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Six Days in Fallujah News

SITREP: Breaching Preview

[h3]"Clearing a building in Fallujah always begins with the building before it." – Sgt. Kyle[/h3]

As we've been promising for some time, we're now ready to begin a series of SITREPs about breaching and Marine tactics, starting with some things that made breaching in Fallujah different than other games have explored.

Before Marines and Soldiers could solve one problem, they had to tackle the problem that preceded it. Combat operations presented a series of challenges that were in constant motion, and the ability to make split-second decisions meant the difference between mission failure and success. Servicemen and women often applied the OODA loop—short for observe, orient, decide, act—to work through the ever-changing web of conflict presented by urban combat.

However, the "observation" phase in Fallujah was vastly different than videogames have explored in the past. Across the last couple decades, players in tactical games were not only given the tools to survey enemies beyond a door, but they were also allotted the respected time to do so. In Fallujah, none of this was possible as Marines and Soldiers were continually operating in a hostile 360-degree environment. The threat of the enemy was constant, pressure was high, and fire could come from any direction at any time. Let’s also not forget that none of them carried the optical devices needed to gain visibility through doors and walls.

Before breaching a building or compound in Fallujah, it's essential to take a moment to pause, listen, and observe across the entire fireteam. How many windows does the building have? Are Insurgents visible from the outside of the compound? What material is the front door made of? Can you hear anyone inside?

“Orientation” and “decision” phases follow immediately afterwards, with heavy communication between the fireteam on threats, roles and responsibilities, and changing variables in combat. Enemies could be flooding the first-floor, and the only viable entry point is on the roof. Perhaps mortars are raining down on the rooftops. What about the back door? Are there alternate routes available?

Finally, the “action” phase pieces all of it together. As a unit, fireteams should execute breaches with violence and speed to achieve momentum. Overwhelm your target with firepower and force and hold every piece of covered ground. And communication certainly doesn’t stop once inside. Immediately call out open doors and windows and cover them with your weapon. Once you've achieved your foothold, ensure momentum by moving quickly to the next breach.

So, here's 1-minute introductory look at breaching and room clearing in Six Days in Fallujah before we break for the holidays. We'll be going into more details early next year about the various ways players can breach doors, how to use observation before entry, as well as picking the best entry point and techniques.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

London's Imperial War Museum Featuring Six Days in New Exhibition

One of the world's most respected authorities on conflict, London's Imperial War Museum, has opened a new exhibition today that seeks to challenge perceptions of how video games interpret stories about war. The exhibition, War Games: Real Conflicts | Virtual Worlds | Extreme Entertainment, includes exclusive game footage and interviews with the development team from Six Days in Fallujah, Victura's upcoming tactical military-shooter video game.

"Six Days in Fallujah lets players become virtual participants during a world-changing historical event, offering context and insight that hasn't been possible until now," according to Victura CEO Peter Tamte. "It's inspiring to see one of the world's most respected authorities on conflict demonstrate the important ways games like Six Days in Fallujah can use interactivity to help players understand the events shaping our world."

More than 2.5 million people visit Imperial War Museum's five locations each year. Founded in 1917, IWM has been recognized globally for its ability to bring insight into people's experiences of war. IWM's new War Games exhibition will run from September 30 - May 28, 2023.

Read more about the exhibition here.

SITREP: Audio Design

[h3]"The first time rounds come back at you and you realize you're in a firefight, it's sensory overload. It's an overwhelming and almost indescribable feeling. You are terrified. You feel like you're about to die at any moment." – Sgt Adam Banotai[/h3]

Welcome to the fifth entry in our SITREP developer diary series! Up until this point, we have tackled community questions regarding visuals—environments, lighting, equipment, and gear. There’s still more work that we’re doing in these areas that we’d like to discuss in the future, but there is another fundamental puzzle piece of Six Days we haven’t addressed. We’ve briefly touched on audio in previous diaries, but now’s the time for a deep dive. Today, we want to answer the questions, “How does Six Days sound,” and “Why?”

Please remember that all assets shown are currently a work-in-progress.

Audio authenticity is paramount to the tactical shooter experience we’re building. The Second Battle of Fallujah was a three-dimensional, 360-degree battlefield - and hearing is the only three-dimensional, 360-degree sense we have. Audio that differs based on type, distance, and environment gives players the feedback needed to make sound tactical decisions and complete the mission. In Six Days, you can hear when a PKM is bunkered down in a house across the street, when an enemy reloads his AK-47 in the room next door, and when someone knocks over a chair deep into the house you’re clearing. However, authenticity doesn’t come without its own unique set of challenges—especially when tackling audio in a video game.

The first, and arguably biggest, question we have as a team is where to draw the line. As we set out to create an authentic retelling of the hundreds of stories we’ve been told, our initial instinct was to design with a 1:1 correlation in mind. This approach makes perfect sense on paper, but it’s just not feasible in practice (at least, as far as audio is concerned). For example, mirroring gunshots and explosions entirely to their real-world counterparts would cause permanent hearing damage to our players. It’s important to remember that we’re not creating a physical carbon copy of what happened in Fallujah. Our goal is to tell the true stories of those who experienced the battle. Here, the key word is experience.

Secondly, you can’t always predict the future in game audio. Sounds are more dynamic when players are involved, with a number of outcomes that don’t have to be accounted for in television and movies. In a movie, a character can walk onscreen and shoot his gun. The team records the footsteps and gunshots to match the actions onscreen. In games, footsteps and gunshots happen in real-time, at will. Here, the possibilities are multiplicative—actions can happen at any time, on any surface, at any distance, at any speed, etc. And, they can even be repeated. If you have 3 movement speeds, 20 surfaces, and 10 variations each, that’s 600 footstep sounds (and that’s just an example for one character). It takes tens of thousands of sounds to make a game the size of Six Days in Fallujah.

Finally, let’s talk about the challenges associated with producing a final game mix. Unlike movies, we can’t plan for specific scenes. Instead, we plan for scenarios. We do this in two steps: first, we track a variety of gameplay parameters that are constantly changing (eg, player location and movement, player heath state and damage, sound sources, etc). Next, we set the audio engine to update the mix in response to these parameters. Our solution boils down to programming the game to mix itself intelligently as it is being played.

DEVELOPER COMMENT
We created a unique parameter called “Enclosedness” in response to the stochasticity of our Procedural Architecture. In most games, player locations can be tracked because these are static on the map. Since we don’t have that luxury in Six Days, we constantly track the closest surfaces around the player in every direction and combine the results into a single value. With the Enclosedness parameter, we can reduce the sounds of distant combat as you creep through a tight alley, calm the wind as you duck into a corner, or make cramped rooms sound more claustrophobic than spacious ones.

Our reference materials for audio are sourced from two places: documentary footage and high-fidelity recordings. Our research team provides footage of every sound in the game, usually from the battle itself. These include voices, footsteps, weapons, equipment, vehicles, and even animals. These references help us understand how often the sounds occurred, how they sounded at the typical distances and perspectives, how they interacted with the environments in Fallujah, and how they mixed with the soundscape of the battle.

The biggest flaw with this historical footage is the sound quality. These were mostly captured by the handheld digital camcorders of the early 2000s, which had microphones that were not designed to capture the sounds of battle. The recordings imparted a unique coloration and distortion to the sounds. Luckily, the coloration is consistent. Like learning to read a person’s cursive, we’ve learned to listen past the unique qualities of the camcorder mics and decipher what it really would have sounded like.

That’s where the second type of audio reference comes in. For nearly all the weapons, equipment, and vehicles in Six Days, the audio team has been able to source authentic, high-quality recordings. If camcorder footage is a letter written in cursive, then these recordings are an email typed in Times New Roman. They are recorded with equipment that captures the full range of frequencies without any perceptible distortion, from multiple angles, distances, and perspectives. We compare the recordings with the documentary footage and manipulate them to play in game.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
Our community might be surprised to learn that in-house recording at the studio is used as a last resort. Sound libraries are vast and accessible, but there have been cases in which we needed something very specific to our project. Sometimes it’s something boring like a piece of metal debris falling on a sand dune. Other times it’s more exciting and unique, like authentic Iraqi-Arabic voice acting. While many of our recordings are just for reference, some have more specific applications.

When covering reverb in games, there is an apparent cinematic quality. The reverbs give a sense of how large spaces are and what materials they are made of. Their sounds have a certain subtlety and beauty, and the reverbs in Six Days initially followed this common practice. However, we found this wasn’t meeting our authenticity standards.

DEVELOPER COMMENT
A member of the team who frequents indoor shooting ranges kept telling us, 'You know, that isn’t actually how guns sound indoors. They are way more bassy and overpowering.' He took us to an indoor shooting range and we took our recording equipment, and our recordings from that day fundamentally changed how we handle interior reverbs.

The environments in Fallujah are boxy and full of hard, reflective surfaces, and we made the weapon fire excite the environment reflections much more than typical shooters. It makes the sound of gunfire in our environments overwhelming and oppressive. It’s the opposite of subtle and beautiful, and it sounds different than any other game.

[h3]"And he was like ‘I don’t know, I think we're in a bad spot, they’re shooting at me, and I don’t know where they’re at.’ And I turn around and look, and there's literally like ‘pow! pow!’ like all around him. Bullets snapping. Like ‘pop pop pop!’ I see it in the dirt. And I was like ‘damn we are in a bad spot, I think they see us or something.’ But he never moved. He stayed right there the entire time, kneeling over me, until I said, ‘all right, it's time to go." – Cpl Dane Thompson[/h3]

The spatial environment also provides important clues for localizing the sound source, especially when you’re under fire. If you listen closely, reverb can help pinpoint sounds—tight reflections tell us it’s a small room, loose reflections tell us it’s outside, and long reverberant tails tell us it’s a large interior like a large hall. Each space in Six Days has realistic acoustic characteristics that help inform the location of sound sources.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
With Procedural Architecture, no individual sound space exists in a vacuum. They are created and recreated in new ways relative to each other as the environment changes. With our audio engine, the reverbs of each space feed into each other, creating a unique acoustic signature for each building that Procedural Architecture creates. When a reverberant space has an opening—like when a door or window is open, or a wall has a hole blasted through it—we call that an “acoustic portal.” Sounds and their reverberations diffract through acoustic portals in realistic ways. This means you can track down an Insurgent’s footsteps deep into a building or follow the sound of your friend’s voice through doorways.

A common community question related to audio is how VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) communication works in Six Days in Fallujah, and we’re finally tackling this today. Success in our game depends on coordinating with your team, and in-game squad communication becomes essential in cooperative modes.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
Our voice communication works just like any other sound in the game—it’s positioned in 3D space, gets quieter as you walk away, uses environmental reverb, and diffracts through doors and windows and around corners. When you talk to your teammates in-game, you have instant feedback about where they are around you. When your team gets separated, you can use the radio. Holding the radio button sends your voice over the team radio channel. Your fireteam will hear your voice in their radios, and anyone in close-proximity will still hear you speaking with your natural voice. But be warned, your character only has two hands. You cannot talk on the radio and perform other actions—like firing your weapon—at the same time.

Filtering of the sound source makes a difference here, too. When your buddy yells from across the street, he’s not only quieter but also slightly muffled. It gets even more muffled if he turns away from you or if objects come between his mouth and your ears.

The chaos of battle also impacts your ability to communicate. Most games duck loud sounds so you can always hear voice comms, but Six Days isn’t like most games. If you’re near loud sounds like gunshots or explosions, you’re not going to be able to hear your teammates.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
Let’s move to audio configurations and hardware. One of the upsides of real time mixing systems is that the mix is agnostic of speaker configuration up until the last step of the process. Each sound in the game is positioned in space, not panned to a specific speaker. When the game runs, it determines what kind of speaker setup you have and performs appropriate panning for stereo, 5.1, 7.1, 7.1.2, and all the other industry standard configurations. You’ll always get the correct panning for your speaker setup no matter if you’re playing on headphones, on your TV, or on a surround sound system. We also have a mono output mode, so players with hearing loss in one ear aren't at a disadvantage.

DEVELOPER COMMENT
When you choose the headphone mix in the audio options, the game detects whether you are using stereo headphones or virtual surround headphones. If you have stereo headphones, we enable our built-in 3D audio tech. If you want to use your favorite pair of surround sound gaming headphones or a surround sound speaker system, the game lets your system handle the spatialization instead.

While the best way to experience Six Days audio is on a great pair of stereo headphones or a high-end surround sound system, you’ll always get the highest fidelity of 360-degree surround sound that your system can play back, no matter what you use.

Traditionally, audio is infamous for being one of the last components to be completed on a project. This is because audio can be found in almost every step in the long chain of game development. And, it relies heavily on the completion of the feature it’s designed to support. While we can’t change dependencies on audio, we can take a proactive approach to audio design in the development process. And, that’s exactly what we have done.

In the early days of the project, our audio team compiled lists of every potential sound that might be featured in the game. Sounds were specifically made malleable, modular, and data-driven to compliment any changes that would be made as features were implemented. For example, every gun could be heard from any distance and perspective, every part of each piece of equipment could make a sound, every surface could interact with every other surface in several ways, etc. Instead of reacting to new features, our audio team was ready and waiting for them. Now, the team is tying up loose ends and refining the work that’s been done over the years. Testing, tuning, bug fixes, audits, and mixing are the names of the game.

As we look forward to the road to release, we want to remind our community of a few things when it comes to audio: firstly, audio can only be experienced in time. You have to take the time to experience it, or you won’t experience it at all. Secondly, our brains interpret audio based on context. You can’t listen to an isolated sound because the rest of the game audio changes how you hear it. You can’t listen to an audio recording of the game because what we see influences what we hear. You can’t even watch a video recording because you interpret the audio differently when you experience the stress of playing the game. Audio is one of the most powerful tools we have at our disposal, and we’re excited for our community to experience the entire soundscape for themselves.

SITREP: Insurgent Weapons

[h3]“The defender had the ability to move a lot faster than we did, just because they were not carrying as much gear as we were. They were shooting at you from a room, and they would drop their weapons and they would run somewhere else, or even run to the next building.” – Sgt Jason Kyle[/h3]

In our last SITREP, we detailed some of the tools of the trade for the USMC Infantry Marine. But, this is just one component of Six Days in Fallujah. The Coalition's opposition came from 31 countries and included a mixture of fighters operating under the Al Qaeda in Iraq banner, Former Baathist Regime Elements, local residents, hired mercenaries, and Mujahideen. These Insurgents had an entirely different weapons loadout than the 21st century western fighting force.

We’ve received a number of questions since our announcement related to Insurgents, and we wanted to take the opportunity to answer some of these in this developer diary. Today, we’re discussing the weapons fielded by the Insurgency in Fallujah.

As the Iraqi Insurgent and foreign Jihadists were defending against the Coalition assault, they were able to store weapons, ammunition, gear, and provisions in homes and businesses instead of carrying it all on their backs. The result was that the average Fallujah Insurgent’s “kit” was much lighter than the attacking Marine’s loadout, prioritizing mobility above all else. Body armor and Kevlar helmets were rare, resulting in lightweight loadouts that allowed for wall jumping, hiding in tight spaces, and crawling in and out of holes, tunnels, and bunkers.

[h3]“They had weapons stashed everywhere. Like I said, I found houses everywhere with pits with guns and stuff. And they know where all this stuff is. They’d take AKs and stash them in different rooms of the house so they can shoot, drop it, and go run and grab another one.” – Cpl Dane Thompson[/h3]

DEVELOPER COMMENT
The most a single Insurgent might carry on their person would be their weapon and a chest rig with five or six extra magazines. With tennis shoes and lightweight clothing, Insurgents could get around quickly. This loadout also allowed for Insurgent foot soldiers to abandon their weapons and blend in with the civilian population. Although gunpowder tests were frequently administered to fighting-aged males on the battlefield, some combatants undoubtedly slipped through the cracks by looking like non-combatants.

Weapon authenticity on the Insurgent side has been a welcomed challenge for our team. For the more commonly seen Insurgent weapons, our archive of photographs and videos captured during the battle is used as a starting point, and our artists bring them up to our design standards.

Please remember that this is not an exhaustive list and all assets shown are currently a work-in-progress.

If the military-issued M16A4 was our starting point for the USMC, we’ll start with its rival for the Insurgents—the Avtomat Kalashnikov. The AK-47 and its variants were the “bread and butter” of the Insurgent foot soldier’s arsenal. The primary reason for this was its accessibility—these rifles, components, and 7.62x39mm ammunition were widely available throughout Iraq during this period. The sheer supply of AKs and 7.62 bullets can partially be attributed to the mass looting of Baathist armories that occurred when Coalition victory over Saddam’s regime became apparent. NPR's Phillip Reeves reported that black market AK-47s cost as little as $50 USD following the fall of Saddam. Our Iraqi consultants have even shared that “every Iraqi man can operate an AK—we’re taught that at a pretty young age."



The AK-47 also rivals the M16A4 in versatility, seeing plenty of variation during the Second Battle of Fallujah. As the most common rifle in the eastern hemisphere for more than half a century, modifications became just as widely recognized as the base model. Variant stocks, especially, cropped up into battle, providing Insurgents more combat options in tighter quarters. In Six Days in Fallujah, players will find an AK-47 with a collapsible metal stock modeled after the AKM-S.



In a city with thousands of buildings of varying height, snipers were extremely common during the Second Battle of Fallujah. From sniper hides deep inside apartment buildings to positions in mosque minarets, crack shot Insurgent and foreign Jihadists wrought havoc on Coalition forces. Long-range combat combined with the home-field advantage made finding a single sniper like finding a needle in a haystack. Their weapon of choice was the Dragunov designated marksman rifle, which caused Marines to think twice before crossing open roadways and rooftops. Players in Six Days will have to do the very same.



Let’s talk about one of the most widely recognized Insurgent weapons in the genre—the RPG-7. Used primarily as anti-tank/APC weapon, this portable rocket-propelled grenade launcher was used to cut off vehicle support to Coalition forces. With its reusability through reloading, various rockets could be used to adapt to the threat at hand. High explosive rounds were sometimes fired at infantry. Players will often face RPGs when engaging in urban combat in Six Days.



On the topic of explosive rounds, there’s another obstacle for players to overcome—82mm mortars. Just as sniper nests were scattered throughout the urban terrain of Fallujah, pre-fixed mortar emplacements posed a massive threat to Coalition forces. This indirect fire weapon was deployed with very high levels of expertise and success. After all, much of the Iraqi Insurgency consisted of former Baathist Army members who earned their experience fighting the Iranian Army in the 1980s. Unsuspecting squads of Marine riflemen often found themselves caught under mortar fire, and players will encounter this in Six Days.



The PKM was one of the Insurgency’s answers to the USMC’s M249 SAW. This 7.62x54mm machine gun was often mounted inside Fallujah houses in anticipation for the USMC. With bipods attached for stability, a swarm of bullets was ready to ambush anyone approaching Fallujah interiors.

[h3]“And as soon as I step out of the door, they open up. Machine gun fire comes, it's just ruthless machine gun fire. It’s just 'BRAAAAH!' And I said, 'you gotta be kidding me.' So there was somebody else in there.” – SSgt Elber Navarro[/h3]



Last on our list is the DShK heavy machine gun. While truck mounted heavy machine guns were common tools for the Iraqi Insurgency, they did not play a huge role in the Second Battle of Fallujah. This is because Coalition forces owned the sky. In the Second Battle of Fallujah, any moving vehicle without military designated infrared beacons would be flagged by air recon and struck from the sky. However, once Insurgents realized this, they began storing these vehicles under overhangs that made them more difficult to discover, and players may find some instances of this as they play through Six Days.

More common, however, were heavy machine guns emplacements in bunkers or fortified homes with long lines of sight. Like the PKM, the DShK was a favorite for this style of combat.



While players don’t control Insurgents in Six Days, we are confident in the systems we have in place to ensure enemy opposition employs advanced tactics in response to individual play. Players will be asked to overcome Insurgent “hit and run” tactics, including ambushes, harassment, and tactical retreat.

As for the common question of picking up and utilizing Insurgent weapons, we want to let our community know we haven’t made any final decisions on this yet. We have a few isolated accounts of Marines using AKs as well as firing RPGs from a distance, but these are few and far between. And, since AKs were so commonly associated with Insurgents, firing one could cause Marines to be misidentified as Insurgents—which was very dangerous, as a few Marines we spoke with discovered the hard way. There are quite a few things to think about before we make final decisions, and we welcome community feedback as we continue development.

SITREP: USMC Weapons

Authenticity in Six Days in Fallujah doesn’t come to a full-stop after discussing the gear Marines wore into battle. There’s plenty more to consider, and we wanted to continue this conversation with some of the weapons and attachments fielded by the USMC.

Just like our Marine equipment, our reference material for weapons includes thousands of photographs and hundreds of videos. Military documentation and reports, alongside the hundreds of first-hand conversations with Marines we’ve met along the development path, are key components to driving authenticity home.

Weapon authenticity poses a few more challenges for us as a team. The beginning of the Global War on Terror saw a huge wave of advancements in the weapons industry, and several weapons and attachments were produced in a very short period of time. This meant that Marines in some units had access to certain optics, for example, while others a few blocks away may have been stuck with iron sights. We’ve spoken with Marines who fought with different hand guards, attachment arrangements, and optics on their weapons. Factor in the number of weapons available, and things begin to get tricky.

DEVELOPER COMMENT:
The interesting thing is you’re going to have Marines who were in Fallujah and carried these weapons who see our showcase and say, “that’s not what my weapon looked like,” and they’re not wrong. Others are going to say, “that’s exactly what my weapon looked like.” Because of how much variation there was for this time period, there’s no one right answer.

Like Marine blouses and trousers, weapons weren’t always in spotless condition after a day of combat. Showcasing varying degrees of use with dust and particles takes hours of reference from high-resolution photos to get finer details correct. In Six Days in Fallujah, players will find Mesopotamia's chalky dust collecting in certain ridges and valleys of the weapons.

Please remember that this is not an exhaustive list and all assets shown are currently a work-in-progress.

There’s only one place to start when considering USMC weaponry in Fallujah, and that’s with the military-issued M16A4. Considered the “bread and butter” for infantry, the M16A4 was a staple for many Marines. Its versatility is unmatched with the sheer number of attachments that were placed on the weapon and used in Fallujah.



The modeling process varies per weapon, but for the M16A4, we began with a scale reference model and made finer revisions by hand to land with a model that passed our consultant checks. Once the modeling process was complete, our artists passed the weapon to our animation team to rig the weapon.

We teased our ACOG sight in our last SITREP on gear authenticity, but now we’re taking a closer look. Vertical Grips and PEQ-2 Laser Sights were also highly requested by the community, and you can finally see them mounted to the M16A4.



Another variation of the M16 includes the M203 under-barrel Grenade Launcher and Leaf Sight. This load out gave members of the USMC increased grenade range in a package that was both versatile and easy to handle. Used for direct engagements or close-fire support, players will become very familiar with this kit.



Let’s talk about the M16A4 reload animation and the community feedback we’ve received since our announcement. Our first reload iteration involved pulling the charging handle every time the player reloads the weapon when, in fact, there are various conditions that lend to different reload procedures. For example, the order of operations to get the M16A4 back to “combat ready” is different when the magazine is emptied and dry-fired than if it were to be reloaded mid-magazine.

Proficient gunmanship is obtained through hundreds of hours of practice, and we sought expert council on proper M16A4 usage to deliver an authentic product. It’s hard to resist the “rule of cool” when creating a game, but pulling the charging handle on an M16A4 every time the player reloads the weapon is simply not the entire picture.

As far as audio is concerned, each weapon component that can animate has its own componentized audio. This means existing animations can be edited and new ones created without having to remake the sound effects. The charging handle only makes sound when it moves, and our animators can move it faster or slower or not at all. Whatever we choose, the sound will always match the movement.

Upon full release of Six Days, players will see various reload animations depending on the state of the weapon. For now, here’s an updated iteration of the M16A4 reload with help from our community.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

There were many situations in which Marines couldn’t carry their primary weapons and resorted to using secondaries. The interiors of Fallujah heavily favored CQB, and some layouts were so small that the only option available was the M9 sidearm. In other cases, the M9 proved useful after expending all ammo on primary weapons.

Our M9 was modeled completely from scratch, as there wasn’t a reference model that satisfied our authenticity checks. We hope our community enjoys this model just as much as we do.



Next up is the M4 Shotgun, which saw some personalization by members of the USMC. Let’s start with some context: Marines are responsible for every piece of equipment issued to them, and losing anything in the heat of battle is the absolute worst-case scenario. The more expensive the gear, the more likely Marines would take additional steps to ensure this didn’t happen. And so, they improvised! Some used zip ties to secure their attachments from being knocked off their person while others used 550 paracords.

[h3]“You had 550 cord to dummy proof everything, make sure your optics were tied on with something in case it gets knocked off or you lose it. Because, if you lost your optics, it didn't matter if you are a private or a colonel. You lose your optics, and they're not dummy proofed? You're done. You're screwed. You're just done.” – LCpl James Maxey[/h3]

We referenced photos of flashlights zip-tied to rifles and shotguns and found it to be a grounding detail that spoke to the culture of the Corps. In Six Days, players will see flashlight attachments zip-tied to the M4 Shotgun.



For situations that call for heavy suppressive fire, players will have access to the M249 SAW. Having this in fire teams was crucial for creating opportunities to control the battlefield with flank and maneuver tactics. Players will employ these same tactics in both single-player or cooperative play for mission success.



While there are several degrees of variation when considering weapons used by Marines in Fallujah, our team is confident that our loadouts are a solid representation of the Fallujah Marine’s tools of the trade. As we continue development with community feedback in mind, we welcome comments and suggestions on assets shown in this entry. As for the next SITREP, we’ll continue with weapons on the Insurgent side in Six Days.