Medal of Honor 2: What we want to see
22nd Jan 2012 | 16:00
With the leaflet included in retail copies of Battlefield 3 essentially confirming Medal of Honor 2 (that's what we'll call it for now, anyway), we think it's safe to assume a release either later this year or next year. That means its speculation and wish list time. Here's what we want to see in the next Medal of Honor:
Have Danger Close do the multiplayer
Hear us out. Opinion is mixed between gamers over which half of Medal of Honor is the better half - the single player or multiplayer. The reason for this is because both were handled by different developers, so one is not necessarily the same as the other. Danger Close handled the single player side of things, and EA called in Battlefield developer DICE to take the reigns of multiplayer. This resulted in Medal of Honor feeling somewhat like Battlefield-lite, and it created a slight disconnect between the campaign and online offerings - a disconnect that we'd like to see removed in the sequel.
So how about Danger Close develop both single and multiplayer this time around? DICE can continue working on another Battlefield or, hopefully, a new Mirror's Edge, and it'll let Danger Close show what they're capable of on the online side of things. You never know, it might turn out great, and we'll wonder why multiplayer duties were ever given to DICE in the first place.
The two Call of Duty developers, while sticking to strict deathmatch formula, still have multiplayer nuances that define their particular series (see Black Ops Zombies).
We'd also like to see the addition of a co-op mode to the game. Maybe not the whole campaign playable with mates, but specific co-op missions not dissimilar from Battlefield 3. We'd like to see split-screen play available for the co-op missions too, and maybe even the online multiplayer. Simply because there's not enough split-screen these days. We miss it.
Improved Campaign
Medal of Honor's campaign was decent, but we felt it suffered ever so slightly from Modern Warfare syndrome. What's that, you ask? Well we mean Medal of Honor just seemed to follow the conventions of a typical modern, military FPS rather than trying to do its own thing.
We must commend Medal of Honor for going the distance on the authenticity front, but it still fell victim to the same hallmarks of the traditional FPS such as not being able to open doors yourself, having to be boosted over a wall by your team mate because you're too unfit to climb it yourself, and generally being lead around each level by the AI like a dog on a leash.
Just tone down the scripted nature of the campaign a little bit and give us just a bit more freedom in our approach to each mission. Maybe let us take point for once and give our squad orders?
Some more varied and spectacular missions would also go along way to making the campaign more memorable. Did you know that at the beginning of the Afghanistan war there was a small band of Green Berets who rode in to battle on horseback while calling in air strikes? It's true, and although seeing this in the game would probably look ridiculous, it would at least help spice up the campaign and give us something a bit different from the bog standard covering fire/sniping/helicopter missions that we play all the time.
Tell the story properly
The plot of Medal of Honor was based on Operation Anaconda but a lot of the events that took place during this mission were rewritten for the game. The second level has you playing as Rabbit, an American soldier, as he and his team take the Bagram airfield back from the Taliban. In reality it was British SBS at the Bagram airfield, and they didn't take the airfield, they helped the Northern Alliance prevent the Taliban from getting hold of it.
Along with the British, the Australian SASR also played key roles in the battle, but Medal of Honor neglects acknowledge the involvement of either. We just feel that if you're going to base your game on real events, then actually stay true to reality and tell the proper story, or you might as well just create fiction from scratch.
In Medal of Honor 2, we'd like the game to illustrate the multinational efforts of the war. Perhaps we could even play as Brits or Aussies for a mission or two. It would be something different at least, and how many other games let you play as British or Australian soldiers? Very few these days.
More emotional impact
War isn't nice, but you already knew that. However, the war depicted in Medal of Honor was still a bit too "clean" and "straight" for our liking, and we feel that Danger Close really missed an opportunity to tell a deep, multifaceted story about the war.
Civilian casualties should play a role in the story somewhat. Not just for the sake of saying "War is bad!" but to show the effect it has. We want the game to explore this moral ambiguity. What are the reactions of the US soldiers when they're forced to call in an air strike on a civilian target, for example?
We'd also like the game to portray a more human side to the Taliban as well, rather than them just being a horde of nameless enemies for the player to shoot. Perhaps a captured enemy could reveal his motives for joining the Taliban in the first place. Maybe he did join just for power, or maybe because he wants to defend his homeland from an American invasion, or maybe his family was killed in civilian casualties.
It would help dispel the notion of a simple "good vs evil" plot. We'd just like more depth to all the characters in the game - team mates and the enemy.