A few nips and tucks to the modes, a plethora of new features and far more complexity to the lush environments, but the old Battlefield vibe still hangs heavy in the air. Just to quell any doubts, Battlefield Vietnam is still the game you know and love from Battlefield 1942 at heart. Well, then at least you can admit that war is extremely good for computer games.
When you've just lost control of a US chopper, however, and are travelling downwards at terrifying speeds towards the rice paddy where you've just dropped off your fellow marines while you leap from your fractured, exploding helicopter and watch it pirouette into the Vietcong forces. Edwin Starr and a variety of other songsmiths, blaring their lungs over the Battlefield Vietnam loading screens are certainly in that camp. Huh! What is it good for? Many would have it that it's good for absolutely nothing.
This is definitely a grungier war, so elements we’ve built in enhance that feel and make it feel more like Vietnam, but nothing controversial like burning babies. Somehow in Battlefield 1942, the whole idea of World War II was very heroic and almost comic book.
"No, no, no, no, no," both producers cry in unison, with Marini continuing, "That’s not part of the Battlefield franchise.
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So you won’t be able to wipe out villages full of children? We definitely won’t put anything in there that could be even construed as remotely offensive." Obviously this war was a lot more controversial, but we’re focusing on the fun aspects of it. We’re using Hollywood for inspiration, but it’s not a blueprint or something we feel we have to do."Īs for the moral issue of setting a game in Vietnam, Schneider is adamant: "I think you face the same issues with a game set in World War II. So the game is designed to look, sound and feel in line with what people know, which covers everything from the way it looks to the the sounds of the guns. According to Schneider "One of the key focuses was trying to deliver what people understand as the Hollywood experience of Vietnam. Vietnam veterans and war historians aside, the vast majority of people’s concept of the conflict comes from the movies, and this is something the game is hoping to exploit. Ultimately though, as producer AJ Marini says: "What we wanted to do is make sure the player firing this weapon feels like they’re firing an actual gun, it’s not just a cool weapon in the game." To this end, the guns in Vietnam will be far more dynamic, offering subtleties such as bullets being fed into the chamber, and even reloads based on actual field data.Īlso, the weight of weapons will have some bearing, with a heavy gun enough to marginally slow a player down. Clearly, the NVA will benefit from better use of the terrain, and we’ve seen one of the booby traps in operation, where a pile of logs is rolled on to some hapless US troops, crushing them like woodlice.īy way of riposte, the Americans will be carrying some heavy armoury, and this is an area that has received a great deal of attention, with EA admitting the first-person shooter elements of Battlefield 1942 weren’t as Deciding which side you choose to fight for will inevitably lead to a vastly different gameplay experience, with the Yanks buzzing around in hi-tech helicopters, and the Vietcong trying to escape on an old Vespa scooter. Something of a mismatch, you might think, but Digital Illusions is doing its best to ensure there is some kind of balance.
Those battles were fought between the mighty US war machine and the have-a-go heroes of the North Vietnamese Army. One of the other key elements of Vietnam was, of course, airlifting, which really changed the way battles were fought." Bigger, Badder, Louder Another key part of the Vietnam experience was napalm, so that was something we felt we needed to integrate into the game. It’s a new type of guerrilla warfare in terms of focusing it around Vietnam, and some of the ways we’re doing that is through trench warfare and booby traps. Producer Reid Schneider told us: "One thing we really want to emphasise is it’s not just Battlefield 1942 with a Vietnam Electronic Arts is keen to stress that the game However, Battlefield Vietnam will be a standalone game, a fact that has already caused murmurs of message board dissent.
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