We don’t normally cover Kickstarters as there are so many of them but this one appears to be pretty special. Plans are afoot for a game based on the classic movie Apocalypse Now, and Francis Ford Coppola is on board. It will be developed by a new team who have previously worked on “Fallout: New Vegas, Wasteland 2, Far Cry, and many other RPGs.”
The game is described as a “first-person RPG with survival and psychological horror elements” and you will play as Captain Willard on the hunt for Colonel Kurtz. Rather than running about and shooting everything – the team say this will not be Call of Duty: Vietnam – stealth, resource management, and dialogue will be your main weapons.
Interestingly, the game won’t necessarily follow the plot of the film, you can make your own choices and take the story in a new direction, “It might be our mission, but it’s sure as hell your boat.”
The initial Kickstarter wants to raise $900,000 , but they will also be trying to raise $5 million to finish the game, with a release date of October 2020. That does seem a lot, the days of massively funded Kickstarters are long gone.
You can find more about the project, including a prototype video of the game, on the Kickstarter page.
Update 2: Counter to what Ars Technica reported Montgomery Markland has offered some clarification in the comments below. The game has not been in pre-production for ten years, but rather for 18 months. Prior to that, it was just being discussed as a potential project with some ideas and concepts for how it might work.
Additionally, he says that cast members or their estates have been “very communicative and cooperative”, and that “We have preliminary agreements for cooperation in place with a lot of the original cast and, absent impossible barriers, will secure all of the available original cast.” There will, however, be characters beyond those in the original movie.
Update: Ars Technica has more information. The game has been in pre-production for ten (!) years, and will not feature the original cast. That’s a deal breaker for me, I can’t see how you can recast Brando’s Kurtz. Console versions will be stretch goals, and Resident Evil 7 is “closely comparable” to their planned game.
Source: Kickstarter
Severn2j
Wait. Its a deal breaker, because they aren’t casting Brando in the game? You do know he’s been dead for 12 years, right?
Tuffcub
American Zoetrope are producing. The same company that made the film. They have access to the original sound recordings. They could use those, that’s what I meant.
Stefan L
They can do wonderful things with cloning these days. Just yesterday scientists announced that they spliced together human and pig DNA…
Tuffcub
Leave Donald out of this
Tony Cawley
Why on earth does this need a kick starter? With Francis Ford Coppola on board surely they have funding available?
The Lone Steven
Yeaaaah, it’s gonna suck. Why? It’s been in pre-production for a decade. It’s based on a film. One of those things alone tends to be a bad indicator(Granted, Doom punched that mold).
MontgomeryMarkland
Hello this is Montgomery Markland the game director of this project.
The Ars Technica information is completely inaccurate and they agreed to issue a correction.
The game has -not- been in pre-production for ten years. The game has been in pre-production for 18 months. We spent approximately 7 years before that just working on ideas, concepts and discussing potential methods of finance. No game development. Just talking. Deciding when and where and how. The prototype and everything you can see was mostly made in 2016.
The majority of the major cast members and/or estates of the original cast have been very communicative and cooperative.
We have preliminary agreements for cooperation in place with a lot of the original cast and, absent impossible barriers, will secure all of the available original cast.
What Larry Liberty meant when he spoke was that we will have more characters than the original movie and so there will be a lot more actors needed than just the original cast.
We’d appreciate a correction here too, thank you.
MontgomeryMarkland
Thanks for the update Tuffcub!