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Command Sergeant Major
Posts: 2,082
Join Date: May 2003
Location: Calgary, AB
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05-20-2003, 07:07 PM
these are the new MOH titles for the PC, info from a bunchof websites and stuff. ( MOH:AA Breakthrough and MOH: Pacific Assault)
Try to enjoy:
Breakthrough
As U.S. Army Sergeant John Baker, players join the battle at Kasserine Pass in North Africa, race to capture Messina in Sicily, and finally repel the German army at the historic battle of Monte Battaglia in the heart of Italy. Armed with a new arsenal of weapons, players will fight alone and with squad mates as they rush to stop the Axis powers.
The multiplayer game has been enhanced with the addition of Liberation Mode. In this mode, defeated players must be rescued by surviving teammates to continue the fight. In addition, players can drive tanks, artillery spotters can call in artillery strikes, and minesweepers can defuse mines. Players can also choose from American, British, Italian, and German skins in all multiplayer modes.
As with the original Medal of Honor(TM) game, the producers sought counsel from numerous outside sources to ensure the game is as historically authentic as possible. EALA continues to work closely with the Congressional Medal of Honor Society to ensure Medal of Honor Allied Assault Breakthrough reflects the ideals and integrity of the prestigious Medal of Honor. In addition, Capt. Dale Dye, who served as military technical advisor on the previous titles in the Medal of Honor franchise, continues his efforts with the Medal of Honor Allied Assault Breakthrough team.
Pacific Assault
March 04, 2003 - Last night the IGN boys and I made our way to the Officers' Club at the Presidio here in San Francisco to see the latest developments in the Medal of Honor franchise. And while the night was weighted a bit more towards the consoles, we were lucky enough to hit up producer Matt Powers for some details on the upcoming PC version, Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault. Also on hand was military consultant Captain Dale Dye who was more than happy to field our questions about the series in general.
First, as the title suggests, Medal of Honor will be making its way to the Pacific this time around and confronting the player with the personnel and equipment of Imperial Japan. Beginning with the attack on Pearl Harbor, you'll have the chance to carry the fight across the islands of the Pacific (including such standards as Guadalcanal) for the first two years of the war.
Although the PC version is in the "we can only talk about it" phase, Matt has a solid idea how he wants the game to shape up. The overarching logic behind the development of the new game is that they needn't mess with the success of the first title too much. "We're following the formula of Allied Assault and just improving on it," says Matt. "It's been so successful, the last thing we want to do is break someone's expectations."
The team will still preserve the basic philosophy that made Allied Assault such a fantastic game -- building towards rewards, immersive cutscenes, moments of small squad action, etc. A few new ideas have crept in to the mix -- fewer immediate deaths at the hand of unseen snipers and a stronger sense of character maturation are two of the biggest -- but the overall experience should be intuitively and immediately familiar to fans of the previous games. Still, it's important to acknowledge, Matt cautions, that none of the design is final yet and the team is still doing lots of planning to nail down specific features.
Matt has actually stayed away from the console titles on purpose to avoid being unduly influenced by the decisions that are being made for different platforms. It's not surprising then, that the story and environments of the PC version, while relatively close to those of the consoles, will nevertheless be distinct from the console counterparts. But that doesn't mean that the other titles don't have an influence on the development of the PC version.
First and most importantly, there's "a lot of mind share, of being in the mood" that's freely transferable across the platforms. "We've basically gone and stolen a lot of concept art and models," explains Matt. "But we consider that stuff as a sort of placeholder. We'll have to up the poly counts and redo the textures for the PC." The PC developers can also share a lot of the animation and motion reference data, although they'll need a good bit more of these resources given the prevalence of cinematic sequences for the PC.
And like the first game, Pacific Assault will contain a few showstopper levels. As an analogy to the still-impressive Omaha Beach level from Allied Assault, the new game will begin with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. We saw a rough animatic of this level (available as a download for Insiders). It's big on the "wow" factor and promises to be one of the really memorable moments, not just for this single game, but for the series as a whole.
While it's on the same level as Omaha Beach in terms of impact, it requires a fairly different approach in terms of gameplay. Most of Medal of Honor is about walking around and shooting stuff; that just doesn't apply to any Pearl Harbor scenario. Instead, the team is focusing on the various support actions that fit the setting. You'll find yourself cruising around in a boat picking up downed pilots and sailors. You'll find yourself rushing to grab a fire extinguisher to put out the fires on board the large ships. You'll find yourself at the controls of a anti-aircraft cannon shooting down Zeros and Vals and desperately trying to shoot torpedoes out of the water. Like Allied Assault there will a few pre-scripted failures here and there. You know, just to make sure the Arizona still sinks and all.
These cinematic sequences, although very tightly scripted, are one of the better parts of the series. Key moments acquire a truly cinematic climax through the timing and scripting of sophisticated triggers. But even though there are a number of experiences that occur no matter how you play, there's still a bit of freedom in the game. Matt explains:
"It's less linear than the other products but still fairly linear, mostly because of scripted events. We want to have variable paths to the objectives and variable methods to complete certain areas. It's not a BF1942 where we drop you in the middle and just say 'Go for it.' Part of the immersion of Medal of Honor is scripted moments, memorable scenes. To do that you need to funnel the player but we still want to give them a larger terrain to work with. Balancing those two is one of the challenges we have."
This is a point that Captain Dye was able to nail down for us in more concrete terms. At a large sand table covered in bits of yarn and Duplo blocks and populated by scores of plastic army men, Captain Dye talked us through the process of planning and playing a level. Using a large Japanese outpost as an example, he showed us a variety of options to clear the level. You could, like me, just go for a straight assault right through the large clearing in the center of the camp. Or you could, like I would once I reloaded my game, try to sneak around the rear of the camp, hoping that you won't be seen during the few moments that you'll be exposed.
More interesting is the sense of moral choice in the game. Captain Dye explains that, as you round a bunker on the fringe of the camp, you may run across two Japanese guards harassing a Solomon Island native. You can choose to bypass the encounter altogether or help the Islander. If you help the Islander, you'll find he's more than willing to show his gratitude by cutting a new path through the jungle, allowing you to bypass a lot of enemies on your way to your objectives.
Beyond the specifics of that one level, Captain Dye also discussed some of the general principles specific to the Pacific theater that guide the design of the whole game. First, combat in the Pacific takes place at much closer distances than in Europe. You can't see as many of the broad vistas and consequently don't have as many opportunities to engage targets at a safe distance. Additionally, camouflage plays a much more important role in the jungle. Consequently, your advances will have to be much slower in terms of pacing. Gains will be measured in feet rather than yards.
We have a five-minute, Insider-only video clip in which Captain Dye explains this in more detail.
We should also mention that, although the game is still based on the Quake III technology, the team has rewritten the renderers to take better advantage of improvements in graphics hardware. An entirely new terrain editor will allow the developers to create environments of remarkable authenticity and detail. One of the biggest priorities is making believable water. The rest of the game, no matter how gorgeous, could hardly make up for any serious deficiency here.
The new game may offer the first chance in the series to really see your character grow and mature during the war. Matt explains:
"We want the player to realize that, as you start out at Pearl Harbor, that's just the beginning of the war. By the time you get through a lot of battles you're more battle-worn, you're weary and you've got that thousand-yard stare. We want the player to experience that. If we're gonna do that, we need to show in our cinematics what the player looks like. That's something we're still playing with because no Medal of Honor product has ever done that. So you'll see your player in these different sequences get older."
This sense of advancement will be apparent in the appearance of your squad mates as well. Through the course of the game, the soldiers serving with you in Pacific Assault will display the effects of combat. The way the squad members behave may likely change too, as they gain more experience in the field.
But the game doesn't claim to be a "super squad" simulator. That would change the basic nature of the game far too much for Matt and his team. (A workable squad feature may be incorporated in to the multiplayer modes somehow. There is one new multiplayer mode planned for the title but Matt was unwilling to reveal any details.) Still, the team does want to maintain Allied Assault's sense that you're working alongside and communicating with a range of supporting characters. They know you're good but, come on, you're not winning the whole war by yourself, right?
Given the dense nature of the jungle terrain, we were all keen to find out how the team was going to handle snipers. Complaints about the unerring accuracy and x-ray vision of the snipers was one of the few strikes against Allied Assault. The developers have listened to the criticisms and decided to (slightly) lessen the danger of hidden foes with high-powered rifles. But the team is eliminating the primitive radar that shows the direction shots are coming from. This seems to work against the notion of toning down the lethality of snipers but Matt's got a handy fix in mind.
Matt wants to make the enemies miss a bit more often, not only to lower the frustration felt by players but to enhance the tension as well. "People don't play games to die," he reasons, so it's much more effective to have bullets pop up dust at the ground beneath your feet or hiss through the air beside your head. "It's okay to have enemies miss you some because that's more dramatic -- to be standing there with bullets whizzing by." If you just find yourself inexplicably dead, "you feel like people are cheating on you."
Matt also mentioned a few other new developments in the series. He says that a brand new Allied Assault expansion, focusing on North Africa and Southern Europe, is currently being developed by TKO. Their lead creative director is none other than Justin Chen of Infinite Machine and Dark Forces fame. He also let slip that the EA team has already envisioned a full sequel to Pacific Assault. "There's still a lot to do in this war" that hasn't even been touched yet, according to Matt.
It's clear to see that EA's putting a lot of emphasis on Medal of Honor as a franchise and we can probably start expecting a new title in the series at least once every year or so. We'll be sure to bring you more information on all of the future titles in this series as soon as we get it.
that was long
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New MOH???
Linear Mode
