Exclusive: Sturt Jeffery tells The Escapist what to expect from 83’s Commander Mode, learning from Rising Storm, and Early Access ideas

For those of you playing FPS shooters nearly half my lifetime ago now will likely have heard of Red Orchestra, or at least Rising Storm and Vietnam, respectively released in 2011, 2013, and 2017. Both shooters are cult classics, and that’s why there’s been some excitement for ’83, the Cold War equivalent made by Blue Dot Games, with lead designers and other staffers from the very same studios. While the game was announced back in 2019, 2026 is the year devs are really showing this game off, with limited beta testing coming up soon, and its Early Access release later in the year.

With the gradual marketing taking place, ’83 has caught our eyes at The Escapist, and the promising sign of a Commander mode also excites us a bit. So much so, we contacted Sturt Jeffery, the Lead Designer on ’83 and former Rising Storm Vietnam developer and designer too.

What is the Commander Mode in ’83?

For those of you unaware, the Commander mode was recently released as part of the game’s marketing this year. The mode promises that a player on each team can become a commander, and help give orders to teams, call in support abilities, and ultimately help command players to victory.

This mode is a key pillar of many more tactical larger-scale shooters. Older Battlefield games had the feature, at least up to BF4, while other games in the genre still run it, like Hell Let Loose, Squad, and many more you can probably name.

Now, where it gets interesting is how ’83’s Commander Mode gives players a bit of a more hardcore version than Hell Let Loose, ordering squads around over Squad Leader VOIP channels. But, there’s also similarities from games like Battlefield 2 and Rising Storm in there.

Commanders are more like Lieutenants

Like in Rising Storm, Commanders will be boots on the ground. Commanders are units whose special feature is that they can place a table down and operate their duties. Doing so unlocks a ton of special systems and effects for them that really open the role up. There’s a radio that lets them call in artillery, but they need to stay near it for the request to complete. Then, they want to use Binoculars or their own eyes to place markers for squad commands in person, or call in artillery.

It’s not something that the Commander is locked into at all times, and you can move around and do other things any old soldier would do.

This is where the brilliance of the system comes into play. “The commander accesses most of his functions from a command post (represented by a table) that he can deploy. This means he is relatively vulnerable as he has to stay at the table to carry out these functions,” says Sturt.

“To us, the commander needs to be vulnerable to in-game action – special forces squads can make it their mission to hunt him down, enemy commanders can call in a ‘counter-barrage’ on his head, so he will often have to relocate to try and ensure his safety in an evolving battlefield. So it’s all about the role of a lower-ranked lieutenant, being there IN the fighting but directing and leading his forces.”

The commander in ’83 is not some general in Sandhurst living it up. Instead, it’s more of a lieutenant as Sturt says. When things hit the proverbial fan, the commander has to be present for that. If they need to run, hide, maneuver, or even fight back a bit, then that’s the commander offline, losing his squad command voice, orders, and commander abilities while he’s not near that table.

This, of course, adds a little chaos to what the commander can and can’t do. It also adds balance to what the squad leaders can do too. So, the Comamnder needs to be safe enough to use the table, but in a good enough spot to properly use the Binoculars to spot and give solid orders to squads.

Squad spawns are a key part of the game, as is with other similar tactical shooters. Rather than spawning on pre set points, the squad leader can set a spawn beacon for the squad to spawn on.

“Special forces squads do get a larger choice of weaponry but are also able to place their spawn points in forward positions. This gives more ability to flank/operate behind enemy lines, taking out commanders and attacking or disrupting high-value objectives,” says Sturt.

This adds a dynamic that the Commander, who can only place his table down inside friendly territory, is at risk of having deep insertions by hostile squads. Some squads may choose to flank and take capture points, or hunt the commander down, depending on squad orders or personal playstyles.

What choices do Commanders have in-game?

The role of a Commander is to largely deliver tactical and strategic superiority and win the game. And while the role and interface is simple enough, there’s quite a few choices that have major impacts on the game. Blue Dot happily provided us with an infographic, which we are sharing with you now to get an idea of what the commander role looks like.

The mode is about using your abilities tactically. Recon Planes can help spot enemies, whether that be helping defenders set up their defenses, or an assault team knows where enemies are to increase the chances they can take that position. Or dropping artillery on a key point, ready for shock troopers to assault or a retake of a recently lost position. Those are tactical choices Commanders need to make with their skills. But, that’s the more grand strategy, there are other aspects to it.

“In our experience, the commander is continuously making the call of where to place his post,” says Sturt. “Whether to stay there and ‘direct traffic’, or to pitch in and help with a last-ditch defense or a final assault. That’s part of the skill, knowing when ‘discretion is the better part of valor.’“

For those of you who played Rising Storm or Orchestra, you can go and do some scouting yourself. You won’t be able to drop your table down till it becomes friendly territory, but the option is there if you need accurate reporting and play a more mobile command playstyle. Or, if you’re under siege, then getting off that table is a pretty good idea, before you get domed through a window or to the back of the head or something.

In addition, the Commander wants to be using their abilities off cooldown and when they have resources. Resources are a big ebb and flow in the game, thanks to requiring control points. Sturt tells me the gamemodes incentivize attack and defending anyway per the game mode rules. But, for a Commander, it’s not just about winning or losing points.

“The main difference is that given different objectives are worth different amounts of each resource.”

“A commander may consider some objectives more valuable than others at different stages of the battle, and so may issue orders to prioritize ownership of those objectives over others, which is a completely valid strategy in a mode like Frontlines, where not all objectives are required for victory.”

A commander may want the control point so they can fund their abilities. That way, ally squads have the help they need defending, assaulting, or whatever else is needed in combat.

We asked Sturt about internal playtesting for a resource-starved Commander is like. Which he said “A commander whose team is on the back foot definitely will have situations where he cannot call in, for example, artillery strikes as often as he would like. This is, in part, one of the mechanics that pushes gameplay away from a deadlock/draw situation.”

So, it seems that Commanders need those pivotal moments before their role becomes significantly harder to achieve.

“From our experience of playing as commander in the Frontlines game mode, the need to grab resource-heavy objectives needs to be balanced against other, potentially more pressing, demands of the role. A commander may be busy directing troops to targets and ensuring that there is aerial recon whilst also watching his own back… making sure there are no enemy spec ops lurking around his command post,” says Sturt.

The idea of a Commander having to scrap for those points makes a lot more sense. It means those game modes have incentives to have squads follow defend and assault orders for the greater team coordination. Sturt also mentioned that through EA they’ll look more into getting XP and score for supportive actions, helping further refine that teamwork-based coordination. Rather than getting kills being your main point-scoring system. So, it should be a self-fulfilling system by the end of it.

Early Access and the upcoming Closed Beta

As it stands, ’83 is in the process of getting ready for Early Access. The devs are offering a public 36-hour Closed Beta, from 15:00 GMT / 11:00 EDT on March 20, until 23:00 GMT / 19:00 EDT on March 21. If you’re interested you can go to the Steam Page and click request access. The game will then launch into Early Access sometime later in 2026 as it currently stands.

Players will be able to test the commander mode, alongside other squads and the Woodpecker battlefield to play on.

The devs are looking for feedback on what to work on and improve before EA. As mentioned, the devs want to implement better XP for getting kills, following orders, and other things in between. But, it’s also a nice time to get feedback on what you want.

You’ll also get to experience the game moving to 40v40, with its faster-paced gameplay. We asked what the game is like, especially learning from RO and Rising Storm, with Sturt mentioning the following:

“We have taken the RO2 philosophy of ‘accessible realism’ as a core pillar of the game. Balancing realism against fun. This has informed every facet of ’83’s design…” Sturt specifically mentions sort of broken gameplay mechanics that didn’t work as intended, so they’ve redesigned class features.

“One thing we learnt from Red Orchestra was that players respond to being awarded points for doing things, even if those points don’t necessarily have broader value. A good example was the introduction of the ammo resupply mechanic for machine gunners – normal riflemen had the ability to give ammo to the MG but nobody used it. The problem was solved by giving 5 arbitrary ‘points’ to players for doing so. The immediate response was players queuing up to spam machine gunners in a cloud of flying ammo boxes.“

As for the new 40v40, that’s largely due to vehicles and needing boots on the ground. “The difference will be generally bigger maps. A big driver for the increase in player numbers was that we did not want the availability of vehicles to detract from the infantry player pool. In previous games we saw that if players maxed out on vehicles, there were hardly any infantry to carry out their part in the combined arms scenario.“

’83 is shaping up to be a spiritual successor and evolution of the old school tactical shooters. 2026 is proving to be a good year for the genre, like with the recent EA release of Over The Top WW1 and the anticipated Hell Let Loose Vietnam also on the cards.