In GROUND BRANCH, you will play as the elite paramilitary arm of the CIA's Special Activities Center/Special Operations Group (SAC/SOG) and lead other special operations forces through challenging deniable ops all over the globe. With deliberate, calculated and unforgiving gameplay, GROUND BRANCH aims to be the true rebirth of the tactical realism genre of the late '90s and early 2000s. Powered by Epic's Unreal Engine 4, GB puts the "tactical" back in "tactical shooter"—no compromises.
GROUND BRANCH's unique True First-Person System improves world immersion and awareness of your surroundings, providing zero disconnect between your view and your character's physical presence in the environment. See your foot sticking out of cover? Better tuck it in—enemies may be able to see it (and shoot it) too, but only if their line of sight and muzzle are verifiably unobstructed. Cameras are placed at the character's eyes and bullets originate from the weapon's muzzle. In GROUND BRANCH, what you see is what you get.
A minimal HUD with multiple optional elements ensures that vital information is available, but never a constant obstacle to either immersion or your field of view.
Say goodbye to pre-defined kits and fully customize your character and gear from basic appearance and outfit to in-depth vest and weapon platform customization, down to individual pouch and attachment placement. What you bring to your mission is determined only by your loadout choice, with realistic consequences: With the upcoming encumbrance and stamina system, too much equipment will impact your character's speed and performance; place a scope too forward on the rail and your sight picture will be too small; bring a long rifle into CQB and weapon collision may prove a hindrance.
Forget unlocks, microtransactions and loot boxes. Ground Branch operators get all the right tools for the job straight away—courtesy of the Agency.
Whether in 8-player co-op or 8v8 adversarial game modes, GROUND BRANCH's unforgiving gameplay makes careful and calculated teamwork essential. Gather your teammates and practice in full-featured training areas, including shooting ranges with dynamic targets and customizable killhouses. Integrated VOIP with both 3D positional voice and radio ensures full communication capabilities with no need for third-party software. Text chat and pre-recorded voice messages (commo rose-style) also available for the mic-less and the shy.
Prefer single-player? Missions with friendly A.I. and a full command systemare fully planned.
In the tactical shooter realm, movement and weapon handling are king. Take full control of your character with standing, crouching and (soon!) prone stances—each with multiple movement speeds—as well as unique weapon postures (including low- and high-ready), leaning and stepping out, free-look (head movement independent from aim), customizable and optional free-aim (dead zone), dedicated mouse sensitivity sliders for point-shooting/unmagnified/magnified aiming, and all-around highly configurable key bindings.
You can also choose between speed reloads (drop magazine) and tactical reloads (retain current magazine) on the fly.
⚠️ NOTICE ⚠️ These release notes are for the V1031 testing build currently available in the GROUND BRANCH CTE Steam® app, not to be confused with the official (and upcoming) V1031 release for the main GROUND BRANCH app. GROUND BRANCH CTE Build ID: 6236486 (Client) / 6236494 (Dedicated Server) Download size: 2.8 GB (Client) / 446.2 MB (Dedicated Server) Greetings, hardcore tactical realism friend. If you like GROUND BRANCH and testing unfinished game features, your time has come again: GROUND BRA...
As this year comes to an end—and what a bastard of a year this has been—comes also the time for our final report of 2020. Intel Update #007 brings you all the major development details and behind-the-scenes of the last couple of months as we move towards GROUND BRANCH V1031. So what’s been going on in BlackFoot Studios country? Development has had its ups and downs since our last release, but we’re hanging in here and doing our best, as always. Here are some recent highlights: Kris was out of ac...
Edited (Oct 30, 6:20pm UTC) — Whoops! We forgot to mention a few character clipping fixes. Edited (Oct 30, 1:55am UTC) — Team IDs for the addbots command were incorrectly listed as 'alpha' and 'bravo' when they should be '0' and '1'. GROUND BRANCH Version 1030.2 Build ID: 5754012 (Client) / 5754023 (Dedicated Server) Download size: 188 MB (Client) / 45 MB (Dedicated Server) Although we normally try to refrain from cramming too much into patches (or point releases, otherwise known as non-main upd...
GROUND BRANCH Version 1030.1 Build ID: 5556979 (client) / 5556987 (dedicated server) Download size: 99.5 MB (client) / 57.1 MB (dedicated server) This Build Update details the first patch for GROUND BRANCH V1030, now live under your regular (non-CTE) game install. ℹ️ What about CTE? In case you are wondering: GROUND BRANCH CTE will not be used for a while, so if you need to free up some disk space, go ahead and uninstall it. Patch 1030.1 is primarily a server/networking fix, but has several othe...
GROUND BRANCH version 1030 Build ID: 5514975 (client) / 5515031 (dedicated server) Download size: 5.6 GB (client) / 398 MB (dedicated server)⚠️ NOTICE ⚠️ This update will completely wipe your saved game settings, but not your item builds – although we strongly recommend manually deleting all folders in …/Documents/GroundBranch. That is necessary to ensure certain updates and items do not conflict with old files. Sorry for the inconvenience! It's been a long time since version 1029, and if you ha...
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