MoH: The SP story

Posted: Sun Jan 31, 2010 10:09 pm Post subject: MoH: The SP story

MoH: The SP story
Written by Noches
Sunday, 31 January 2010

Our colleague Noches, who keeps watch on German media alerts us of an article from the mainstream magazine pcgames.de concerning Medal Of Honor. Noches has summarized and translated the article into English for all of you non-Deutschophiles out there:

Please visit www.pcgames.de and buy their magazines in case you are interested. Sorry for my English.

The game will be played from 2 different "perspectives" telling stories of US soldiers in Afghanistan:

1. Sledgehammer

You will be fighting in a platoon element and sometimes you will be joined by larger complements of forces for big offensive missions.

Those missions include: Attacks on enemy bases with air support, search operations and more. You can also fly in a chopper and blast away at the enemies with a cannon from the air.

2. The Tier-1 missions.

Stealth here is key.

You will be part of a small, special unit which is trained to accomplish critical missions. For example, you might be sent to conduct sabotage assassinate highranking enemy leaders.

*Warning: spoilers ahead*

In one such mission, a Tier 1 team drives through an uncontrolled part of a city. They're in disguise and try to melt into the background (a little tricky given that they're in three cars and have only their beards and scarfs to hide the fact that they're American soldiers - jy).

An enemy patrol stops the cars and asked the driver for their destination. The team's cover gets blown and two rpgs destroy the cars in front of the player's character.

From this point on, the three Tier-1 members in the player's car have to fight through the city to a checkpoint to get rescued. During the mission there's a lot of tactical freedom allotted to the player. One could turn off the car's headlights so that the enemy doesn't spot them, for example.

There apparently is some measure of destructibility in the game. In some situations the player can penetrate light cover and kill the enemy hiding behind it. You can shoot at a wooden boardwalk supporting a bunch of bad guys...the boardwalks will disintegrate and the baddies fall to their death...or at least twist their ankles.

Although the game seems to have more tactical intricacies most of the action is still based in scripted events.

The magazine's authors met the actual Tier-1 advisers in the interview. They were masked and weren't allowed to be photographed or filmed because they still do concealed operations around the world.

Although the Tier-1 advisers told some real stories about missions in Afghanistan the game won't include missions which are completely based on true stories.

Concerning game graphics, Medal Of Honor will be right up there with the best. Apparently the textures and objects reach Crysis levels - pardon the pun.

Graphics seem to better than what is seen in Modern Warfare 2.

It seems the developer's plan to finish the single player content by Christmas 2009 to spend the rest of the time for fixing bugs and modifying the scripts until everything works perfectly.

Here's an interview with executive producer Greg Goodrich from PC games magazine that fills in a few more gaps:

PC Games: With Medal Of Honor you finally leave the setting of WW2. Are you happy about this change?

Greg Goodrich: Oh yeah. We are very happy and satisfied with this. Richard (Richard Farrelly, creative director of Medal Of Honor) said once to me that has worked for a longer time on the games than the war took. We thought that this was funny. But seriously, I believe that we treated every single aspect of this conflict for a several times. That's why it was about time.

PC Games: How did you end up with the decision to choose the Afghanistan conflict?
Greg Goodrich: It was so to say a really natural decision. We had a bunch of stories and things which were told us by our advisors. And all this happend in this conflict, so the decision wasn't hard.

PC Games: So you don't think that such an actual topic is too hard to deal with in a game?

Greg Goodrich: Well, no matter if you talk about a game, a movie or a book, in the end we all just tell a story. With games we can reach the people in a very special way and simply bring them closer to the everyday life of the soldiers in Afghanistan, as realistic but also as respectful as possible. But we are aware of the fact that perhaps not everybody will appreciate this.

PC Games: How many mission are based on real operations?

Greg Goodrich: We use the real incidents as inspiration. But we don't rebuild real operations in detail, we tell our own story and for that purpose we make up operations which are being realized as realistic as possible with the help of our advisors. In other words: What you see could really have happend this way.

PC Games: In the first moment one might say that you copy elements of the Moder Warfare series. So how do you defend yourself in that case?

Greg Goodrich: This is a completely natural reaction. But in the end the step into the present is just a stage which we use aswell and we simply put our focus more on authenticity than on huge action. I do even think it is cool, when someone compares us to Modern Warfare, as it is a really great series. And being metioned with this series in the same sentence, doesn't sound bad.

PC Games: So in your eyes the main difference is the realism?

Greg Goodrich: So to say, yes. We simply try to keep the action a bit on a more realistic level. This means that the complete style of the game appears a bit more authentic.

-Noches