Hello! Its been tough to keep quiet about last weeks trip to EA Games in Los Angeles but finally the gag order is off and you can read all about it.
Medal of Honor: Airborne Community Summit
On May 16th and 17th EA Games (Los Angeles) brought a few people out to get a sneak peek at the newest title in the Medal of Honor series... AIRBORNE! As the groups only actual paratrooper, I was a little nervous about what I might find from a group of civilians but what I found was that the world is about to get a whole new perspective on why paratroopers are a feared weapon in the military tool chest.
Getting There
After a 4 hour flight into LAX I hopped a vehicle and got over to the hotel. EA was nice enough to bed us down at the Ritz Carlton Marina Del Rey and told us to be in the lobby at 8pm in order to be marched out for chow. No trip to LA would be complete without dinner at a Mexican restaurant and EA didn’t disappoint. We relaxed and waited for a few stragglers as we asked questions from our host and EA Community Manager 'Blackhat'. We quickly got to know each other and learned who hailed from where and what website they represented. There was plenty of speculation, questions, comments and giddy energy between the beer and chips. Since some of us hadn’t signed an NDA, not much was available but Blackhat was teasing things pretty well and at one point I thought we might all just ask to skip sleeping and get to the game! In the end, we slipped out and got to bed in anticipation for our day.
Breakfast at EALA
Morning formation was 0745 and we picked up transportation for the short drive over to the EALA offices. I have to say that they have a security model much like an Iraq Forward Operating Base! After we grounded our equipment we headed out to the EA chow hall where we were advised that we should take advantage of the EA breakfast burrito (top notch) but aside from pouring coffee into my blood my focus was on getting a look at this game. After our brief walk through the EA offices (game rooms, relaxation centers, and fitness area) we were brought into a screening room where it was time to see if the hype lived up to the real deal.
Presentations
A full wall sized movie screen and tiered seating setup awaited us and as the lights dimmed I got my first look at my new favorite game. First up we saw the game trailers and the videos for START ANYWHERE but on a full screen and monster sound system, just like Pavlov's dog, I was drooling for the details.
Patrick Gilmore, the games Executive Producer presented the big new feature that in my opinion is going to change the way gamers see FPS (First Person Shooter) games, they call it VERTICALITY (what we refer to as vertical envelopment). The notion of ‘START ANYWHERE’ is a new concept to gaming and one that makes the regular gamer realize quickly why PARATROOPERS introduce some unique tactical advantages onto the battlefield.
Wiping out the LINE and rethinking the battlefield
As any FPS gamer is used to, you are normally thrust into a level at some starting point and your job is to get to the end point objective. This is known as a LINEAR model and you keep moving towards the objective. Given that in the past a developer could script events based on you entering the area at a known point, the emphasis was on you powering through the bad guys, traps and challenges but once through, nobody worries about what was behind you. Your focus was always ahead of you. So, when Patrick told the development staff that the player will parachute into the battlefield and go where THEY want to go, he got a whole lot of strange looks and bewildered head shaking. He had just challenged a team to literally think outside of the 'box' and what they came up with was a new Affordance AI.
Rather than script events based on where you are, they had to teach the enemy about the battlefield. The player can come in and start the game on the roof, on the ground, in front or behind the enemy and the enemy has to be able to react. A new behavior model emerged that creates a visual cone and a sound sphere allowing the computer controlled players to have some battlefield awareness like never before. The bad guys can notice you if you fall into view or hear you if they're close enough and then act on that information. The enemy also calculates your location and determines what’s important around them and what is suitable for cover. Your enemy will take stock of the area and maybe determine that a machine gun nest of theirs is important so they stay close or gain control of it and then determine what good cover between them and you is. That’s right; they'll hit cover and use the terrain in a way I don’t think gamers have ever seen before. The best part is that if you come in from another angle as you replay the game, the situation will be completely different as they react to what you're doing.
Patrick said it best when he noted that upon first hitting the ground he felt 'afraid' because rather than putting your weapon into action and running forward, you had to take stock of the situation because for the first time, your enemy could be behind, above, below or in front of you depending on where you chose to land. Depending on the situation, you might have just called a whole lot of unfriendliness out for a visit.
Among the other skills your new enemy employs is the 'brains' to know when a tactical retreat is in order. Yes, they'll back off and you'll have to make the decision to advance or wait them out. If an enemy that knows what to hide behind, retreats when appropriate and tries to maintain important tactical points isn’t enough, wait till you see them 'blind fire'. Yes, to reduce their visual footprint they'll fire around corners or over the top of cover without looking. They'll even employ ‘spray and pray’ to keep you from rushing the position. We were later informed to look out for enemy who will point you out to other enemy. While I didn’t see it in the game, we were told that if they spot you sniping or hiding you might just notice them pointing to you and yelling to their counterparts just where you are.
Producer Matt Marsala took us through some PowerPoint slides to show us just what kind of weapons detail was going into this game. As a guy who routinely works with spreadsheets, I have to tell you that they seriously did their homework.
Nobody will be able to complain that EA didn’t bring you a FULL complement of period weapons. We were introduced to the weapon upgrade system where players are awarded weapon upgrades as they become more proficient with the weapons they utilize. The weapons have a three upgrade path so play for a time with the Thompson and you'll soon find yourself with a pistol grip then the Cutts Compensator which keeps that barrel down and adds to your accuracy and finally get the 50 round drum magazine for added capacity and ultimate close quarter’s carnage. Missions are not only night ops, but through the day and while our introduction offered us Operation Husky and Operation Avalanche, we heard more about daylight missions as you work your way across Europe. The visuals are amazing and feature dynamic lighting from subtle street lights that create pools of light to searchlights and tracers piercing the darkness to seek out the aircraft and paratroopers inside. The whole world has a hazy thickness to the air that obscures distant targets making the player feel that all hell is breaking loose and the very air around you is yet another way for the enemy to hide. For the first time in a game I actually was confronted with a lighting realism that made me rethink passing in front of an idling truck because I was afraid I would break the headlight beams and let everyone know where I was. It is this kind of detail that makes this game exciting.
For once sweating palms and building anxiety doesn’t have anything to do with an up close encounter with a gross alien or dismembered corpse but from what you might accidently do to alert the bad guys to your location. On more than one occasion I found myself reaching into my memory for the tips I learned as a paratrooper in the real 82nd about fields of fire, situational awareness and the all important concept of fire discipline. Gone with this game are the days of ‘hair cleaning gunning’ rules where the player runs, guns, reloads and repeats.
Play time
Operation Husky You are introduced to Operation Husky as all good troopers in the real world, through a mission briefing slide show. You're told where the safe landing points are and where the objectives are located. You are then allowed to setup your weapon load out with two primary weapons selectable and your backup is the trusty .45. The two primary options offers you a chance to select a weapon like the M1 Garand or 1911 Springfield for the long shots and a Thompson for the more cozy close quarters action. As the game progresses you’ll have access to more and more weapons and of course you can pickup weapons on the battlefield as you run across them.
After the mission briefing you find yourself sitting inside a very loud Dakota C-47 with the jump light going green but unlike games with a parachute drop, you can watch the troopers leave the aircraft but you can wait; not long of course; long enough to move your jump point deeper into the drop zone. This offers you additional locations to start your assault within the walled town. As you descend you can see green smoke indicating a safe area free of the enemy and loaded with ammunition and other friendlies. You can choose to start there or survey the scene and make your choices literally 'on the fly'. In the short few hours we had with the game I jumped dozens of times into Operation Husky and deliberately tried different landing areas, landing on the smoke, landing on the roof or into a square already bristling with your squad’s gunfire.
As you ready yourself to hit the ground another feature of the game comes into
play... the landing. If you flare and get the right angle you'll be rewarded with a greased landing and you'll be out of your harness and into action quickly. Play around trying to steer at the last minute and your come in like a bag of rocks in a botched landing which will delay exiting the harness and depending on your landing zone choice, this might mean the difference in giving the enemy a chance to draw down on you before you can even get started. Husky is played through village streets at night with wet surfaces in places, reflective windows, low light exteriors and well lit interiors. Rather than a single objective you have a few to work on and how you execute them is completely up to you. Take out the flak guns or go after the town hall and its enemy officers. Whatever you decide to do, you'll be amazed to learn that just like in real life, the developers have given you choices. We were told that there are 11 points of entry into the town hall offering you everything from second floor window and back alley sneak attacks to kicking in the front door and take on the machine gun.
The map may look small from the screenshots but believe me, there is a lot of ground to cover and so many places to hide that I think you could play this level 60 times before you felt you might have hit all the ways to take it on but then you could start using different weapons and just like magic, it’s all different again.
Operation Avalanche
This operation starts with the same mission briefing and weapons load out but choose wisely because there is a lot going on. Operation Avalanche puts you out in the open in the ruins of a Greek excavation. Jump in and get started just like Husky but here you'll be faced with motor pool objectives, disrupting enemy communications, fenced obstructed areas and even find yourself climbing scaffolding as your enemy shoots at you from above AND below. At this point we learned that there were a few locations on the map where a parachute canopy indicated a place where you could earn skill points by landing at this location. These areas are typically small, harder to hit spots to test your jump, steering and landing skills such as window ledges, scaffolding or blown away sections of an aqueduct.
During the play of Operation Avalanche 'Blackhat' showed us a few new tricks that you can learn for some extra fun such as a melee (physical) attack where you kick an enemy before you hit the ground on a parachute drop. It’s all up to the timing and your nerve as you descend on a German troop manning an MG42 machine gun nest and kick him in the head for the instant kill. This is tough enough that it’s pretty rewarding (or so I’m told as others practiced but I think only one of our group managed to pull it off successfully). Another battlefield oddity is the grenade kick where your German counterparts lob a grenade close enough to you and you're prompted to press a key to 'kick it back'. Timed well this leads to the poor enemy soldier being reunited with the grenade he dropped just in time for it to explode. Kicking a grenade may not sound like the best idea for those with some experience in the field and while I would personally avoid the practice in reality, this makes for great fun when multiple grenades suddenly start entering your hiding place.
Death can be amusing
Some of you may have played games with what they call 'ragdoll physics' where an enemy goes limp when they die resulting in all kinds interesting poses. In the past some of the ways the body moved isn’t really natural but it’s getting better and the Medal of Honor team has done something great to upgrade this with the addition of shot physics. Basically if you shoot the enemy in the shoulder you'll see the impact of the shoulder as the enemy’s shoulder is struck giving you a visual cue where the hit landed. When the rag doll effect hits the momentum of the round determines how they go down. If you view the videos' you can see this in action and it makes for some pretty funny grenade scenes.
The sound of battle with a little background music
The audio in the game is impressive. Many gamers would agree that part of feeling immersed in the game is the sound and EA isn’t disappointing with this. We played with stereo headsets and it was amazing. Live audio recordings of C-47 and all the weapons within the game give the game realism and depth. As you play you'll notice more and more of the little things like roof tiles under your feet when you've decided to move across the rooftops. We were assured that the audio is going to be surround-sound and those of you with surround sound capability should be able to enjoy some incredible audio.
The background score is another piece that brings it all together and is done to such a high quality that already there are calls for EA to put out a game soundtrack with deluxe versions of the game. If you're a fan of the Band Of Brothers series you'll get a few hints of that style in the background music as it adds dramatic effect and polish to the game.
Round Table with Development
Once game time was over it was time to meet up again with the development staff to discuss what we felt about the game. From the EA staff we got questioned first on how we felt which was overwhelmingly positive by our group. The team asked us how certain things they were working on felt to us in order to find out if what they created was played and felt the way they hoped it would. We got to tell the development team about a few ideas and tweaks we felt might further enhance the game. As we did so, some of us realized that we were giving out polishing ideas for a game that is still in major production. This really hit home how well the team is doing and told us that the team has things well in hand.
Yes, multi-player too
Just a quick note to say this trip was all about single player but rest assured that multi-player is going to be in this game and more details will be available in the coming weeks.
Overall Impressions
Replay ability: Typically FPS games live and die on multi-player mode since your average gamer plays the single player part once or maybe twice (at a harder level) at the most before getting bored. This games ‘start anywhere’ mode breathes new life into the single player mode and offers gamers the ability to start where they want and use all the additional weapons you've gained. This means you can go back to the beginning and decide to take on the enemy at a harder level, with different weapons and from any entirely different angle and tactic. This change will add hours of entertainment to the single player game and I predict a few will be challenged by friends to brave a particular level only with certain weapons.
Graphics: For a game that’s not due out until August 28th, I was amazed at how far along it was and there was almost nothing that distracted enough to break my concentration while playing the game. The dynamic lighting and visual effects will challenge you to concentrate on the enemy rather than site seeing. This is the part where PC gamers will want to ensure they have invested wisely in a high quality video card prior to the games release. Start saving your pennies troopers!
Realism: Obviously, it’s a game and that means certain aspects just can’t be as real because they'd effect the enjoyment of the game. Everything that can be done for realism is being done with sounds, visuals and historical accuracy. For anyone but the hardcore detail minded, this game is out there leading the way on realism and based on the field of available games you've played, this one will definitely be a few steps up. The key will be on what platform you're playing and what the graphics capability will be.
A little teaser
Nobody likes a dull ending, we've all likely played a game where a little tougher last mission ends abruptly with closing credits and we feel like we missed the payday. I'll let you in on a little secret, for those of you who decide that this game is worth the playtime (if you don’t, check your pulse please), you're going to be rewarded with an ending worthy of the end of a war. I've been sworn to secrecy on further details but from the sound of things, Medal of Honor Airborne is going to make you feel like you earned it. In Closing
Fellow paratroopers, I’m proud to say that there is a game coming to market that will show countless people around the globe that Benjamin Franklin had it right so long ago when he said "Where is the Prince who can afford so to cover his country with troops for its defense, as that 10,000 men, descending from clouds, might not, in many places, do infinite amount of mischief before a force could be brought to repel them?"
Are you ready to do some mischief?