Unlike the quite cut-and-dry good vs evil of World War 2, the Vietnam War is often seen as an immoral war, especially by comparison. With Hell Let Loose: Vietnam, the sensitives surrounding the conflict have been core to the development of the upcoming FPS game as the team balances realism, historical accuracy, and humanity.
‘ Hell Let Loose has always been about portraying the events of conflicts in a grounded and historically sympathetic manner,” game director Rushy Rustchynsky told us in a recent interview. “Due to the nature of the Vietnam War, we had to be even more cautious and sensitive to the subject matter.”
For designing the realism-slanted take on a multiplayer conflict during the Vietnam War, a number of concessions have been obviously made. “We recognise we’re a video game, and we do take occasional liberties regarding realism to emphasise specific elements for the sake of gameplay balance, readability and more,” the game director said.
One of these major concessions is the move away from Guerilla Warfare, one of the more noticeable elements of the Vietnam Conflict. There are elements of guerilla tactics, of course—the North Vietnamese Army faction can build tunnels to rapidly move around the map and flank the US forces, but traps such as punji pits and other tricks are not present in the game.
“We drew the line very early on in development to focus solely on the military conflict, and not include guerrilla warfare that includes the likes of ambushes and traps as a strategy. Our military combat remains grounded in the events of the war, and actively steers away from being overly cinematic,” Rustchynsky.
Nevertheless, as in the real conflict, there is a feel of imbalance between the two military forces, although the gameplay itself has been tuned to give both sides a fighting chance. The US forces are more technologically capable than the NVA, but they can’t build tunnels, and the Americans’ superior air capabilities can be tackled by the use of the NVA’s impressive anti-air capabilities. Furthermore, the NVA boats can transport and carry supplies along water networks.
Rustchynsky explained that one of the biggest challenges of creating a multiplayer game based on a historic conflict is balancing fun, realism, and education. “This is a constant push-and-pull battle with the game feel and the balancing to ensure we’ve made a fair and competitive game,” the game director said.
“On the game feel side of things, you want everything from the running speeds, vaulting actions, weapon reload times and more to feel responsive and satisfying. Using real-world values for these examples would lead to a very slow-paced and frustrating experience, so we’re always trying to find the sweet spot that works best for the game experience we want to deliver.
“Then on the balancing side of things, we’re having to tweak values to ensure that both sides are evenly matched, so that whatever force you play for, you have an equal chance of winning when facing an equally matched opponent. So we’ll often make small and subtle changes behind the scenes to ensure that gameplay balance is favoured over realism.”
Of course, one of the most glaring omissions with Hell Let Loose: Vietnam does come on the American side. During the Vietnam War, the United States made use of a number of chemical and horrific weapons against the Vietnamese, including White Phosphorus. Some weapons, such as Napalm, will be present, but some of the US’ more controversial weapons will be absent.
“It has been a tricky balance to strike, as we want to remain accurate to the weapons used by military forces during the conflict, but there has to be a line to the things we want to depict in Hell Let Loose: Vietnam,” Rustchynsky said. “Napalm is an incendiary weapon that will feature as a space-denying offensive commander order, but we decided that chemical warfare was a step too far, so the likes of Agent Orange will not be present.”
Alongside the aim to simply be a fun multiplayer video game, Hell Let Loose: Vietnam devs hope that the game will be an educational experience. For many who are interested in the shooter, they likely already know a lot of information about the conflict with some ready and primed to point out inaccuracies. However, for those who aren’t well-versed in the conflict and the equipment used within, the team has provided learning materials so new fans can dive deep.
“One of the things we’ve done with Hell Let Loose: Vietnam that we’re proud of is to add in voice-overs from The Royal Armouries that detail many of the in-game weapons, allowing players to learn about them,” we were told. “The gameplay itself won’t directly teach you about the historical nature of the conflict, but I’m optimistic that players will be keen to seek out more about the Vietnam War after playing the game.”
Hell Let Loose: Vietnam launches on August 13, 2026 on PC, PlayStation, and Xbox. The multiplayer game features epic 50 v 50 battles across wide environments with full cross-play functionality.
