TiMi Studios’ free-to-play first-person shooter Delta Force hails from an iconic series that helped shape the tactical shooter genre for decades to come. With its wide-open maps and squad-based gameplay, the original Delta Force titles paved the way for large-scale shooters like Battlefield 1942, which arrived four years after 1998’s Delta Force. TiMi Studios has taken up the series’ mantle and with developers on the team who grew up playing titles Delta Force: Black Hawk Down, it appears to be in good hands.
Game Rant sat down with Delta Force game design director Ricky Liao to discuss how the game looks to its series roots in terms of game mechanics and design philosophy. Liao revealed several key aspects of the original Delta Force he sought to preserve in this decades-later iteration, and how this approach resonates with fans of Delta Force‘s particular flavor of combined arms warfare.
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Liao Has Been a Fan of Delta Force From the Start
Liao revealed that he’s been a fan of Delta Force since the very beginning, and was drawn to the immersiveness brought out by the game’s approach to combat and storytelling. Rather than using cinematic cutscenes, the story was told through gameplay, and the intense moments derived from chaotic combat scenarios, limited ammo, and tactical gameplay reinforced a sense of being a soldier on the ground, rather than an action hero or an arcade game character. Liao notes:
“I have been playing Delta Force since I was a kid and have been a big fan of the whole franchise. The most shocking part when I first played the game was that I felt like I was literally transported into the boots of a soldier about to complete a series of missions that seemed almost impossible.
Let’s talk about the classic Black Hawk Down for this game. I literally felt like I was that soldier in that very environment — needing to be mindful of my own status and my ammo, always being put in an open space with a lot of rules to choose from to finish the mission. That game doesn’t rely on cuts or cinematics to tell the story. Instead, as I progress through the mission, I feel like I’m part of the story and driving it forward. That’s something very unique for me, and I didn’t really experience that kind of uniqueness with other shooter titles.”
Of course, today’s Delta Force is a free-to-play multiplayer shooter with fewer narrative components than a campaign shooter, but that hasn’t stopped the team from telling stories. Recently, Delta Force released the cooperative Black Hawk Down campaign, which evoked a similar intensity as its predecessors by dropping a squad of players into the legendarily brutal Black Hawk Down incident.
Delta Force Preserves the Series’ Best Features
As for specific facets of Delta Force that resonated with Liao, he pointed to the sprawling maps. At the time, open-ended maps such as 1998’s Delta Force were a rarity, and players hadn’t seen battlegrounds of this scope outside of top-down real-time strategy games. Liao looked to Delta Force‘s open spaces and long-range, tactical gameplay for inspiration:
“As for the most memorable part of Black Hawk Down and similar titles, what really impressed me was how big and open the maps were. It was the first game where I felt like I was truly interacting with the map and other players — engaging them from long distances and utilizing different tactics. The map was designed with enough, let’s say, scope for me to really explore all sorts of ideas and gameplay freedom. That’s something we want to carry forward and improve in our game.”
By preserving the best aspects of classic Delta Force like its open-ended maps, intense tactical gameplay, and immersion through action, TiMi’s Delta Force hopes to live up to its predecessor’s legacy while adding plenty of its own near-future sci fi flare to the mix.
Shooter
Tactical
Extraction
- Released
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December 5, 2024
- Developer(s)
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TiMi Studio Group
- Publisher(s)
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TiMi Studio Group