Delta Force devs “don’t see other shooters as competition, especially CoD”

Chinese developer Team Jade is hard at work on the early access version of Delta Force, a new free-to-play tactical shooter launching on Steam on December 5, 2024. While the game has been compared to the likes of Black Ops 6 and Battlefield, design director Ricky Liao wants gamers to know that the team isn’t attempting to compete with the giants of the industry. 

In an interview with VideoGamer, Liao explained that the team isn’t looking to compete with Call of Duty, Battlefield or any other shooter. Instead, the Tencent-backed project is aiming to craft an entirely unique space in the free-to-play market, first on PC and later on mobile and console. 

Delta Force isn’t competing 

While comparisons will always be drawn between one FPS game and another, Liao explained that the team doesn’t “see other shooters as competition, especially CoD”. Despite loving Call of Duty, the team behind the new free-to-play shooter doesn’t want comparisons that dilute what’s special about their upcoming game.

“CoD is one of my favorite franchises,” Liao said. “We don’t see other shooters as our competitors, especially CoD. When you look at the kind of gameplay experiences you see in Delta Force, it’s actually very different from your typical CoD experience. So, our ultimate goal is to create a game that’s fun and fresh that also challenges the players’ tactical mind.”

While Delta Force is decidedly more casual than the series’ original 90s entries, the team has worked hard to make sure it is more tactical in nature. From its gunplay to its wide open maps, the new free-to-play game aims to have a realistic tone than other shooters on the market. 

“We used to play Delta Force when we were kids, so it was a huge privilege and motivation for the entire team to work on a new Delta Force game,” Liao said. “It was a game that needed to be played with a brain, and not a pure arcade game. When we started working on Delta Force, we established our first rule that it’s very important the new Delta Force game should be a tactical game, that players need to really play both with their hands and also with their brain.”

However, Liao explained that bringing the series back did require some changes instead of transplanting decades-old gameplay systems with modern visuals. 

“We also need to be mindful that the last Delta Force game was fifteen years ago,” they said. “If we fully recreate that kind of experience, the control, the movement, the animation, it won’t really be an experience that’s suitable for the modern gaming landscape.”

Despite this, the team is aiming to keep the “core identity” of the FPS series, bringing back big battlefields and tactical gunplay and a slower pace than, say, Call of Duty. It might not be as hardcore as the series’ debut games, but 

For more on the upcoming free-to-play FPS game, read about the team’s thoughts on the FPS game “cancer” that is the surge of cheating online. The game launches on Steam later this year, but a console version is in the works for Xbox One, Xbox Series, PS4, PS5 and mobile.