There’s a Rambo video-game in the works and every month or two, a little bit of information crops up. Like most others, I found myself blowing news of the game off entirely (mostly because the last Rambo game I ever heard of didn’t turn out too well…) but having recently rewatched the first (and best) Rambo film, First Blood, I found my curiosity had been piqued. Maybe this time could be different. Maybe…

I turned to the press releases. The latest one started well with what might be the best line from the entire tetralogy of films.

I could have killed ‘em all, I could kill you. In town you’re the law, out here it’s me. Don’t push it. Don’t push it or I’ll give you a war you won’t believe…

–John Rambo

And the screens of the worlds taken straight out of the original three movies looked pretty great. Then came the kicker. That one phrase I didn’t want to hear. First-person shooter. “Rambo: The Video Game will be a fixed-perspective, first-person shooter & action game allowing players to fill the combat boots of John Rambo on a violent journey through iconic action sequences from the original three legendary Rambo movies.” And the video chosen to accompany this press release? Well…just watch.

Okay, let’s take this one step at a time. We’ll ignore the fairly unforgivable marketing decision to not include any gameplay or even pre-rendered cutscenes and ignore the fact that this doesn’t tell us a single thing about the game that people with associative abilities haven’t already figured out.

That is not Rambo. Well, it is. But not really.

How many people out there have actually ever seen First Blood, because I suspect it’s far less than the number of people who know about the Rambo character. If you haven’t yet, make a point to watch it because aside from being the second best Vietnam film of all time (despite only having about 20 seconds of footage set in Vietnam) First Blood will break down every preconception you ever had about Rambo as a character. The sequels soon became satired and parodied in everything from Hot Shots to The Simpsons but all that was kind of unnecessary because they were pretty much already parodies of themselves. First Blood, however, still stands up as both a masterful psychological thriller as well as an utterly kick-ass action film. Don’t believe me yet? Okay, here’s a slight spoiler that won’t make any sense to you until you’ve seen First Blood: There is literally only one death in the whole movie and even that was an accident.

That is the game I want to play. I want to play as John Rambo from First Blood: a good man, a loyal soldier, misunderstood by his fellow civilians. Mentally scarred and fractured after an exhausting war and an even more tiring life, living with PTSD. Deadly, but not murderous. Violent, but not evil.

I ragged on Rambo: The Arcade Game earlier but I can’t bring myself to hate Sega for developing it. Even a few years ago, in 2009, I don’t think they could make a true Rambo, or should I say a true First Blood game. And besides, the machismo stereotype that Rambo became is too easy a ‘sell’ for video-games: Give players a big gun, plenty of targets and the job’s a good’un! But now however…I think right now is the time that First Blood could be truly realized in an interactive form.

Earlier this year, we had Spec Ops: The Line, which may have lacked in certain gameplay elements (whether that was the point or not is a discussion for another day), but made up for such ‘shortcomings’ with a tremendous story that carefully portrayed the destruction of a sane mind, the practically desensitizing  mindset of a soldier pushed too far. Although it’s plot was liberally lifted from Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now! (the best Vietnam film ever made, by the way), First Blood certainly courts the same themes.

Telltale Games have been releasing a Walking Dead episodic game throughout the year that shows how effectively emotional story-telling can trump banal life-less action, every single time. Although I don’t think an episodic adventure game would work for a Rambo game I can’t say I wouldn’t be curious to see what Telltale would do with it.

Or how about Naughty Dog’s upcoming post-apocalyptic thriller/horror/action game The Last of Us? It’s a bit early to draw any absolute opinions as we won’t be playing The Last of Us any time soon but honestly, I could see the systems and mechanics they’ve shown off so far working wondrously in a First Blood game. Tone down the violence slightly, bring in a couple of Uncharted style set-pieces such as Rambo hanging from a cliff or riding a motorcycle, consider a way to incorporate traps (which may even be in TLoU, who knows?) and borrow the self-medicating gameplay vignettes from Metal Gear Solid 3. Hell, I’d play that just to see what works and what doesn’t and I still have a feeling it would be great.

Remember when Batman: Arkham Asylum came out and everyone was in awe of a licensed game not only being okay, but being great? None of the ideas above are likely to happen any time soon, but it illustrates the potential that licensed properties have, going forward, and although I couldn’t care less about the Rambo sequels, I would really hate to see First Blood tarnished.

Of course, all this concern could be for naught. Teyon, the developers behind Rambo: The Video Game, could be onto something great. If only there were some sort of trailer we could see to gauge how the game might turn out.

Oh, wait…