T0@st
News Editor
- Joined
- Mar 7, 2023
- Messages
- 2,141 (3.15/day)
- Location
- South East, UK
Before Call of Duty, before Battlefield, before even Medal of Honor, there was Delta Force. Released in October 1998, NovaLogic's FPS was one of the original tactical shooters. Arriving just two months after Red Storm Entertainment's Rainbow Six, Delta Force put players in the role of a Tier 1 Operative, challenging them to complete 40 missions in various modern military settings. Though it shared some similarities with Rainbow Six, Delta Force was defined by its radical Voxel Space technology, enabling it to simulate warfare on battlefields far larger than any FPS that came before.
Delta Force was sufficiently successful to spawn a sequel, and ultimately became a series—including its most famous entry, the 2003 game Delta Force: Black Hawk Down. Yet as Call of Duty and Battlefield took the popularity of real-world shooters to stratospheric heights, Delta Force struggled to keep up. The final game in the series, Delta Force: Xtreme 2, reviewed poorly, and as the world went wild for Modern Warfare, NovaLogic quietly exfiltrated the modern military shooter scene. Now Delta Force is back, though. Developed by Chinese studio Team Jade, the reboot is bigger, broader, and more comprehensive than any prior entry in the series. Featuring classic team-based multiplayer battles, a more modern extraction mode where players compete to scavenge loot in open-ended combat zones, and a co-op/single player campaign inspired by the series' legacy, Delta Force has its sights set squarely on the two FPS franchises that have dominated multiplayer shooters for over a decade.
Mission briefing
Delta Force (initially titled Delta Force: Hawk Ops) owes its unlikely revival to a quirk of gaming history. While the series was only ever moderately popular in the US and Europe, Delta Force was a phenomenon in China. "It was very popular in Chinese net cafes around 2000," says Leo Yao, Studio Head at Team Jade. "It kind of was the first PvP FPS game in China, even before Counter-Strike."
It was the first shooter Delta Force's Game Director, Shadow Guo, ever played, and he isn't the only developer on Team Jade with that experience. "Our core team is made up of veterans, many of whom have been in the shooter genre for over a decade. And Delta Force was the first shooter game many people ever played during their childhood," Guo explains. Team Jade was assembled from developers within TiMi Studio Group, which previously developed PC and mobile shooters like Call of Duty: Mobile and Assault Fire. This time, they wanted to make a shooter that catered to PC and console players as well as mobile players, one that might disrupt the busy modern military shooter landscape.
"We (felt) that the whole industry needs a fresh title," says Guo. Around the same time, Team Jade received word that NovaLogic were interested in selling the Delta Force rights. "When we got this information, we didn't hesitate, and just went to talk with them," Yao says. In addition to being fans of Delta Force and understanding the advantages of making a game around an existing license, Team Jade also believed the series possessed several key elements that suited their needs.
"We felt that the legacy Delta Force titles and the pillars that make them outstanding—like open terrain, the weapons, and the control of the character movement—are still relevant today, and we wanted to not only preserve but also expand and evolve these pillars," Guo explains. In short, Team Jade wanted to give players an experience that was recognizably Delta Force, but which was also modern and forward-thinking enough to appeal to gamers more familiar with today's shooters. This is evident in all aspects of the game's design, but it's the campaign where Delta Force most closely aligns with the tactical shooters of yore.
Black Hawk Down
Delta Force's multiplayer is already available to play, and was available (albeit in more limited bursts) for several months prior to launch. But its campaign is still in development and remains largely shrouded in mystery. Team Jade revealed it is a reboot of the single-player campaign from 2003's Delta Force: Black Hawk Down, retelling the events of the Battle of Mogadishu made famous by Ridley Scott's 2001 film.
Yao is reluctant to reveal too many details, but regarding the campaign's status as a reboot, he explains it is not a shot-for-shot replica of the 2003 game. Instead, it's "a combination" of elements of that campaign, combined with aspects of Scott's film and direct inspiration from the event itself. "We love the movie. We like the Black Hawk Down campaign of the old Delta Force, so we just directly bought the copyright of the film," he says. "It's not 100% the film, or 100% the old game."
Precisely how the campaign will blend the two remains unclear, but it will include many key moments that players will recognise from both the 2003 game and Scott's film. "All of the sequences are based on reality. It's based on what really happened in Mogadishu," Yao says. "Players also remember some classic moments, so we want to include those classic moments [in the] campaign." Beyond the more specific nuances of how the campaign will be structured, Team Jade explains that there are two key pillars to the campaign.
The first of these is immersion. Where Delta Force's multiplayer runs in Unreal Engine 4, the campaign is built in Unreal Engine 5 and takes advantage of all the new technical solutions Epic's updated engine offers, from its global illumination and reflections system Lumen to its high-detail virtualized geometry system Nanite. On top of this, Guo explains that Team Jade has "worked on a whole suite of add-ons for both versions of the engine," including new tech for gameplay and "especially" character animations. "We are also working on our own spatial audio add-on, which is also independent of the engine, so players will get very good immersion based on the audio."
The second key design tenet for Delta Force's campaign is authenticity. Yao says Team Jade didn't want the campaign to be "very narrative-based" i.e. a heavily guided shooting gallery. Instead, the studio has designed the campaign to be "very hardcore." Players will have to "follow some of the tactics. Do not move and shoot on your own—otherwise you're gonna be shot by your enemies." While Yao says he "can't call it a Soulslike," he does say that in regards to difficulty, Delta Force's campaign is designed to be "kind of the twin of that," with an emphasis on replayability and mastering the challenges it presents.
Moreover, since the campaign will require players to work with their squad, it features optional cooperative multiplayer, letting up to four players work through its challenges together. "It's going to be very hardcore, and make the whole war in Mogadishu feel high-pressure," Yao says.
Further details about Recon, Open Warfare and Joint Ops can be checked out in the full Epic Games feature piece/cover article.
View at TechPowerUp Main Site | Source
Delta Force was sufficiently successful to spawn a sequel, and ultimately became a series—including its most famous entry, the 2003 game Delta Force: Black Hawk Down. Yet as Call of Duty and Battlefield took the popularity of real-world shooters to stratospheric heights, Delta Force struggled to keep up. The final game in the series, Delta Force: Xtreme 2, reviewed poorly, and as the world went wild for Modern Warfare, NovaLogic quietly exfiltrated the modern military shooter scene. Now Delta Force is back, though. Developed by Chinese studio Team Jade, the reboot is bigger, broader, and more comprehensive than any prior entry in the series. Featuring classic team-based multiplayer battles, a more modern extraction mode where players compete to scavenge loot in open-ended combat zones, and a co-op/single player campaign inspired by the series' legacy, Delta Force has its sights set squarely on the two FPS franchises that have dominated multiplayer shooters for over a decade.
Mission briefing
Delta Force (initially titled Delta Force: Hawk Ops) owes its unlikely revival to a quirk of gaming history. While the series was only ever moderately popular in the US and Europe, Delta Force was a phenomenon in China. "It was very popular in Chinese net cafes around 2000," says Leo Yao, Studio Head at Team Jade. "It kind of was the first PvP FPS game in China, even before Counter-Strike."
It was the first shooter Delta Force's Game Director, Shadow Guo, ever played, and he isn't the only developer on Team Jade with that experience. "Our core team is made up of veterans, many of whom have been in the shooter genre for over a decade. And Delta Force was the first shooter game many people ever played during their childhood," Guo explains. Team Jade was assembled from developers within TiMi Studio Group, which previously developed PC and mobile shooters like Call of Duty: Mobile and Assault Fire. This time, they wanted to make a shooter that catered to PC and console players as well as mobile players, one that might disrupt the busy modern military shooter landscape.
"We (felt) that the whole industry needs a fresh title," says Guo. Around the same time, Team Jade received word that NovaLogic were interested in selling the Delta Force rights. "When we got this information, we didn't hesitate, and just went to talk with them," Yao says. In addition to being fans of Delta Force and understanding the advantages of making a game around an existing license, Team Jade also believed the series possessed several key elements that suited their needs.
"We felt that the legacy Delta Force titles and the pillars that make them outstanding—like open terrain, the weapons, and the control of the character movement—are still relevant today, and we wanted to not only preserve but also expand and evolve these pillars," Guo explains. In short, Team Jade wanted to give players an experience that was recognizably Delta Force, but which was also modern and forward-thinking enough to appeal to gamers more familiar with today's shooters. This is evident in all aspects of the game's design, but it's the campaign where Delta Force most closely aligns with the tactical shooters of yore.
Black Hawk Down
Delta Force's multiplayer is already available to play, and was available (albeit in more limited bursts) for several months prior to launch. But its campaign is still in development and remains largely shrouded in mystery. Team Jade revealed it is a reboot of the single-player campaign from 2003's Delta Force: Black Hawk Down, retelling the events of the Battle of Mogadishu made famous by Ridley Scott's 2001 film.
Yao is reluctant to reveal too many details, but regarding the campaign's status as a reboot, he explains it is not a shot-for-shot replica of the 2003 game. Instead, it's "a combination" of elements of that campaign, combined with aspects of Scott's film and direct inspiration from the event itself. "We love the movie. We like the Black Hawk Down campaign of the old Delta Force, so we just directly bought the copyright of the film," he says. "It's not 100% the film, or 100% the old game."
Precisely how the campaign will blend the two remains unclear, but it will include many key moments that players will recognise from both the 2003 game and Scott's film. "All of the sequences are based on reality. It's based on what really happened in Mogadishu," Yao says. "Players also remember some classic moments, so we want to include those classic moments [in the] campaign." Beyond the more specific nuances of how the campaign will be structured, Team Jade explains that there are two key pillars to the campaign.
The first of these is immersion. Where Delta Force's multiplayer runs in Unreal Engine 4, the campaign is built in Unreal Engine 5 and takes advantage of all the new technical solutions Epic's updated engine offers, from its global illumination and reflections system Lumen to its high-detail virtualized geometry system Nanite. On top of this, Guo explains that Team Jade has "worked on a whole suite of add-ons for both versions of the engine," including new tech for gameplay and "especially" character animations. "We are also working on our own spatial audio add-on, which is also independent of the engine, so players will get very good immersion based on the audio."
The second key design tenet for Delta Force's campaign is authenticity. Yao says Team Jade didn't want the campaign to be "very narrative-based" i.e. a heavily guided shooting gallery. Instead, the studio has designed the campaign to be "very hardcore." Players will have to "follow some of the tactics. Do not move and shoot on your own—otherwise you're gonna be shot by your enemies." While Yao says he "can't call it a Soulslike," he does say that in regards to difficulty, Delta Force's campaign is designed to be "kind of the twin of that," with an emphasis on replayability and mastering the challenges it presents.
Moreover, since the campaign will require players to work with their squad, it features optional cooperative multiplayer, letting up to four players work through its challenges together. "It's going to be very hardcore, and make the whole war in Mogadishu feel high-pressure," Yao says.
Further details about Recon, Open Warfare and Joint Ops can be checked out in the full Epic Games feature piece/cover article.
View at TechPowerUp Main Site | Source
