Hey everyone,
Welcome back to another Intel Report. We know it's been a minute, but the silence has been the sound of heads-down work. And this time we're not just pulling back the curtain on a few previews. We've got a lot to discuss about the future of GROUND BRANCH.
After years of development, and a whole lot of invaluable feedback from you, we're proud to announce that GROUND BRANCH V1.0 launches on July 16, 2026.
Yes, you read that right. We have a date.
This is the most significant milestone in the game's history. V1.0 officially replaces the "V1036" label and brings improvements across AI, environments, visuals, animations, inventory, player interaction and overall immersion on the strongest foundation GROUND BRANCH has ever stood on.
So before we get into the roadmap and what comes next, let's go over what you'll actually be deploying with on day one.
What's in V1.0
V1.0 is the culmination of everything we've been teasing across our Intel Reports, brought together into one release and polished for both solo and co-op play. Here's the rundown on the latest developments since Intel Report #031, plus some important highlights.
The campaign returns: Operations and the Prologue
Many of you will remember Operations, the campaign structure we first demoed back in V1034. It was pulled temporarily for some much-needed retooling, and it's making its return for V1.0. This isn't a simple re-release of the "Silent Reach" demo, however. We're introducing the Prologue, set in the new Northwest Pakistan hotspot, where you'll play two new missions set two years before the main events of the campaign — a gentle on-ramp into the Operations gameplay loop.
The bigger shift: the story is now a central focus. Where the original vision had standalone hotspots with little connective tissue, we've put serious time into building a real narrative — a proper storyline with grounded characters and situations. We brought writer Scott Hamm aboard to set the stage and key characters, while our own Travis Rose continues to unfold the plot and develop the factions and operations.
💡 The Prologue also introduces a character who'll play a role in events further down the campaign.
💡 Expect the return of full briefings — this time with voice-overs — plus persistent progression.
For now, Operations will be available in lone-wolf and co-op only, with a proper friendly-AI system planned for Chapter 1 (more on chapters soon). As we keep refining the core mechanics, we'll circle back and bring these early missions up to their best.
Outpost joins the map selection
A brand-new environment is almost done, and it's the setting for the second mission of our Prologue: Outpost.
Set in the mountains of northwest Pakistan, Outpost is built around an old fort perched on a ridge right along the Afghan border. Inside the stone walls you'll find interconnected buildings, plenty of vantage points and tight passageways. Outside them, rugged terrain and sparse shrubs are about all the cover you'll get crossing a large, exposed perimeter.
Outpost joins Airbase (747 remake), Hospital (Rundown remake), Border and Creek (overhaul) as the additions for V1.0's map selection.
The mountain overlooks a town from an earlier mission — and you can spot recent events playing out in the distance.
💡 Expect high-wind audio ambience that can mask your footsteps — and very lethal, long sightlines if you get caught in the open.
💡 At launch, Outpost is tied to the second Prologue mission only. It won't be available in quick missions or other modes just yet, but broader access is of course planned for a post-launch update.
Smarter, deadlier enemy AI
Our enemies have had substantial work done to their logic, and we continue to work under the hood to improve their overall decision making in combat. We've got Chris and Zachary locked in a room with the behavior trees working on the following:
- Aim point now depends on skill level and visibility: By default, AI aim for the pelvis bone. However, if the body is behind cover and only the head is visible, the AI will switch to targeting the head instead of losing the target entirely. Higher skilled AI will aim for the chest or head by default.
- Perception range and reaction speed have been adjusted: Maximum view distance increased from 100 meters to 200 meters. The rate at which the AI's alertness builds has also been tweaked so that AI will avoid the old scenario of staring at a player and not reacting.
- Suppression and damage response: The AI now react to being shot in an unaware state. Being hit sets a suppression value and location, causing flee behavior to trigger even when the AI cannot see or hear the attacker. This means if you miss that lethal shot the chances of the AI running to cover before you can finish the job.
- Defender AI behavior added: Enemies in guard mode are now "defenders" tethered to their assigned guard point. They cannot move outside a set radius but will turn toward sounds, allowing them to hear you approaching and respond rather than standing frozen with their back turned. On maps like Hospital (formerly Rundown), this means enemies hold their rooms and avoid lining up like a train to their death.
- Guard point logic improved: AI now claim only one guard point at a time. If all guard points in a group are taken, remaining AI idle gracefully. Guard points are released whenever the AI changes state.
- Morale and death awareness systems added: When AI witness another enemy die, they experience suppression and a morale drop. This means your combat actions have more of an effect on the overall enemy's decision trees.
- Retreat and flee behavior now depends on skill level: Higher-skilled AI stay in cover longer before breaking away from contact. Overall, enemies feel more resilient.
- Under the hood: Behavior tree nodes are being moved from Blueprint to C++ for better performance and reliability.
Take a look at this quick demo on the overhauled Creek against enemies on "Trained" difficulty (hit reactions and the armor system are also visible):
💡 As mentioned in previous reports, all our enemy factions will also feature entirely new models and textures, as well as native-language voice lines.
Extrapolating on Extraction
In our last blog, we introduced the new quick mission Extraction, our PvE counterpart to the Hostage Rescue multiplayer mode. This week we'd like to go into more detail on how this mode plays, how it will be worked on in the future, and the underlying changes to AI to make some features also apply to HVTs (high-value targets) in our campaign.
In Extraction, players take on the role of the rescue team while the enemy AI hold onto a friendly hostage. The hostage is guarded by 2 captors — enemy AI whose sole purpose is to keep tabs on the prisoner. As the captor witnesses and hears combat, they will become agitated, depleting their morale meter as they go on. This meter does not refill and, if fully depleted, will result in an execution. (A demo of this behavior was previewed in Intel Report #031.)
💡 The maximum number of hostages per map will be expanded in the future.
Interacting with the hostage is currently handled through our command wheel: to free and begin leading them, simply follow the interaction prompt. While being led with the "Follow Me" command, the hostage will mirror the player's speed and stance. When ordered to "Move To" they will always run to the position, while ordering them to "Take Cover" will send them to the nearest viable cover to crouch and hold. In co-op scenarios, the hostage will respect the last player to interact with them, allowing players to quickly take control in a situation where you end up in contact with the enemy.
Extraction has some changes from our other quick missions that are important to note. For one, the amount of enemies on the map has to be a minimum of 10 and a maximum of 30. This is for balancing purposes and gives us headroom in the future for civilian and hostage AI expansions.
We hope you look forward to giving it a try and sharing your feedback come release!
A new door interaction system
CQB is the heart of GROUND BRANCH, and V1.0 brings a smoother, more responsive door system without giving up an ounce of the realism you expect.
As covered last report, doors are getting locked-door support and the ability to breach them open with explosive charges or shots to the handle. Since then we've worked out a better door handling animation and set up simulated physics with the doors which will react to being pushed by characters.
New player locomotion
Mike has been busy. We're completely overhauling the player movement set with fresh motion capture. Standing and crouched movement — walking, jogging, sprinting, strafing — is all being replaced, and the difference in fluidity is night and day. Take a look at these previews:
Watch on YouTube
Watch on YouTube
💡 Running (default Shift) now uses a more stable stride animation, allowing for dynamic room clearing that looks and feels much better.
We've retuned the speeds across every stance and reworked weapon handling to use more natural movement wobble and aiming sway patterns in place of the stiffer movement currently in V1035.
Bark at the moon
Returning in v1.0 is the moon phase feature that used to be part of our Advanced Time Menu. We've made it easier than ever to understand and control this system.
In quick missions you can now choose the moon phase directly from the Mission Parameters menu, giving you granular control of how bright or dark you want your nights to be.
💡 The moon now appropriately casts a shadow. Hiding in the shadows cast by the moon further conceals your position, making you nearly invisible to the enemy.
With a full moon, most of the map is illuminated — you are more exposed to the enemy in this state:
With a waxing crescent (below) or darker moon phases, you will be more concealed to the enemy, but your NVG will require an IR illuminator (available on the AN/PEQ-15 or similar modded attachment) to help illuminate dark spaces.
💡 We are currently experimenting with lowering the overall visibility of the enemy at night compared to previous versions. We hope this helps you feel like an extra spooky operator.
Gameplay, inventory, visuals and quality-of-life upgrades
As previewed in our recent reports, lots of other updates are taking place in most areas of the game. To recap and add a few points:
- Several maps have had art updates to clean them up in preparation for release. One such map — Rig — has had some work done by Will. These include material and texture improvements, updates to the ballast tanks/leg interior, an optimization pass, adding railing covers, lighting and atmospherics, and adjusting the color palette to try and aid navigation.
- The new armor system will give players enhanced survivability at the expense of stamina and a further challenge in multiplayer encounters, while hit reactions add another layer of immersion and complexity to combat by making it more difficult to return fire if targeted first.
- In the locker room, players will have access to new gear (rugby shirts, fingerless gloves, rig/armor combos, kneepads, drop-leg holster…), weapons (RPK, M500, MK3…), attachments (new rail panels, grips) and new character appearance options (new hair and beard styles) to add even more operator and loadout variety.
- A large number of textures and models have also been reworked for better visuals and lighting in our character and inventory assets.
- We've raised the overall volume and increased the attenuation of footsteps and player foley. We've set them to be higher in the mix for now to address player feedback that they find it too hard to hear the enemy's movements.
- As amusing as the flying ragdolls were, they've sadly been fixed. It was fun while it lasted.
- Replication of certain VFX like gun smoke and spent casings in PiP scopes will no longer render at a blown up scale on the maps. If you've ever seen a large 2D texture pop up in the sky and wondered "what was that?"… wonder no more!
- The VOIP crash which used to cause player's audio to complete disappear is resolved.
- We have gone through all our missions and cleaned up invalid enemy spawns from the great migration to C++.
Some of the map art updates displayed on Rig
The new (or rather very old) AN/PVS-7 night vision system
What V1.0 actually means
Hitting V1.0 does not mean the end of development.
V1.0 is the milestone that says GROUND BRANCH has fulfilled its core promise — a fully functional, stable, content-rich tactical shooter with a campaign framework and mod support. Hitting that mark doesn't close the book; it opens the next chapter. A great deal of what's coming next is already mapped out — and that's a roadmap of planned additions, not a list of things we're scrambling to finish.
The road beyond V1.0
GROUND BRANCH V1.0 is the start of a process that runs all the way through the rest of 2026 and into 2027. Here's where we're headed.
💡 Though we're working extra hard to meet this schedule, please note that these dates are tentative.
July 2026: V1.0.0
Launch. Everything above, plus the base for multiplayer.
Summer 2026 → Winter 2026/2027: the campaign chapters
Following launch, we'll roll out three new campaign chapters across updates V1.1.0, V1.1.1 and V1.1.2. Each chapter adds a new hotspot with 3–4 new missions, and every release keeps bringing new features, improvements and fixes alongside the story content.
💡 Every new hotspot also gets its own dedicated Ready Room, themed after the area.
V1.2.0: the Multiplayer Update
After Chapter 3 lands with V1.1.2, we're planning a dedicated Multiplayer Update (V1.2.0) with a set of improvements, shipping alongside the new Mod Kit (SDK) updates for maps and missions.
💡 The Mod Kit will not be receiving updates until then.
That's the shape of it: continued, planned expansion of our gameplay, campaign chapters, the multiplayer update and Mod Kit, ongoing AI work, more maps, weapons and gear, and steady quality-of-life passes. We'll have more detail to share on each of these in the months ahead.
Thank you
GROUND BRANCH wouldn't be where it is without the dedication, feedback and support of this community. Every report, every discussion, every suggestion, every play session has helped shape the game into what it's about to become.
On behalf of the entire team — thank you for being on this journey with us.
We look forward to deploying with you on July 16. See you on the ground.
This has been Intel Report #032!
As always, thanks for keeping up with GROUND BRANCH. Stay safe, and have a great rest of your week!