Arma 3 No Longer Set On The Island Of Lemnos
After an incident where 2 developers from Bohemia Interactive were arrested on charges of espionage, the developer has made the decision to rename the main island of its game Arma 3. Instead of calling the island in the game Lemnos, they’ve instead decided to go with the fictional name Altis. The new name “reflects the distinctive Mediterranean identity of its environment”, while at the same time it would distinguish it from the actual island that it’s based off of.
According to the press release the decision to change the name of the island stems directly from the arrest of the 2 employees. The employees were visiting the island of Lemnos, in part to get a feel of the island for the game, but were arrested as spies and held in jail for 129 days before being released on bond. Bohemia Interactive has maintained that the employees were merely on vacation on the island, while the Greek government has claimed that the 2 were spying on military bases while they were there.
It’s unknown if there’s more being changed in the game besides the name of the island. According to the project lead Joris-Jan van’t Land, “As part of the creative process, our virtual environments are often rooted in real-life locations and, during development, they evolve and grow along with our design. The resulting fictional environment is often close to its inspiration, but it’s never exactly the same – nor would we want it to be. For us, ‘Altis’ echoes the Mediterranean heart of our island, but differentiates it from any undesired real-life connotations.” I would argue that while the original island probably had some differences, I wouldn’t be too surprised if they made some more radical changes to the island in order to appease the Greek government a little bit.
