As Tencent's flagship product, "Operation Delta" has continued to respond to its product positioning with outstanding results since its launch: mobile has often entered the top 10 best-selling lists, reaching the third place in the best-selling list, and the daily active users of the whole platform have reached millions. In the 2024 Q3 financial report, Tencent's revenue in the local game market increased by 14%, which also mentioned that "Operation Delta" is one of the important drivers.

On February 21st, the campaign mode "Black Hawk Down", which has been the killer feature of "Operation Delta", was finally released, the campaign was built with UE5, and the actual experience of the picture quality really shocked many players, saying that it truly achieved the quality of the movie. "Black Hawk Down" is a must-see movie for the majority of military fans, and its classic street battle plot is extremely famous throughout history.

The most surprising thing is that it is officially announced that "Black Hawk Down" is completely free. You must know that this magnitude of the campaign mode (7 chapters, 3-10 hours of process) is placed in other games, and it is not an exaggeration to sell it as DLC for less than 100 yuan, but Tencent obviously has a bigger abacus and wants to use free high-quality content to "plating gold" for Delta IP, thereby increasing the product heritage.

A small number of "gun" elements were found in one of the Old Six games

"Pick people", this is the first impression that "Black Hawk Down" gave me.

I believe that many people initially experienced the campaign mode with the cool travel mentality of "Dragon Aotian", and may be used to playing games like "Call of Duty", experienced various complex indoor and outdoor assault scenes, and have a certain understanding of modern warfare, but when they entered this game, the process was still quite painful, and many players in the community said that "I died seven or eight times in the first level, but I still couldn't get through." ”

Or bring the gameplay habits of the "Delta Operation" battlefield and gold gameplay into the campaign mode, and finally find that there are only some old-fashioned guns to choose from, and the usual skills such as sliding shovels and medical guns are not all extended.

However, as the example at the beginning of the article, there are also quite a few players who want to experience the most authentic battlefield atmosphere. Therefore, "Black Hawk Down" is a rather controversial attempt by the Linlang Sky team.

The game abandons the TTK setting of traditional FPS, and both sides follow the brutal rule of "kill with three shots". Bullets don't replenish automatically, medics have to deliver first aid kits close to their bodies, and even teammates' accidental injuries are real, and if you slip your hand and throw the thunder at your teammates behind you, you can really restart it on the spot.

A tribute to Geralt the legendary Witcher

Therefore, this style of extreme pursuit of "realism" is actually more similar to games like "Ready for Battle", except that "Black Hawk Down" places the scene in Somalia, restoring the most classic street fighting in modern battles.

In the context of the time, the guerrillas were hiding in the streets and alleys and were undetectable, the major warlords had the support of the masses, and their clans were extremely easy to mix with the civilian population.

Although the special forces are well-trained and well-equipped, the local militia can still pose a great threat by virtue of its numbers, bloodiness and home field advantage.

In the game, players will deeply understand this difficulty, not only can not find the position of the sixth child, but also see their various forms, may be "corridor god of war", "Viet Cong probe", "evil ghost in the smoke", and even, when they see their teammates killed, they will immediately incarnate as "Somali blind monk" in the corner crazy elbow strike, if you do not get enough information to rush in, players are very easy to be deflated.

In addition to the pressure from the enemy, the campaign is also very cooperative with the player, and many of the designs require the player to rely on tactical gestures and voice communication like real special forces. For example, the game allows players to replenish bandages or ammo for teammates, but the UI does not show how many resources the teammates have, and if teammates don't like to open the microphone to communicate, they will also suffer a lot of dumb losses. As for the single-player game, it is even more difficult, the difficulty of the game is not dynamically adjusted due to the increase or decrease of the number of people, and it is said that no one in the production team can clear the level alone.

In fact, we all know that adding checkpoints or weakening enemy AI is a breeze for today's gaming technology. But they still choose to keep the setting of ammunition shortage, hoping that players will cherish every bullet like real soldiers; At the same time, the save function is erased, perhaps to allow modern players to substitute the oppressive feeling of the Rangers being isolated and helpless, after all, the historical Delta players did not have the option to "start the game again".

Black Hawk Fall is aimed at the hardcore、Realistic this track,From the market point of view, it is certainly seeking dislocation competition,But in the actual development,The team is showing a less market-oriented side,Some people half-jokingly said "This Black Hawk Fall is the best anti-war game",There are also players who feel numb after immersive play,But no matter what kind of evaluation,I think after this battle,The team will definitely have more growth,And then give more value to the IP of Delta。

Doing a campaign is a step that must be taken

Before the fall of Black Hawk, Linlang Sky was undoubtedly better at multiplayer gameplay, and was more familiar with the retention mechanism to maintain player stickiness, but when it turned to the field of strong content-based narrative, no one had done it in the whole country.

This time, "Black Hawk Down" shifted the focus to "single immersive experience", and the creative idea is different from the past, the team puts more emphasis on "real battlefield atmosphere" and "movie-level emotional impact" and pays attention to the expression of "IP core".

From the plot point of view, the battle has made a pixel-level reproduction of the movie "Black Hawk Down", and the short film at the beginning of the game directly appropriated the footage in the movie, and also moved a lot of bridges and lines from the movie into the game, which has a lot of "emotional bonus" for players who have watched the movie, and at the same time, when looking through the movie reviews, I also found that many players said that "I came to watch the movie because I played the game".

What makes "Black Hawk Down" so popular is that the team has restored the atmosphere in the movie very well, and the team used real-world scanning, Unreal Engine 5 Nanite and other technologies to highly restore the streets of Mogadishu and the ruins of bomb craters in the movie "Black Hawk Down"; The Lumen global illumination and ray tracing system gives smoke and fire a documentary-like dynamic light and shadow in street battles.

Sound design also serves immersion. The team recorded real-life sound effects such as gunfire and vehicle collisions, and the sound of bullets grazing in the ears of players in an ambush in a narrow alleyway was accurately transmitted. In the "Mogadishu Long Run" level, they use sound effects to mobilize the player's emotions, and the breathing sound of the special forces will change from normal to panting to rapid wheezing when running, while the background sound gradually decreases, and only heavy breathing and footsteps are left in the fog, which is very similar to the "suddenly quiet down and only hear the heartbeat" technique in the movie.

In previous interviews with other media, Yao Yuan, general manager of TiMi J3 Studio, said, "For overseas media and markets, single-player narrative is always higher than multiplayer and mobile games. In other words, doing a good job in the campaign mode is a natural requirement for the global positioning of Operation Delta, and it is also a step that must be taken.

Producer Shadow also mentioned that "Operation Delta" only planned to launch a mobile game version before, but during the period of 22 to 23, when the team learned from overseas, it found that more and more players would talk about graphics cards and configurations, and the industry often mentioned that the improvement of pipeline and industrialization can make "Operation Delta" present in a better form, which has prompted "Operation Delta" to move towards a higher goal.

Facts have proved that this "Black Hawk Down" has also sent a positive signal to the market after its launch, the shortcomings of domestic FPS have never been technology, UE5's graphics, cinematic camera movements, and real-recorded sound effects prove that we can keep up with the footsteps of international manufacturers. The real gap lies in whether we dare to abandon the routine and use narrative and mechanism to convey a sense of weight.

The attempt at "Black Hawk Down" may not be perfect, it is too hardcore, too picky, and too uncommercial. But it is this kind of "truthfulness" that allows me to see the daring side of domestic FPS, no longer imitating the popcorn plot of fast food FPS, but using the perspective of the local team to deconstruct the real history; Use technology iteration to serve the narrative; Use free and high-quality content to rebuild players' trust in domestic masterpieces.

As producer Shadow once mentioned: "The core of Delta is for players to perform an "impossible mission"" Personally, this "impossible" may be the key to breaking the game in domestic FPS.

This article is from Xinzhi self-media and does not represent the views and positions of Business Xinzhi.If there is any suspicion of infringement, please contact the administrator of the Business News Platform.Contact: system@shangyexinzhi.com