Good morning, Vietnam! You’ve rocked it from the Delta to the DMZ, but today the big show is at CGN,courtesy of Gamescom. In my completely unbiased opinion, this right eclipses every announcement in this year’s edition.
It might have taken over twenty years, but the wizards at Team17 have finally fragged the Vietnam game curse that had lingered since Battlefield Vietnam. Built on the solid foundations ofits World War 2 predecessor, the new game will be called Hell Let Loose: Vietnam.
The cinematic teaser-trailer unveiled at the Future Games Show showcase doesn’t reveal many details, but it gave me just enough to say that we are, in fact, back. This is the spiritual successor to Battlefield Vietnam that I’d waited twenty years for.
Charlie Don’t Game: The Vietnam Curse
Your life changes when you watch Apocalypse Now and Full Metal Jacket as an impressionable youngling. It’s nothing like the heroic war stories you used to hear about your grandparents and great-grandparents in World War 2. Vietnam in pop culture is often depicted as wet, pointless, yet somehow still alluring, thanks in large part to the Woodstock-at-war soundtrack.
And yet, despite the period being one of the most recognizable in the post-war era, with a titanic footprint in pop culture, the videogame industry has turned a blind eye to Vietnam recently. Stick with me for a little history lesson.
The Vietnam War had a decent footprint in the late 1980s and early 1990s games, especially through adaptations like Flight of the Intruder, Rambo, and Thud Ridge.
Then came the early 2000s boom. There were a lot of strange releases, like Digital Reality’s Platoon strategy game, but that didn’t matter next to the excellence of Vietcong, Battlefield Vietnam, or Men of Valor.
The problem is that the commercial performance didn’t quite match AAA expectations. Call of Duty: Black Ops was the last big bucks release to embrace the jungle rot beforethe franchise went off the rails. And with that, the Vietnam War was relegated to the occasional DLC, like SOG Prairie Fire forARMA 3orFar Cry 5’s Hours of Darkness.
Then in 2017 came hope, followed shortly by heartbreak.
Lessons Learned From Rising Storm 2: Vietnam
In 2017, it looked like the tides would finally turn in favor of the silent masses who did crave a good, all-encompassing Vietnam War game. From the developers of Red Orchestra and the Pacific’s Rising Storm cameRising Storm 2: Vietnam.
The game came out a little raw, but the soul was there. You had trauma-inducing action sequences, punchy gun sounds, and an engaging gameplay loop, helped by beautifully crafted maps. Unlike its WW2 predecessors, Rising Storm 2 didn’t have crewable vehicles besides helicopters, but this was going to be fixed in future patches. You know how this one ends.
A mere two years after release, the two studios responsible for the game got into a messy divorce. AMG’snew project eventually died, taking the studio down with it. Tripwire left Rising Storm 2: Vietnam for dead, shifting focus instead to theextremely underwhelming Killing Floor 3.
Today, if you want to get the full Vietnam shooter experience, complete with boats, tanks, and helicopters, you need to boot up Battlefield Vietnam and pretend the graphics don’t bother you.
From the trailer revealed during the Future Games Show, it looks like Team17 understood the assignment. We have riverine patrols laying down fire from machine guns, North Vietnamese Army ambushes, Green Berets sneaking through the jungle, and getting busted in the process. It’s epic, it’s beautiful, and most importantly, it’s the Vietnam game I’ve been wishing for.
Hell Let Loose: Vietnam is set to come out in 2026 for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S.
