Hearts of Iron 4, a kind of Midnight Suns game where you make Mohammad Reza Shah and Mao Zedong best friends instead of Blade and Spider-Man, has announced its next DLC. It’s heading down to South America in Hearts of Iron 4: Trial of Allegiance, a new country pack that aims to round out the experience of playing Brazil, Argentina, and Chile.
Although Hearts of Iron mostly—for understandable reasons—focuses on the Pacific and European theatres of WW2, there was plenty going on down in South America during the most destructive war in human history. The DLC will release on March 7, and Paradox’s first update about it is mostly about its Brazilian aspect: focusing on the first presidency of Getúlio Vargas and his attempts to keep a grip on power, which he did by imagineering a bogus communist uprising called the Cohen Plan and using it as a pretext to clamp down on other people’s political liberties.
Early-to-mid 20th century governments loved inventing fake communist uprisings. It was like their favourite thing to do. But that doesn’t mean scaring reds out from under the Brazilian bed is all you’re going to get up to. Brazil is getting a whole new national focus tree, which will let you pursue alternative histories across the years of WW2 if that whole Vargas thing isn’t to your taste.
Argentina and Chile are getting the same treatment, but Paradox isn’t going into much detail just yet about what their respective trees will look like. It does give a smidgen of detail, though. Argentina is “Rife with corruption, revolts, and worker unrest,” and will present “a difficult political challenge” to any player who fancies themselves up to the task of righting its ship.
Chile, meanwhile, “is a vigorous republic with a radical tradition that must face domestic fascist parties, the embers of ethnic unrest and the imposing influence of the United States.” Paradox makes it sound a little sunnier than the other two, though, inviting you to “chart a course of equality and renewal, rallying under the banner of continental unity.” Sounds good. I’ll take that one, please.
As with other HOI 4 country packs, this one will come with various little additions alongside its big three offerings of Brazil, Argentina, and Chile. Paraguay and Uruguay will get “minor content as well as several new releasable nations,” and there’ll be new art, music, and voiceovers to fit the South American theme. A las barricadas, camaradas.
