By Travis Johnson
Hmm.
Gaming as an art form is increasing in prominence, but still there’s a patina of juvenilism clinging to the medium which is proving difficult to shake (give it a generation). Perhaps that’s why this news is giving us pause: there’s currently a Kickstarter campaign for an Apocalypse Now computer game, apparently with the full blessing and backing of director, Francis Ford Coppola.
This is not the first of Coppola’s projects to be reconfigured so – the Godfather game even had James Caan and Robert Duvall on voice duties – but it’s an odd choice. We’ve had shooters set in the Vietnam War in the past and they, like pretty much every other ‘Nam-era project since 1979, have drawn at least some influence from Coppola’s psychedelic war epic, but nobody has attempted a direct adaptation until now. Perhaps because, given the film’s weighty philosophical and moral concerns, it seems a little tasteless?
Anyhoo, the marketing screed describes the nascent project as a stealth game, wherein the player takes on the role of Willard as he journeys upriver the terminate the command of Colonel Kurtz with extreme prejudice. It’s “…a psychological horror game where the narrative gameplay and your interactions with the other characters drives the story.” That sounds promising – an Apocalypse Now where you mow down hordes of VC irregulars or Montagnard tribesmen would be gauche. However, then you get to the reward levels, where we’re promised goodies like “novels set in the world of Apocalypse Now” and “Colonel Kilgore’s death cards” and it suddenly seems like a bad idea all over. Time will tell.
Shoot over to Kickstarter for a look.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/fringerider/apocalypse-now-the-game
