Campaign
Danny Mercer
A rifleman’s year with the 1st Cavalry Division, September 1965 to August 1966.
- September 1965 to August 1966
- Central Highlands and Bình Định
- 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry, 1st Cavalry Division
- In development
Danny Mercer, a rifleman from Ohio, arrives in Vietnam in September 1965 with the 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry. The campaign follows his year there, one mission at a time.
It starts quietly, cutting a base out of the scrub at An Khê and walking the first patrols. Two months later the battalion flies into a clearing in the Ia Drang valley called LZ X-Ray. After that come the paddies and hamlets of the Bồng Sơn plain, a downed plane to reach before the enemy does, and a firebase at night with the wire cut.
Between missions Danny writes home, and an older Danny, looking back, says what he could not say then.
The places, the operations and the units are real. Danny and the men in his squad are fictional, and none of them stands in for a real soldier.
The other side, after release
A second campaign will follow a North Vietnamese soldier, from the war against the French to 1975. It is planned for after the game comes out.
How we tell it
Millions of people lived through this war, and many did not survive it. We treat it as that. Civilians in the game are people going about their lives, not targets. The wounded and men who surrender are not shot. There is no score for kills: a mission is judged on what you were sent to do and on how many of your own men come home.
The men you lose stay lost. Their names go on a memorial wall at the end of each mission.
Dedicated to all who lost their lives in the wars fought in Vietnam.
May their stories never be forgotten.