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Battlefield, eat your heart out.

Squad is a 100-player military shooter from a melting pot of people who worked on Project Reality, a popular Battlefield 2 mod that made the game significantly more realistic. Without getting too long-winded about it, I will say Project Reality is the most fun I've ever had lying in a ditch wetting myself at the prospect of an artillery barrage for 45 minutes. It requires hella tactical planning and isn't always fast-paced, but it's provided me with some experiences no other game has. Think a midpoint between Battlefield's sometimes over-the-top ridiculousness and Arma's "sir, yes sir!" devotion to even the creaky dregs, the ugliest latrines of the battlefield, and you're on the right track.


So Squad. It's Project Reality, but a) standalone, b) developed from the ground up as its own thing, and c) really dang pretty. Here's what the dev team is going for:

"Squad is an online, team-based military themed first-person-shooter where high levels of teamwork and communication are crucial to success." "Built from the ground up in the Unreal Engine 4, Squad pits teams of up to 50 players against each other in white knuckle modern day combined-arms combat scenarios, with both conventional and unconventional forces." "The players dictate how the scenarios unfold with base-building and interactive environments, intuitive squad command and management tools and large-scale warfare where strategy and leadership are just as important as a quick trigger finger."


Planned features include massive battlefields, a kit-based class system, robust base-building (that will help you push your front line ever forward; a crucial part of why Project Reality is so interesting), a resupply system, realistic firing and damage physics, an emphasis on making medic play as intense as shooting, built-in communication tools, and day-one mod support.

Basically, Squad's team seems to have a damn good head on its shoulders. They know exactly what sort of game they want to make and are focused on features that will facilitate that. Color me interested.

The plan is to pursue some sort of crowdfunding—probably Kickstarter—a little later this year, after which a beta will get the war started the right way (read: quietly and politely, with many allowances for mistakes) mid-2015. Think you'll enlist?

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To contact the author of this post, write to nathan.grayson@kotaku.com or find him on Twitter @vahn16.