God of War dev's PSP project exposed

Monday 12 March 2007
David Jaffe, the action-brain behind God of War, has spilt some enticing info-beans about the ill-fated PSP project he was working on last year, though as challenging and interesting as it sounds, it's now consigned to development purgatory.

"Heartland was the story of China invading America," David Jaffe explains in an interview with Entertainment Weekly, "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," Jaffe continues, "[there were] sequences where you'd go into homes and your commanding officer would tell you to shoot innocent Chinese-Americans".

Sometime ago on his personal blog, Jaffe spoke of wanting "to make gamers cry" with his project, but he also had deeper hopes for Heartland - "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".

But it wasn't to be, and with Jaffe unwilling to desert his family for "90% of the time" in order to commit to developing the game, the project was dropped. Though Jaffe says that talking about Heartland makes him quite sad that it'll never see the light of day. Perhaps he'll rethink once God of War III has been polished off...