Medal of Honor revives virtual WWII - Video Games - Brief Article - Evaluation

Post, March, 2002 by John Gaudiosi

LOS ANGELES -- One of the reasons Steven Spielberg founded Dream-Works Interactive in 1995 was his interest in doing a first-person shooter (FPS) videogame set in World War II. Due to the realities of the business at the time, the idea was shelved for a few years and the company focused on a few Jurassic Park games. In November 1997, upon completion of principal photography for Saving Private Ryan, Spielberg gave the mandate to revisit the idea of a WWII videogame called Medal of Honor that would be about "rising beyond the call of duty." That idea became reality on PlayStation with Medal of Honor (MOH) and its prequel, MOH: Underground. Even after selling his game studio to Electronic Arts, which renamed the studio EA LA (www.ea.com) and has released all of the MOH games, Spielberg continues to keep tabs on his virtual WWII universe. Following in the successful footsteps of the PlayStation games, EA is taking the franchise to the PC with MOH: Allied Assault and PlayStation 2 with MOH: Frontline and MOH: Figh ter Commander. The best-selling franchise is also going to invade Xbox and GameCube in the near future, as well.

The MOH games have succeeded because of their depth of gameplay and blending of actual WWII events with intriguing fictional storylines. The first game introduced Lt. Jimmy Patterson, a member of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), and sent players on 20 detailed missions in a fully-realized 3D European Front WWII universe. While FPS games have traditionally focused on brainless action, the MOH franchise opened the genre up to a world of strategy. A mission in the first game required the player to steal the uniform of a German officer, board a merchant marine vessel to Bremen, infiltrate the U-boat production facility called Dachsmag, sneak aboard the experimental Nazi submarine U-4901, radio its coordinates to the Allies from sea, scuttle the sub and then exit via the hatch before it sinks to its doom. WWII vets consulted with the game makers, who also spent time in boot camp and studied the weapons, vehicles and events of the second world war.

As a prequel, Underground introduced a new heroine named Manon, a young woman who joins the French Resistance and is later recruited by the OSS. The game spans 22 levels and sends Manon on seven missions, each divided into three or four game levels, inside such locales as France, North Africa, Italy, Germany and Greece, to uncover the Nazi's early plans.

When you add the processing power of the PS2 and PC to the mix, WWII fans are going to be thrust straight into the action in the three new games. In Frontline, players assume the role of Lt. Jimmy Patterson again, this time to uncover the secret German initiative to create a jet-based flying wing, the HO-IX, that will turn the tide of the war. Frontline starts players off on Omaha Beach on D-Day. In Allied Assault, players take the role of a member of the I st Ranger Battalion who gets conscripted by the OSS and sent on several exciting clandestine missions that cover the length and breadth of the war. The game features a multiplayer mode for up to 32 players with 12 different locations, allowing you to choose to be one of 16 different characters from either the Allied or Axis powers. Fighter Commander is a departure for the series, taking the action inside dozens of WWII planes and into the Pacific Theater of the war right after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

"The increased memory and CPU speed, as well as the DVD storage medium, give us several tactical advantages that we plan to take advantage of with Frontline, but its not quite nirvana yet," says Rick Giolito, executive producer of the MOH franchise. "From a gameplay perspective, the PS2 allows us to put more characters on the screen...up to 14 at any one time. This opens the opportunity for true squad-based play and more opportunities for scripted elements. We will be doing D-Day on the PS2, something not possible until now. We are careful to limit our field of view to make sure that we never overextend the processor, but 14 non-player characters, along with massive explosions, tracers, particle effects, fog and a truly incredible ambient soundtrack allows us to simulate what it might have been like. In some of the other areas, I can offer some comparisons versus the PSI: 450 dialogue tracks per level vs. 45; 3,000 total animations vs. 650; facial animation where there used to be none; lipsync where there use d to be none; breakable glass in every level; breakable objects in a 5:1 greater ratio than PS I. In short, we will be offering a much deeper, more immersive gameplay experience."

While striving for authenticity, the games will stick with a teen rating with no blood and guts to allow a wider audience to get a taste of battle. To create this virtual battlefield, the teams worked with Alias/Wave-front Maya and Discreet 3DS Max.

"All of our animation is hand drawn. We use no motion capture whatsoever," says Giolito. "Mocap is great for many things, but we find that it does not fit our needs as we put a lot of subtlety into our animation. Our Al [the game's artificial intelligence] and animation works hand in hand, so our animators actually design to the Al. Since the Al reactions are often determined by the scenarios [once you get passed the basic run, walk, duck and cover moves], it's actually an interactive process that develops over time. We don't start with an entire bank of animation on the first day of production, but design it to fit the particular scenario of each of the levels. All of our levels are done in 3D Studio. One of the biggest challenges in building a custom engine and getting it all to work is providing the necessary tools to the designers and animators so we can implement it into the game. Designing and building intuitive, usable tool paths has been the proverbial 'snake' that we've been wrestling with since day one. Assets built using different packages need to fit seamlessly together. Designers place objects, do the pathing and scripting, and the animators tweak it. Our engineers pair up with our animators to make sure it's all hooked up to the Al." The end result is a videogame franchise that doesn't seem to have any end in sight.