Ever wonder about the video games that almost were? Before Sledgehammer Games brought us Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 in 2011, they were cooking up something truly different. Imagine a Call of Duty game plunged into the heart of the Vietnam War. But this wasn’t your typical war shooter; it was designed with a heavy dose of horror.
This lost project, known as ‘Fog of War,’ aimed to blend intense combat with genuine scares. Glen Schofield, a co-founder at Sledgehammer and the creative mind behind the chilling ‘Dead Space,’ shared details with PC Gamer. He talked about creating a game that felt both terrifying and action-packed, unlike anything seen before in the series. Schofield, having previously worked at EA Redwood Shores (Visceral Games) and crafted ‘Dead Space,’ knew exactly how to make players jump out of their seats. His vision for ‘Fog of War’ was to push boundaries, combining full-on horror with relentless action.
Picture a scene he described: you’re in a pitch-black tunnel, barely able to see, with only a tiny flicker of light at the far end guiding your way as you fire blindly. Another planned moment sounds even more dramatic. Players would be fighting through enemy lines in a jungle river when a burning B-52 bomber would begin its fiery descent right towards them. The massive aircraft would crash deep into the foliage, an explosion waiting to happen. The camera would then pan to a waterfall, showing the player leaping into the water below. As the view shifts back up, the plane would be gone, having flown right over them, its scattered wreckage raining down into the river.
Sadly, this ambitious vision never saw the light of day. The team at Sledgehammer was redirected. They were needed to finish ‘Modern Warfare 3.’ Because of this, ‘Fog of War’ was shelved. It has remained a fascinating ‘what if’ in gaming history, a terrifying Vietnam War experience that never got its chance to scare us.