
  • Rare Guns Subverted. While the game only issues each faction their real-world issue weapons, some of them are practically never seen outside their own countries, such as the Chinese QBZ-95 rifle.
  • Reliably Unreliable Guns: 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.
  • 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.
  • One-Man Army Averted, hard. 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).
  • 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.
  • 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 factons 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.
  • The Vietnam War: The new Project Reality: Vietnam, of course.
  • Walkie-Talkie Static Averted. There is static, but no distinctive beep at the end, only at the beginning.
  • 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 Mossberg 590 shotgun and PKM machine gun in PR: Vietnam. The developers have even stated on the forums that the former is a placeholder until a more period-correct weapon can be added.
  • World War Three 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...
  • Yanks With Tanks Times two; US Army and US Marines. These factions appear in both the original PR and in the new PR: Vietnam.
  • 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.
  • 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. The tanks and APC's also feature smoke grenade launchers which can be used to quickly create a temporary smoke screen.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • Bottomless Magazines Averted. All weapons from the original game that exhibited this trait have been redesigned to have finite ammo supplies.
  • It's Raining Men: A few maps will have an airborne spawn point, meaning the player will parachute onto the battlefield.
  • 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. Recently, a single-player map pack was released that includes a few nondescript middle-eastern locations.
  • Weaponized Car: The technicals used by the Insurgent, Taliban, Hamas, and Militia factions; pickup trucks with machine guns or recoilless rifles mounted on them.
    • The British Land Rover jeeps could count, too.
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