February 07, 2016
Source/Homefront on YouTube
A still from a preview for the video game "Homefront: The Revolution."
An upcoming video game set in Philadelphia in the year 2029 shows a dystopic, Orwellian world, where the U.S. is under military occupation, the suburbs are a burned-out war zone, and citizens live under constant terror and surveillance.
But, hey, at Philly finally gets to win the Super Bowl. (Or the "Football League," as it's called, since leading an armed resistance against an imperialist power is less risky than using a trademarked name in a video game.)
As Philly Mag noticed, demo footage from the game "Homefront: The Revolution" shows a fake newspaper called "The Philadelphia Post" proclaiming a "HISTORIC WIN" for our hometown heroes, the "Philadelphia Hogs."
The game, which is being developed by British company Dambuster Studios, concerns a group of guerrilla fighters who are leading "the second American Revolution" against Asian invaders. (Awkwardly, much of the gameplay takes place in a section of the city known as the "Yellow Zone" — there's a Green Zone and a Red Zone too, but still.)
"Philadelphia — once the birthplace of Independence — has become a ghetto, where surveillance drones and armoured patrols keep the population at heel, crushing any dissent with savage force," says the game's website.
This is one of the issues with having a British company make a video game about an American revolution: they don't know the difference between the Steelers' uniforms and the Eagles', they think that Philadelphia would ever have a sports team called "The Hogs," and they don't know how we spell "armored."
Read the full story here.
