Project Reality Forums

Have you guys noticed that there's been a quite a lot AAA titles set in Vietnam these days? Well at least soon coming out.

Look at this: Battlefield: Bad Company 2 'Vietnam' add-on coming Winter 2010 | Joystiq

Bad Company 2's getting a Vietnam Warfare expansion.

Call of Duty: Black Ops will be primarily set in Vietnam.

And Project Reality's getting a Vietnam rendition.

Is this the foreshadow of a trend?

Plus I noticed that the music in the BC2: Vietnam trailer was the same as Project Reality's Vietnam trailer.

Don't forget one of the coolest damn games in the world, Men of War: Vietnam which should be out in the 3rd quarter of this year



The Vietnam war is just like any other genre, such as Desert Storm, WWII, etc. Every few years you start to see a bunch of interest in a specific genre, so lots of games and movies come out trying to cash in on the interest.

Most recently, the trending genre for films was WWII. But other than a few oddball films, the Vietnam war hasn't been a hugely successful genre since the late 80's. To be honest, I can't even remember the last time they made a good Vietnam movie. And no, Tropic Thunder doesn't count.


I think that the Vietnam war appeals to gamers so much because it really was one of the "coolest" wars in regards to weapons, vehicles, large battles, all with a modern twist. Who doesn't like the idea of rockin your pig in the jungle while listening to some CCR?

it's horrible and very typical that that's the only part of war the gamers seem to see, though I'm guilty as well

I think its because everyone has finally understood how overdone ww2 games are, and now they have been looking for alternatives.

The alternatives seems to be either modern warfare, or Vietnam. The TOW series is an exception, they chose the Korea war, which is a great and original choice IMO.

Well the devs are looking to refresh the market with something new (People are getting a little sick of desert shooters in the same way they got sick of WWII shooters when CoD4 came out) and the Vietnam war is a war that really never any real good games.
Also in pass gen consoles you realy cound't make a good looking forest now a days you can make beautiful tropic forests (just look at Crysis or Bad Company 2)
I like the Vietnam war and I hope that PR:Vietnam is real good

The song is by CCR called Fortunate Son. Alot of Vietnam stuff have this playing... like Forest Gump has it. It's just a song that is linked with Vietnam.

Look it up it's pretty good.

Well, these are the major wars in history and major wars of the 20th/21st century.
Though they can make games based on reallife fights being fought today; see Iraq, Afganistan, Chechens,etc.. But then again people will be saying; "trend of Iras war" or "trend of WW2 games"
I think there's nothing wrong with that unless you want to play games where you have to fight the Bonaparte in Waterloo or having a fight for Jerusalem with your Crusader brothers ?

Black Ops isnt focusing on vietnam, the devs said that vietnam is only a small part of the whole game, also cant wait for mov vietnam, loved mov, also aint seing anythin good with Bc2 nam, problems they have in the servers just destoy the game.

I think nobody understands any of these wars, I bet people join the army because they think modern warfare 2 is cool. It's just the time, most likely because of black ops and how the gaming industry really didn't make money on it. Next you will see the gulf wars and it will go on and on.

I wouldn't consider this a new thing, a few years back there were a few Vietnam based games released: Vietcong + sequel, Men of Valor, Conflict Vietnam released 2003-2004. There are probably a couple more as well.

Like people have said players want to experience different environments. The point about technology is perhaps a good one as one complaint about these earlier Vietnam games was the 'on-rails' nature of the gameplay. You would find yourself walking into an invisible wall in the jungle; invisible walls are more acceptable in an urban environment, for example, but in the jungle they can spoil the player's immersion.

HellDuke wrote:Maybe the reason that there were few games with vietnam war, was because people thought it's too early for that. I mean WW2 and WW1 games are good since the were both won (the loosing sides no longer exist for the most part, Germans resent the Reich just as much as any american or european, the soviet union is no more).

However in Vietnam the US went in and got raped. So logicaly that might be a bit of a touchy subject to some from US and the game developers didn't want to bring that up too soon... Well that's the way I would explain why there were few good Vietnam games or movies (I liked Full metal jacket... That's a good vietnam movie)

Soviet Union wasn't a losing side in WW2, so why did you mention them when talking about loosing sides not existing? Oh, and while Japan is hardly an empire anymore and most are quite pacifist, they haven't really been brought up to resent their involvement in the war as much as the Germans.

And maybe where you are there are few Vietnam War movies but in America, especially in the 70's and 80's, (just after it ended) they were being churned out by the dozens. Platoon (the best), FMJ, Apocalypse Now, Operation Dumbo Drop, Hamburger Hill... it's probably the second most represented war in American media just behind WW2. And I'm not even that sure there are more American WW2 movies than Vietnam movies. Though you are right about the fact that there are very few good Vietnam games. There are very few at all and most are pure ****. But movie-wise, I'd say you'd be far off.

HellDuke wrote:However in Vietnam the US went in and got raped.

I wouldnt put it quite that way, Vietnam was lost by the US more or less because of politics. Military wise the US outgunned and outfought North Vietnam, who lost well over 1,150,000 in deaths alone. Even the Tet Offensive, which many considered to be a huge loss for the US and South Vietnam, was actually a horrific defeat for the North, but became a political victory for them in the end.

I would say that unpopularity is the reason for so few vietnam war movies and games, it was afterall a war that went on for 20 years with high ammounts of people opposing it back in the states.

Quikli wrote:
Bad Company 2's getting a Vietnam Warfare expansion.

Call of Duty: Black Ops will be primarily set in Vietnam.

BC2's Vietnam will definatly be the better of the 2, especially in terms of historical accuracy.

Black ops, from what Ive seen have skipped on on accuracy for a more "tacticool" look (Ie: flip up sights on the XM177 and the M16 just to begin with)

EA is good with historical accuracy 9 out of 10 times, and the online gameplay is generally alot better then call of duties.

HellDuke wrote:
However in Vietnam the US went in and got raped.

Uneducation at its best, do some research.

I think part of the reason games haven't really touched on Vietnam has a lot to do with the fact that a game set in Vietnam, to be convincing, would have to exceed the graphical capabilities of WW2/modern warfare games. Up until about five years ago (when the 'new' consoles came out), I don't think graphics engines could handle dense, tropical environments well. Since Crysis, that has been changing.

This also has a lot to do with the fact that people associate Vietnam so much with certain movies, probably more-so than any other war. You think of Vietnam and immediately you put a soundtrack on it ("it ain't me, it ain't me...") and imagine it looking a lot like Platoon/Apocalypse Now. I think game developers threw Vietnam on the back burner for a lot of years because they knew they couldn't pull off "the look" until very recently.

Then there are development teams like Codemasters who wanted to make a Vietnam game and then decided that it was "too depressing" and might open old wounds. It really is a war that people of all backgrounds want to distance themselves from, mentally. It was just so wrong in so many ways.

Also, trends come and go and we just happen to be on downward slope of a major WW2 trend that has been going on since... well, Saving Private Ryan in 1998. People started to get really sick of WW2 games around 2005 yet they're still being made to some extent (I, personally, stop caring about what war a game is set in if the game is halfway decent).

I agree with the OP in that Vietnam will be the next big historical war for FPS games to cover. I'm really looking forward to some intense, realistic, FPS shooters set in Vietnam. My actual worry about PR: Vietnam is that they're not going to be able to pull of a jungle environment convincingly. The trailer video had a lot of low grass with a palm tree every ten feet or so--that's not how it should look! The US army wasn't just fighting the Viet Cong and the NVA in that war, they were also fighting the jungle. It needs to be so dense that you don't even see the enemy until it's too late

SGT.JOKER wrote:Uneducation at its best, do some research.

US Got raped in Vietnam, so did the Vietnamese, French, and anyone else who was there. In Short - it was a horrible mess.