It’s a pretty great time for lovers of historical fiction in their videogames. Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 is a banger. I understand those PlayStation folks are enjoying Ghost of Yotei (assuredly PC-bound at some point). Games like Manor Lords, or Hunt: Showdown, or good ol’ Crusader Kings also let us live out our dreams of distant and alternate pasts.
Problem is, of course, the frogs. Are devs really telling me that, in an age of Unreal Engine 5, lumen and nanite-ified whatevers, game creators can’t do better than a frog that’s clearly seen an iPhone before?
Atrocious stuff, but fear not, because the devs making Hell Let Loose: Vietnam—follow up to 2021’s World War 2 shooter that shifts the action to, well, Vietnam—know just how immersion-breaking an anachronistic frog can be. In a chat with PC Gamer magazine, creative director Matt White said the team are taking historical authenticity incredibly seriously.
“All of it is a hundred-percent historically authentic,” said White, pointing out “All the uniforms or the weaponry, the environment,” even “the clothes you see on the floors” as being appropriate for the time and place of the game’s setting. And you bet that even applies to “the sound of the bugs” and “the sound of the frogs.” These amphibians don’t even know what Netflix is and the only thought in their heads is whether they’re for Carter or Ford.
Lest my fun-poking be mistaken for mockery, let me be clear: I think this rules, and I am very glad that the team is prioritising the minutiae of history in this way. So much so, in fact, that the team also headed out to the Royal Armouries to record their gun noises and have an artist whose area of expertise is foliage, which I think we just used to call a landscaper.
It sounds like the team is using the term “historically authentic” instead of ‘historically accurate’ deliberately. “With World War 2, you know exactly where the battles took place,” said White, but the Vietnam War is inherently harder to locate on a battle-by-battle basis. “So instead for us it’s more about making sure the maps are authentic to the Vietnam environment, but picking the best location within the vicinity for gameplay purposes.”
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