Is There Room For Medal Of Honor?

26 Feb 2010 at 00:00:00 by Andy Alderson

When IncGamers caught up with EALA's Sean Decker to talk about the upcoming Medal of Honor reboot, we asked him about the similarities with Battlefield: Bad Company 2 and he was quick to dismiss our concerns. There's “enough separation” between the franchises, he assured us, emphasising that, like human beings and the fish, they can coexist peacefully. “Having worked on both franchises and seen and worked with both teams,” said Decker, “they have different ideas of first-person shooters, especially in the tone and how you play, and also the pacing of the game.” After all, both games factor in to the publisher's plan to take back the shooter crown from Activision, although simply making a multiplayer game that can't be hacked would arguably do the trick. But are they as different as EA makes out? Or is the publisher taking a big risk reanimating a dead franchise that it doesn't need? 

We were certainly a little surprised when we first heard the rumblings that the Medal of Honor series was being revived. This is a series that peaked pretty damn early and then slipped quickly into tedium with the likes of Rising Sun proving that the formula, and technology, was more than a little tired. And, of course, the current gen installment of the series, while sporting some decent ideas, was hamstrung by technical issues. It seemed like the death knell of the series had sounded, especially when you compared EA's shooter to its main competition.

When the Battlefield series finally found a comfortable home on console with Bad Company (its prior console iteration never felt like a proper Battlefield game) we all forgot about Medal of Honor. Although DICE hadn't got the formula exactly right, Bad Company was EA's great white hope offering a compelling brand of shooter gameplay that PC gamers had known about, and loved, for ages. And with Battlefield: Bad Company 2 just around the corner, why did EA feel it needed another competitor for Call of Duty? Especially when, this time around, DICE knows exactly what it wants its shooter to be.
   
Make no mistakes about it, DICE has Infinity Ward's cash cow in its sights. Bad Company 2's single player game is no longer about the big, open battlefields and experimenting with vehicles. In BC2, the focus has been narrowed and you can feel DICE's hand on your back guiding you from set piece to set piece and, all credit to the developer, it works well. It's an attempt to recreate those amazing Battlefield Moments that dominate the multiplayer game in the single player campaign. As such, it's  set up its stall in the heart of Call of Duty territory. However, isn't this also Medal of Honor territory? The big set-piece driven, mostly linear single player shooter used to be Medal of Honor's forte in the days before Call of Duty. Hell, some of Allied Assault's development team even went on to form Infinity Ward. Before the series got stale, MoH had the big, bombastic shooter genre nailed. In 2010, however, it seems unlikely anyone will do it better than IW and DICE.

In terms of multiplayer gaming, it's the same story. MoH was never at the forefront of MP shooters in the same way as the CoD and Battlefield series and so when it was announced that DICE is handling the MP in MoH, the news was greeted with a mixture of excitement and confusion. DICE obviously has some game when it comes to online shooters but how different can it be from Bad Company 2, especially when MoH will use the Frostbite engine in MP?

On the surface it seems that, with Battlefield now really competing in terms of single player and having refined its multiplayer model to near perfection, there's no space for Medal of Honor as we know it. And, I guess that's the point. This new game needs to be a real reboot if Medal of Honor is to force its way back into the shooter market. What it used to do is now being done, and done better, by Battlefield and Call of Duty. Medal of Honor needs to carve a new niche now and, from what we've learned about the game so far, it seems as if EALA is intent on doing that.   

When we spoke to Decker he told us that the new Medal of Honor is about authenticity. Although set in Afghanistan, the game will not be a “propaganda piece” and instead will tell the story of the guys on the ground. When Decker name dropped Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker he wasn't trying to attach his game to a film tipped for Ocsar glory, he was trying to express (or at least I  hope he was trying express) that Medal of Honor will be about gritty realism. There's a space for that. With CoD concentrating on World War III and grand conspiracies, and Bad Company 2's MacGuffins and tongue-in-cheek humour, there is a gap in the market for an authentic, character-driven military drama. And it seems like EALA has some first class advisors on board for Medal of Honor. The input of the Tier One Operators is EALA's ace in the hole and its unprecedented access to the real-life military unit gives them the chance to make something truly unique. And with Greg Goodrich's assurance that the Tier One guys have “100% editorial” control, we can hopefully expect a level of authenticity that will allow Medal of Honor to find a new place in the shooter market. So is there room for Medal of Honor? For the game in its previous guise, no. But there's always room for something new.  

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