Call of Duty's newest installment may deal with a future war against the threat of private military corporations, but developer Sledgehammer Games were initially working on something radically different for the franchise. New concept art from the earliest stages of a CoD game set in Vietnam have surfaced online, and from the look of it, it seems like we might've missed on something very interesting.
Artist Eddie Del Rio worked on the concept pieces for Sledgehammer's third-person Vietnam-based Call of Duty back in 2009, which also evidently covered the war's activity in countries like Laos and Cambodia. Looking somewhat similar to the last WWII installment World at War, the game looked to take on an almost horror-esque approach to war (not, perhaps, unlike Spec Ops: The Line's impression of Apocolypse Now, itself a recreation of Heart of Darkness), with scenes of POWs waiting to be decapitated by the Vietcong, ground troops struggling to get out of the path of a plane explosion and more grim scenes.
Glen Schofield, Sledgehammer's co-founder who originally helped make Dead Space, said they were planning on having some moments similar to EA's horror series in the game, though it's unclear how that would have played out. The team showed the concept to Activision after about eight months of work, at which point they were asked if they wanted to help out on the then-upcoming Modern Warfare 3.
Could we ever see this Vietnam Call of Duty resurrected? It's unlikely, but perhaps its design breaches may live on in something else.
[Via IGN]
