Medal of Honor: Warfighter Expectations

Perhaps the most notable thing about this game is that it actually attracted more attention by announcing that a beta key for Battlefield 4 is included with limited edition preorders than it has from marketing its own campaign or multiplayer game play.  However, after a less than stellar sales record from 2010's Medal of Honor modern reboot, public expectations are rather muted for a popular franchise release which is slated for October 23 of this year.

Many franchise loyalists have expressed that the MoH series was best represented by the World War II installments that helped to redefine the first person military shooter genre, but that's not to say that the last MoH game was a complete disaster.  Still, there were several things that kept it from being a great, or even memorable game.  Medal of Honor was somewhat successful in terms of distribution.  EA reported that the title sold over 5 million copies after just two months, but the game seemed easily replaced by heavier hitting titles soon after release.

That being said, what is it that MoH: Warfighter needs to get right to hold it's own during the Fall 2012 release season?  There are several things about the last MoH that left an odd taste in gamers' mouths, but for the sake of argument, let's boil it down to the most obvious points.

Single Player Campaign (Story):

I can remember being particularly excited by the prospect that MoH was playing the angle of what it was like to be an elite soldier in the United States Special Forces, and the game's inclusion of tie ins to real world events like 9/11 really fueled the fires of controversy that may have ultimately increased sales of the title.  Still, with all of the hype, the story was perhaps a little too effective in its aim.  The plot devices of MoH were planted in the real world, and a great amount of effort was taken to portray the soldiers in game in the most realistic way possible. However, it also served to alienate players from the story that the game was trying to tell. 

The NPCs were often a little too clinical as they worked their way through enemy encampments and villages which made the characters feel robotic and alien to civilian players.  MoH: Warfighter promises to examine the more human side of many of the characters returning to the franchise by exploring the effects of war on their personal lives, but I question how this will tie into the conflict of the new game.  If the plot moves away from the more grounded, realistic tone that MoH set for a more action oriented experience, the developers may struggle with diluting the campaign to something derivative, and that's the last thing that today's shooter market needs.  


Multiplayer Development:

It's not unheard of for developers to contract out development of certain game resources to other studios under the same publisher's flag, but MoH developer Danger Close's decision to leave the construction of their title's multi player component completely up to DICE was something that confused many fans of the game.  The result of said split development was that the two parts of the game felt like they were completely different games with different control schemes.  DICE's approach to MoH's online multi player was evocative of their then recent Battlefield: Bad Company games with a little bit of Call of Duty's franetic pacing, twitch reflex shooting and kill streak like gameplay mixed in. 

Multi player felt good, but it didn't carry many of the mechanics over from the single player campaign that could have made the experience feel unique.  For example, the campaign control scheme introduced a crouch sliding mechanic as well as a cover lean command and both were absent from the MP side along with the inability to go prone.  Perhaps those additions wouldn't have dramatically altered the MP experience, but they would have provided some tie ins to the campaign that could have pulled things together.  

Development of Warfighter looks to be handled by one developer with the use of the Frostbite 2 game engine created by DICE, but who really knows what this will mean for the MP suite.  Early reports indicate that Warfighter will utilize micro destruction like Battlefield 3, but most likely on a much smaller scale.  It's most likely that some environmental elements may be destructible, but structures and buildings will be another matter since MoH tends to favor smaller, more frenetic map layouts over the sprawling environments that Battlefield 3 is known for.  

The Breakdown:

With so many shooters on the 2012 roster that failed to capture much acclaim this year, Medal of Honor: Warfighter has quite a bit of ground to cover if it plans to make any sort of dent in what will most likely be a holiday season dominated by Call of Duty: Black Ops 2.  Not that every shooter that EA publishes should be out to steal the throne from Activision's Call of Duty series, but it is still likely that there is a lot riding on MoH's shoulders in terms of market representation this Fall.

Medal of Honor: Warfighter may be another in a long list of modern military shooter games, but this series still has a lot of potential to influence the direction that the genre will be taking in years to come.  It will be interesting to see what adjustments will be made to this tried and true franchise and whether or not the series reboot will be justified in the public's eye.  Medal of Honor: Warfighter launches on all systems on October 23, and hopefully the experience will be worth more than the Battlefield 4 beta for pre order purchasers.