I don’t want to call Adam Smith lazy, but since first writing about Ground Branch’s Kickstarter campaign back in 2012, he’s not given a single update on the tactical shooter’s development. He’ll say that he’s not got a moment to spare, what with being the writing director over at Larian, but I say it’s just a matter of optimising your time.
Well, I guess I’ll just fill in the blanks.
Ground Branch is being made by BlackFoot Studios, the developer formed by John Sonedecker, an artist who worked across the original Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon games at Redstorm Entertainment. This was, of course, long before Ubisoft laid off all of the studio’s game developers.
The tactical shooter with a fanatical devotion to realism has been in development in one form or another since 2007. Its 2012 Kickstarter campaign fell short of its funding target, but it garnered the game a small community who have been supporting its development since it arrived on Steam in Early Access in 2018.
After nearly eight years in early access, BlackFoot Studios say they’re ready to hit version 1.0. To give a sense of Ground Branch’s attention to detail, there is a section in the announcement devoted to “a smoother, more responsive door system”.
However, doors aside, the big addition in 1.0 is the long-awaited campaign. Or, at least, the first part of it. Ground Branch had previously featured a mode called Operations, which was a set of disconnected missions you could hop between. Now they’re coming back along with a new prologue to ease you into the game and set up the story for some forthcoming chapters that extend the story.
Ground Branch is also getting an Extraction mode, but I’ll be quick to add it’s not the extraction mode that’s in vogue at the moment. Instead, you and your teammates will be infiltrating a map to grab an AI hostage from the grip of AI guards, before getting them to safety. However, if you make too much noise on your approach, the guards may lose their cool and execute the hostage.
As the mention of upcoming chapters alludes to, development of Ground Branch isn’t set to end with the release of 1.0 on July 16. BlackFoot say the game will then have “fulfilled its core promise” but in the months following they will release new single player chapters and eventually a mod kit, too, so players can expand the tactical shooter themselves.
While Ubisoft moved away from the spirit of the original Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon games many years ago, the recent defenestration of Redstorm Entertainment has had me hankering for a tactical shooter. While I’ve enjoyed Rainbow Six Siege, and even had some fun in the open world Ghost Recon oddity, I’ve missed the older, straight-laced games. I’ve been reaching for my copy of SWAT 4 (I know that wasn’t Redstorm, but same itch to scratch), and it looks like Ground Branch’s full release has arrived at just the right moment.
