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Daily News
by Gail Helmer
COMBATSIM.COM Exclusive:
Friday, March 8, 2002First Look: Delta Force: Task Force Dagger
Our good friends at Zombie Studios tell us they have signed on with Novalogic to create the fourth installment in the highly successful Delta Force series. This time it's Delta Force: Task Force Dagger.
According to Zombie Studios Head, Mark Long, Delta Force: Task Force Dagger will be based entirely on the current multinational military campaign in Afghanistan. What's in a name, you ask? "Task Force Dagger" is the name of the US military's 103rd Military Intelligence Battalion and the name of the field headquarters for all Special Operations missions in Afghanistan.
Each of the ten multiplayer and twenty-five single player missions will be based on an actual operation from the war in Afghanistan. "We scoured all the open source info from the various military agencies," says Long, "and found textual data, satellite imagery, and video from unmanned predators for each and every mission we will be building." Long went on to add, "As a player, you'll be launching assaults on the exact same targets, some cases are even based on actual Department of Defence UAV imagery.
The three phases in the game will mirror the phases of the early campaign in Afghanistan from the initial assault on Kandahar by the Rangers, to the urban warfare conducted in Mazar-e Sharif to the alpine / bunker / tunnel campaign in the mountainous region of Tora Bora. If that weren't cool enough, Long tells us that some missions will actually be a combination of three missions in one. "Huh?" we said, so Long explained:
"In the first stage of the campaign, three separate teams attacked the airport in Kandahar. So, in the first mission, you'll parachute onto the outskirts of the airport and complete your mission objectives. While you are doing that, you'll see another team parachute onto the airstrip itself and complete their mission. The team that parachuted onto the runway is actually your next mission. Then there's a third team that parachutes onto another compound attached to the airport and they do some very special stuff and that's your third mission. You'll be able to see the second and third team while you are doing the first mission, then you'll see the first and third team while you do the second mission, and so on."
Yes, very cool, indeed.
Zombie Studios will build the missions using Novalogic's existing Voxel 2 engine. Voxel 2 was revolutionary when it first came out and can still hold its own today but it is getting a bit long in the tooth. The folks at Zombie, however, intend on pulling more tricks than ever out of the Voxel 2 engine this time around. "The Voxel engine has some amazing capabilities that were never used in past versions of the game," says Long. "For example, we plan to do helo extractions whereas previous Delta Force titles simply had the mission end when you reached the LZ."
Long also told us that TF Dagger will allow you to play as any one of ten different branches of military from either the US, Canada, Australia, or Britain. Here's the list of military divisions you'll be able to play:
- Australian Special Air Service Regiment (SASR)
- British Special Air Service (SAS)
- Canadian Joint Task Force 2 (JTF-2)
- US Air Force Special Operations (STS)
- US Army Delta Force
- US Army Rangers
- US Army Special Forces "Green Berets"
- US CIA Special Operatives
- US Marine Force Recon
- US Navy SEALs
Novalogic's Delta Force is a tactical squad-based military shooter and has sold over a million copies since it was first released in October 1998. Zombie Studios burst on the first-person shooter scene back in early 1998 with Spec Ops which was arguably the first truly realistic 3D military combat shooter. In addition to their own Spec Ops title, Zombie Studios designed an expansion pack for the hugely successful Rainbow Six / Rogue Spear line by Redstorm. Release Date: May 2002