Why always the same 'nam?

[Bellator]

Vietnam war is a conflict, much like the European WW2 or the Gulf war, that is quite frequently depicted in games and movies, to the extent that I think that by now "the market" is over-saturated with frustrated American grunts in the Indochinese bush, at least I am.

Now, obviously, I don't think that the dev team is suddenly going to cancel and start instead working on "PR: Chadian–Libyan conflict" or any depiction of the dozen of other forgotten (and hence more interesting) wars of roughly the same period.

But to make things a little more interesting and different, I would like to see depictions of the fronts scarcely depicted in standard "vietnatainment" such as the Sino-Vietnamese War or the Cambodian–Vietnamese War, for example.

[chagadiel]

i kind of agree and disagree with you. yes vietnam has had a fair few games and apperrantly a few more are on the way. the thing is i dont think one has been done very well or accuratly and have been characatures of the war and cliches.

i didnt touch battle field vietnam simply becuase the communist forces had jets , helicopters and tanks. until now no one has been brave enougth to find a balanced fun way of playing a game with one side armed to the max and the other with nothing. that is untilPR started insurgency and proved that it could be done. i love insurgency games playing either side.

Thats why i am hopeing this for the first time will be a true vietnam game.

[TomVasseur]

Well I have heard sounds of people who want the French in (you know the guys who were in Vietnam before 1954) and you have to remember that this is a Project Reality so you can't really expect any Apocalypse Nowesque scenes. So I don't think there is a need to worry.

[Rudd]

PRV has the virtue of having Trahnlee on board from EoD, so alot of work has already been done, rather than having to start from the drawing board.

[TomVasseur]

PRV has the virtue of having Trahnlee on board from EoD, so alot of work has already been done, rather than having to start from the drawing board.

But is that work stereotyped or not? (I'm not familiar with EoD, I don't game a lot)

[Serbiak]

How can you be tired of THEEE conflict to play??

[Rudd]

But is that work stereotyped or not? (I'm not familiar with EoD, I don't game a lot)

not particular, it was high quality

Eve of Destruction

[Jigsaw]

I completely disagree here, the Vietnam conflict is far from saturated with games, in fact here is a list of Vietnam era games released since 1981:

Vietnam War Era games

High quality, prestigious games? Not so much. In fact the most recent game that I would call high profile was Battlefield Vietnam, and that was originally released six years ago... Ask yourself, how many of those games have you actually played? My guess is very very few, I can't even remember the last time I gunned my way through a dense swamp with a Huey flying overhead. By way of comparison, here is a similar list of WW2 era games:

World War II games

With this evidence in mind I don't see how you can argue a case for over-saturation in this medium, in films certainly there are numerous examples, but games?

No.

Sure there may be a time to look at other smaller scale conflicts within the whole but the base should be the Vietnam conflict itself. Yes there are both CoD 7 and BC2:Vietnam coming but don't let them cloud your vision of what is a particularly under-explored conflict in video games.

[TheOldBreed]

let's face it, who would people rather play as: a trooper in the air cav, sitting with his feet on the skids of a huey, flying under the rising sun with a door gunner firing burst after burst shouting 'get some'; OR some lowly cambodian peasant whose trapesing along in the jungle with nothing to do but get malaria and eat rice. BOOM.

[TomVasseur]

I like the underdog role, so I'll chose the peasant.

[Anhkhoa]

Just because Call of Duty: Black Ops and Bad Company: Vietnam exist...doesn't mean Vietnam is an over-explored time period.


-----Offtopic

let's face it, who would people rather play as: a trooper in the air cav, sitting with his feet on the skids of a huey, flying under the rising sun with a door gunner firing burst after burst shouting 'get some'; OR some lowly cambodian peasant whose trapesing along in the jungle with nothing to do but get malaria and eat rice. BOOM.

How about...
Some random conscripted American that's gonna die anyway; OR some Cambodian peasent turned soldier to protect his village from ruthless Vietnamese?

It works both ways you know.

[Bellator]

---

That's a pretty impressive list of vietnam war games (sure, its not as obsessively depitected as WW2 ... although, there are few quality WW2 games that depict the warfare accurately).

But my point was not strictly limited to games, but to medias overall. Yes, there is an over-saturiation, at least for me, for the specific type of Vietnam war depiction (the drama of unshowered American soldiers in the bush and their fights and distress). Its been rehashed in popular culture too many times. Video games are an art among many, so my point does include them as well.

Now, obviously, I don't think that the PRV team should abandon the Vietnam conflict all the sudden now that its been selected. But I would like to see the less frequently depicted fronts. (i.e. Laotian civil war, Cambodia vs North Vietnam vs China, etc)

Cambodian peasent turned soldier to protect his village from ruthless Vietnamese?

Well Cambodia was ruled by Pol Pot, so the Vietnamese invasion was pretty much a liberation.

[TheOldBreed]

I like the underdog role, so I'll chose the peasant.

[Glimmerman]

Indeed, good in depth Vietname era games are hard to find and EoD is a very good one especially when PRified.

If you would desire a Chadian–Libyan conflict or a Falkland mod then gather up a DEV team of your own and start on it, if its good enough it might be accepted for PR who knows.

Same as for WW2, i would love to see a PR/FH2 mod, the awesome setting of WW2 europe scneery with the nice models from FH2 with PR gameplay.

[Gore]

90% of vietnam and ww2 games are ****, i'd like to see many many more.

[ytman]

It'd be nice, but, I'm not expecting anything but a great US-Vietnam conflict addition to the basic PR formula.

[Ninja2dan]

[quote=""'[R-MOD"]Jigsaw;1374158']I completely disagree here, the Vietnam conflict is far from saturated with games, in fact here is a list of Vietnam era games released since 1981:

Vietnam War Era games

High quality, prestigious games? Not so much. In fact the most recent game that I would call high profile was Battlefield Vietnam, and that was originally released six years ago... Ask yourself, how many of those games have you actually played? My guess is very very few, I can't even remember the last time I gunned my way through a dense swamp with a Huey flying overhead. By way of comparison, here is a similar list of WW2 era games:

World War II games

With this evidence in mind I don't see how you can argue a case for over-saturation in this medium, in films certainly there are numerous examples, but games?

No.

Sure there may be a time to look at other smaller scale conflicts within the whole but the base should be the Vietnam conflict itself. Yes there are both CoD 7 and BC2:Vietnam coming but don't let them cloud your vision of what is a particularly under-explored conflict in video games.[/quote]

This is one of the points I have tried making in the past too. While there have been some Vietnam-era games, many were low quality or focused more on the storyline of a movie than the actual war or realistic events. The same can be said about the majority of Vietnam-era films out there, usually involving some bullshit plot instead of going after real or "realistic" events. Platoon, Full Metal Jacket, Apocalypse Now, etc are some examples of a decent film written about total ****. The solid films are those such as BAT 21, Rescue Dawn, and I'll even say We Were Soldiers.

Then look at the market of WWII games. It's been flooded so much that even a damn good WWII game is likely to see little interest simply because it's been overdone. It's like steak and lobster: Some of the best food, but if you eat it 3 times a day, 7 days a week, for 10 years straight...after a while that steak and lobster is going to taste like shit.

I've seen some good WWII games, but I've seen 10 times more crappy ones. Same with movies, I've seen (and even helped write) some great stuff, and I've seen some really awful films that would make a maggot gag.



[quote="Bellator""]That's a pretty impressive list of vietnam war games (sure, its not as obsessively depitected as WW2 ... although, there are few quality WW2 games that depict the warfare accurately).

But my point was not strictly limited to games, but to medias overall. Yes, there is an over-saturiation, at least for me, for the specific type of Vietnam war depiction (the drama of unshowered American soldiers in the bush and their fights and distress). Its been rehashed in popular culture too many times. Video games are an art among many, so my point does include them as well.
[/quote]

You mean the part of the war that took place when most people actually knew we had soldiers over there, when the war was actually in the news instead of page 12 of the paper? If you look at the beginning of the war, there is not a whole lot that would make for interesting games or movies. Even today a lot of the missions that took place are still classified because most of the early war operations were SpecOps, Black Ops, "Agency" missions, or advisor duties.

What you see in previous games and film is not 100% accurate, but it's usually not that far from the truth either. The majority of your soldiers were not volunteers, they were poorly trained in the first place and our entire military overall was lacking sufficient knowledge/tactics of jungle warfare. Of course you'll see some fictional events and drama in the movies, THEY'RE MOVIES. But a good amount of what they show in the movies and games is close to fact.

Besides, if you were buying a video game or movie about the Vietnam War, which would you want: 1) Pvt. Gimper sitting in the chow hall eating pork & beans while smoking a Marlboro, way behind the lines with not a drop of action for hundreds of miles... or 2) Cpl. Gungho with an M60 in his arms, belt of ammo draped over his shoulder, shouting profanities at his fellow soldiers while dodging bullets from the NVA/VC, with some CCR music in the background?

People don't buy games or movies to just sit their watching some guy with his thumb up his ***, they watch or play something to be excited, for entertainment.


Here's another good example of why you see what you see. I'm sure most of you have seen at least one episode of "Cops". When was the last time you saw an episode showing an officer writing parking tickets, filling out an accident report back at the department, or eating lunch at Subway?



Personally, I love the whole Vietnam-era setting. I honestly wish I had been born a generation earlier so I could have taken part in that conflict. I love the jungle, I feel comfortable there. And the type of combat was hardcore, what every true Infantryman lives for. That really was a "Get Some" war, and it's much harder to find that kind of action now. Vietnam-era war games really open up a can of whoop-*** on some great opportunities. I think PR:Vietnam is going to be a great mod when it's done.

[Startrekern]

Honestly if you want to see the other fronts in the war, why not start a community faction for PR:V? They exist for PR, so why not?

[Tannhauser]

Well I have heard sounds of people who want the French in (you know the guys who were in Vietnam before 1954) and you have to remember that this is a Project Reality so you can't really expect any Apocalypse Nowesque scenes. So I don't think there is a need to worry.

Hold on, I thought they were already going to be in?
Aren't they already in EoD against the Vietminh?

[Bringerof_D]

wait COD7 features the vietnam war? i dont think so, perhaps they are fighting in vietnam but in the trailer they're sporting gear that wasn't available till well after the war.