14 DAY TRIAL // Reading the story I'm about to paste below this paragraph left me without words. I had to take a 5 minute break and think about how great of a game David Jaffe and team could have made, if developing it hadn't encountered so many obstacles. What some of you may remember as "Project HL," is Heartland, an emotionally charged game that should have made it to the PSP, but didn't. Jaffe finally tells what the game was supposed to be about and why they gave up on the project:
"Heartland was the story of China invading America. It was a first-person-shooter where you played a soldier debating whether to stay and fight for America or go AWOL to meet up with your family. We were trying to put in a lot of gameplay that would evoke emotion. You had sequences where you'd go into homes and your commanding officer would tell you to shoot innocent Chinese-Americans. It was very dark and was meant to cause players to consider what it's like to live in America and be an American today."
OK, by this point I was already imagining the game and how it would affect teenagers today. See, showing them the horrors of war may not have such a negative impact after all. The game says "shoot the innocent Chinese/Americans in their homes" but as Jaffe says, it's purpose was emotional, letting you know that it's wrong.
Jaffe continues: "Hearing myself talk about it now makes me a bit sad [that we didn't finish it]. But I wasn't incentivized to make it, in a way that I could go to my family and say, 'You're not going to see me for 90% of the time, but there's a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.' "Not finishing Heartland, game designer David Jaffe feels that something that could have had a great and positive impact is now lost forever. We sincerely hope that the man who left his mark on God of War, will not forget this idea for a game.