Videogame Imagines North Korean Invasion of U.S.

In Kaos Studios’ coming first-person shooter Homefront, players for once don’t step into the boots of a soldier, special operative, or space marine fighting a war on hostile ground. Instead, they see through the eyes of an average American civilian who joins an armed resistance against Korean oppressors—on American soil.

The story, penned by screenwriter John Milius (“Apocalypse Now”), imagines that the Greater Korean Republic—united by the North—has invaded the United States in 2027 with the help of an EMP weapon that has taken down the nation’s power grid. Kaos says it performed research and consulted with a former CIA field officer to ensure this fiction was plausible. Homefront bills itself as speculative rather than science fiction, and so the plot, which involves running jet fuel from Colorado to San Francisco for a military operation in the post-peak oil era, is relatively modest in scope.

The premise, however, is certain to raise eyebrows. A modified version will be sold in Japan (Kim Jong-Il will not appear in the game’s opening sequence, and North Korea is referred to as the “country to the north”). According to David Votypka, the studio’s creative director and general manager, North Korea was simply more suitable to the fiction of a home invasion than either Russia or China.

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