A video update for the in-progress Arma 3 mod 2017 shows Altis as a misty, decaying world with a dark history. And as a stage for a horror sim, where a player's own mental health has to be taken into account and cared for, the giant map has the potential to serve up some frightening encounters.



But one thing the free mod won't be delivering is a run-in with zombies. As lead artist Luke Hinds outlines in the mod team's latest devblog, the undead don't have a role in 2017's post-apocalyptic world.



"We are not going to have zombies in this game," says Hinds. "We were going to have a kind of infected human beast, but we're going to get rid of that and we're going to focus on the the other creature types we've designed for this world. ... Our main focus is not to simulate survival, it's to simulate horror."



To drive home this point, the video introduces a figure called "the Sadist," an unhappy-looking man I think we'd all likely regret bumping into. As Hinds describes him, the Sadist is a salty type quite comfortable in a landscape that's fallen into chaos and ruin. It's still unclear how the mod's proposed "sanity system" will be affected by run-ins with such a character, but it can't be good. Although the mod is currently in a pre-alpha testing state, you can already get a look at some of the development team's player models and skin textures in the update below.