The most popular war idiom from gaming may be Fallout’s “War never changes,” but if there’s one thing we’ve learned from Gaijin’s combined arms online war shooter War Thunder, it’s that it’s in fact always changing, no matter what Ron Perlman or anyone else says about it. After 13 years of relentless evolution and growing popularity, War Thunder’s latest major update has dropped.
The new update, Sky Odyssey, is a potent show of force to hammer home War Thunder’s dominance in this theatre of online shooters. It brings to the fray a host of new vehicles—particularly from Greece, but also from Indonesia, Malaysia, and Australia—as well as several major improvements to the aerial mechanics, a new map set in the Falkland Islands, and finally a solution to players cravenly ducking out of their vehicles to deny opponents a kill.
First, Greek aviation and ground vehicles arrive in the Israeli military, reflecting the nations’ history of cooperation while fleshing out the previously narrow Israeli aviation tech tree. Its aviation branch runs from the SB2C-5 Helldiver through the F-84, F-86, A-7, Mirage F1 and F-4E AUP, eventually reaching the Mirage 2000-5EG and Rafale EG—Israel’s first Rank IX aircraft, capable of carrying eight radar-guided missiles.
Russia gets a similar upgrade with the MiG-35—which packs eight active-radar missiles. Rounding up the major international additions are China’s J-16, the US-Greek F-102A Delta Dagger, and Britain’s Hawk T1A. The F-102 is a particularly interesting one, in that it has no cannon, relying mainly on AIM-4 infrared and radar-guided missiles. This should force some interesting tactics from veteran players, who’ll have to be disciplined and deliberate in their combat approach and picking their shots: high risk, high reward.
Sky Odyssey also addresses one of the long-running bugbears of players who enjoyed the idea of cruising with the heavy firepower of jet bombers but found them too fragile—hefty clay pigeons rather than looming juggernauts of the skies that they’re historically known to be. So Gaijin have overhauled their damage systems with refined hit zones and damage accumulation. It’s now substantially harder to take them down, and attackers will need to be more deliberate in targeting their fuel tanks, engines, and crew rather than just clipping at their wings or bombload until they explode.
But the Bombers won’t have it all their way. Air-to-air missiles should feel a little tighter going forward too, with revised flight models and more precise manoeuvring for core missiles such as the AIM-7, AIM-120s, and R-77s. Some, like the MICA-EM, have even had their launch range extended, with these changes shifting the balance to reward precise missile deployment and players maybe finding them a bit harder to evade.
Military history buffs will be pleased about the new map entering the fray: a new Ground Battles map set at Darwin Hill on the Falkland Islands: a map made up of dangerously stark rolling grasslands broken up by rural settlements and an airfield. It’s all about using the natural undulations of the terrain as defilades here, so expect to see plenty of turrets popping up over ridges to take pot shots before dipping back out of sight. Good optics and sniper-style tactics win the day here.
Several existing maps, meanwhile, have been improved, including Red Desert—which has had some topographical changes to reduce spawn-camping and excessive sniping—and the Falklands and Afghanistan air maps, which have had shiny graphical overhauls.
As is often the case with War Thunder updates, there are too many QoL refinements to list here, but one we want to give a shoutout to the one that tackles the longrunning issue of players ducking out of vehicles in a losing battle just before they get blown up, dishonourably denying their attacker a kill (though yes, we know that when you J-Out it’s usually because you’re accepting defeat so you can move onto the respawn stage and get back to battle quicker).
Now, when a player abandons their vehicle, 50% of the usual kill reward is credited to the nearest enemy player or projectile within a 3 km radius, which could be a tank that’s cornered them or a jet that’s just dropped a bomb that’s two seconds away from turning that tank into a burned-out husk. This proximity-based reward system, which was already refined in Air Battles earlier this year, should alleviate some of the frustration of not getting that notch on the K/D post when you get one over on an enemy player.
So there’s a whole lot going on, and it’s already been deployed! The Sky Odyssey update is out now, and you can head over to the official War Thunder site to download it on PC, or add it to your PS4, PS5, or Xbox Series X|S libraries. ‘War has changed’, to quote a certain grizzled veteran video game hero, and you and your pals can head to the frontlines of War Thunder right now for free.