As reported by Deadline, Francis Ford Coppola’s production company, American Zoetrope, has taken to Kickstarter to fund an Apocalypse Now video game. It’s seeking $900,000 to help produce an “immersive, psychedelic RPG” based on Coppola’s classic Vietnam War movie, and should it reach that goal, its creators are predicting the full game wouldn’t release until October 2020. According to the Kickstarter page, it will recreate the story of Captain Benjamin Willard, played by Martin Sheen in the film, putting players through his drunken Saigon hotel freakout and taking them on a horrific journey through Vietnam as they seek Colonel Kurtz.
The game’s developers and even Coppola himself are keen to note this won’t be a bombastic first-person shooter in the vein of Call Of Duty. They describe it as a survival-horror game where avoiding combat and using resources wisely are more important than mowing down whatever gets in your face and that the characters you meet will have a different impression of Willard depending on how you’ve handled the game’s events. “It’s about not being killed, as opposed to being a killer,” Coppola said in a video on the Kickstarter page. According to the creators, they’re seeking crowdfunding because major video game publishers were not keen on bankrolling the project as they envision it. Of the veteran developers who are working on the proposed game, the most exciting name is Josh Sawyer, who was previously the lead designer on games like Fallout: New Vegas and Pillars Of Eternity and is acting as an gameplay advisor.