Enlisted Off-road Patrol Update Adds Armed Light Vehicles
Sometimes the best way across a battlefield is to stop walking.
That is the idea behind "Off-road Patrol," the latest update for Enlisted. The free-to-play World War II shooter now gives players small, fast off-road vehicles built to get a squad from one objective to the next in a hurry. They also come armed, so anyone standing between you and that capture point should probably move.
It's a simple pitch, and that's part of the appeal. Enlisted has always been a game about scale, with squads, tanks and aircraft fighting over sprawling maps. Getting around those maps on foot can be slow. A light vehicle with a mounted gun changes the pace in a way that's easy to understand the moment you see one.
Four Nations, Four Rides
The update adds new researchable squads, and each one brings a light vehicle tied to a specific faction. The lineup looks like this:
- Soviet: GAZ-64 DS-39
- German: Kübelwagen 82
- Japanese: Type 95 Kurogane
- American: Willys M1919A4
Spreading the content across all four nations is a sensible move. No faction gets left on foot while the others drive around, and every side has something new to unlock.
The bigger change is how these vehicles interact with objectives. Players can capture control points without ever getting out of the vehicle. That's a meaningful shift. A squad that can roll onto a point, take it, and keep moving has a very different role than infantry that has to dismount, clear the area and dig in.
Firepower isn't limited to the mounted machine guns, either. The vehicles also carry boxes of grenades, which means the crew can resupply explosives on the move. A fast car that also works as a mobile grenade dispenser is the kind of tool that could make an aggressive squad very annoying to deal with.
Better Light, On PC and Console
Off-road Patrol isn't only about new toys. It also includes a round of visual upgrades.
On PC, Enlisted now supports Path Traced Global Illumination. In plain terms, the feature makes indirect lighting more accurate - the way light bounces off surfaces and fills a scene, rather than just the light coming straight from a source. For a game that leans so heavily on muddy fields, ruined towns and smoky interiors, that kind of detail can do a lot for the atmosphere.
PC players aren't the only ones getting attention here. New ray tracing presets are also available on both PC and console, giving players more control over how the game balances visuals and performance on their hardware.
The full rundown of the upgrades and the rest of the new content is available on Enlisted's official site.
Our Take
On the surface, this is a modest update. Four light vehicles and some lighting tech won't reinvent Enlisted. But the design choice behind the vehicles is worth paying attention to. Letting players capture points without leaving their seat suggests the developers want objectives to change hands faster, and want mobility to matter as much as raw firepower. If that's the goal, it could reward squads that coordinate and punish teams that leave flanks open.
There is a balance question, too. Fast, armed vehicles that can take objectives and hand out grenades are a strong package. It is worth watching whether infantry players feel they have enough answers to them, or whether the off-road squads start to dominate certain maps. That kind of tuning usually takes a few patches to settle.
The update also fits a pattern. Enlisted has been expanding in steady, themed chunks, with earlier updates like "Far Eastern Front" bringing in the Soviet-Japanese conflict at the end of WWII and "Jet Power" adding jet fighters. Each one pushes the game's sandbox a little wider. In a free-to-play shooter space where business models are being rethought - Quake Champions dropping free-to-play for a price tag being one recent example - that steady flow of content is likely a big part of how Enlisted keeps players coming back.
Meanwhile, the graphics work shows the game still wants to look current. Path tracing on PC is a notable addition for a free-to-play title. Whether it runs well on a wide range of machines, and how players react to the new presets, will be the thing to watch over the coming weeks.