Special Forces, the first (and quite early) expansion for Battlefield 2, is coming out this week (November 22nd in the US and November 25th in Europe).

A couple of release notes of the addon have been put online by BFNation. The most remarkable feature, next to the grappling hook, zip line, night vision, flashbang and the tear gas seems to be the fact that Special Forces players can use the addon weapons on normal Battlefield 2 maps (after some unlocking):

Also, a first patch (version 1.12) will be made available for both the expansion and the original game. It's advised to install Special Forces first though, if you don't want to apply the patch again afterwards.

The patch makes sure that BF2 and SF players can play on the same map. But next to that it only fixes problems still present in Special Forces, there is no mention about changes/bugfixes to the original game. So, you can read the 1.12 patch details (in wonderful Dutch though) right here. If you can read and understand you know what issues are apparently still left in the retailverson of Special Forces.

While we're at it, BF2.be noticed some screens of the new medals/awards in Special Forces. You can watch them here. The descriptions are all in wonderful French as the screenshots are taken from the official French EAGames site.

In other news: