In the past few years, Hearts of Iron IV has distinguished itself as having one of the most vibrant and creative modding communities out there. We've written about this scene for a bit now, from The End of a New Beginning's ambitious attempts to build a substitute Victoria III, to deep dives into fan-favorites like Kaiserreich. But there is a new contender on the horizon, with the polish to stand with the rest of the greats: The New Order: Last Days of Europe.
The New Order is a mod that asks that most dark of alternate history counterfactuals: what if the Axis won the Second World War? While that scenario is pretty well-trod ground, the mod approaches the material in a way that interestingly critiques some of sci-fi's most stubborn tropes. Plus, after years in development, it comes packed with a lot of content - thousands of original events, focus trees, and what surely amounts to a novel's worth of text.
Two things make The New Order immediately stand out from the crowd. The first is its gorgeous visual aesthetic. Boot it up and the first thing you'll see is the title screen distorted to look like the slightly bulbous fisheye of a cathode ray television. The UI uses a strikingly bold neon blue, while tech and equipment images are drawn in an old-school vector graphics style. The gentle ocean hues and contrasting national colors of HoI4 have been replaced with a pallet of midnight blues and moody greens that create an atmosphere of perpetual night. The effect is an entrancing world of gloomy cassette futurism.
RELATED LINKS:
Review: Hearts of Iron IV: Death or Dishonor
Review: Hearts of Iron IV: Together for Victory
Hearts of Iron IV Fights On - An Interview with Dan Lind