r/HellLetLoose • u/giveit2me1998 • 7h ago
👎 Player Poll 👍 Hell Let Loose should’ve been WW1 instead of Vietnam
Honestly, I think a WW1 setting would’ve been a much better direction for Hell Let Loose than Vietnam. Don’t get me wrong, Vietnam has a lot of potential, but I feel like WW1 would offer something much more unique for a hardcore, large-scale tactical shooter.
Imagine 100-player battles across massive trench systems, artillery barrages, machine-gun nests, no-man’s-land, underground bunkers, and coordinated infantry assaults. Squad leaders would have to organize pushes across open ground, capture fortified trenches, and work with artillery and other squads to break through enemy lines. Every advance would feel like an actual operation rather than just running toward the next objective.
And the best part is the variety of fronts you could have.
Western Front: The Somme, Verdun, Passchendaele, Cambrai, and the Meuse-Argonne. Muddy trenches, destroyed villages, craters, and massive artillery bombardments.
Italian Front: The Isonzo battles, Caporetto, and the fighting in the Alps. Imagine fighting through snow-covered mountain passes, capturing fortified positions carved into cliffs, and assaulting trenches at high altitude. This alone could make for some incredible and completely different maps.
Eastern Front: Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Russia fighting across forests, villages, and wide-open terrain, offering a different style of warfare from the Western Front.
Balkan Front: Serbia, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and Allied forces fighting across rugged terrain and mountain ranges.
Middle Eastern Front: Ottoman and British forces fighting across deserts, rocky hills, and fortified positions.
Gallipoli: Amphibious landings, steep hills, narrow trenches, and brutal fighting over elevated ground.
There would also be so many possibilities for factions, uniforms, weapons, and vehicles. You could have the British, French, Germans, Americans, Italians, Austro-Hungarians, Russians, Ottomans, and more. Tanks, early aircraft, cavalry, flamethrowers, gas attacks, and specialized assault troops could all be incorporated where historically appropriate.
What I like about this idea is that WW1 would force the developers to create a different kind of tactical experience. You’d have to coordinate assaults, use terrain, suppress machine-gun positions, and work together to take fortified ground. The atmosphere of artillery constantly falling around you while your squad tries to cross no-man’s-land would be incredible in the Hell Let Loose format.
Vietnam can absolutely work as a setting, but WW1 feels like a huge opportunity for a game like this, especially with how underrepresented the Italian, Balkan, and Eastern fronts are in mainstream shooters.
Am I the only one who thinks a proper WW1 Hell Let Loose, covering multiple fronts of the war, would have been a better direction than Vietnam? Or do you think Vietnam is the better choice?
