Apocalypse Now - A new type of rpg?

@PCGamer they take a look at Apocalypse Now and ask writer Rob Auten about the teams plans to translate a cinematic classic.

A videogame adaptation of Francis Ford Coppola's dark take on the Vietnam War, Apocalypse Now, is on the way-at least by around 2020 if the development team meets their Kickstarter funding goal.

It's an announcement that will undoubtedly inspire a mixed and passionate reaction, and rightfully so. How can a videogame billed as a psychedelic first-person horror RPG adapt a dark, meditative film on the Vietnam War without coming off as hamfisted? And what can it say that already hasn't been said by Heart of Darkness, or another game adaptation of the same source material, Spec Ops: The Line?

When I talked to lead writer on the project, Rob Auten, he assured me that he and the rest of the team are aware of how easily such an adaptation could go wrong. Without an inordinate attention to detail, the characters, from Willard to Kurtz, might behave like pizza parlor animatronic imitations of their talented Hollywood counterparts. And licensed games have a stigma as existing for the purpose of capitalizing on a namesake.

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For Auten, such an advancement comes in the form of AI and fluid, evolving narratives that respond to player behaviors invisibly.

"Character and the evolution and evocation of character in computer-driven systems is something that's really interesting to me," says Auten, "We're less concerned about really tense machine gun set pieces and really more about characters that feel like they have both the knowledge base and a presence that's maybe a little bit more eerie than some of the things we've seen before."

Advanced narrative AI sounds pie-in-the-sky, but juggling the fragile hearts of so many ardent film fans versed in both cinema and videogames means Auten and the team need to execute. They're actively looking forward to how critical and involved their community will be, and Kickstarter was a natural fit for assembling such a jury.