Medal of Honor: Airborne

Medal of Honor: Airborne
Developer(s)	EALA
Publisher(s)	Electronic Arts
Producer(s)	Patrick Gilmore
Designer(s)	Rex Dickson
Composer(s)	Michael Giacchino
Engine	Unreal Engine 3.0
Platform(s)	PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, PC
Release	PC & Xbox 360 August 28, 2007 TBA, 2007 August 24, 2007 TBA, 2007 PS3 November 13, 2007 TBA, 2007 November, 2007 TBA, 2007
Genre(s)	First-person shooter
Mode(s)	Single player, multiplayer

Medal of Honor: Airborne is the 11th installment in the Medal of Honor series of World War II first-person shooters. It is being developed by Electronic Arts' Los Angeles studio for release on the Xbox 360 and PC on August 28, 2007 and PS3 on November 13, 2007.

Overview

In Airborne, the player will take on the role of Private first class Boyd Travers, a paratrooper in the U.S. 82nd Airborne Division and later in the 17th Airborne Division. Travers' insertion is into major engagements in Tunisia, Sicily, Salerno, Normandy, and Holland. The game begins with the Allies leading a costly invasion of Sicily (1943), followed by a rescue operation in Salerno, Italy (1943). The 82nd Airborne is then airdropped into France during the morning hours of June 6, 1944 as part of the famous Operation Overlord, the Allied invasion of Occupied Europe. The game culminates with Operation Market Garden, General Montgomery's failed plan to secure the Allies route through Holland and into Germany.. This is notably the single largest airborne invasion in history.

Originally, there were to be both pathfinder and combat missions in Airborne, featuring two different characters, and overlapping the same areas. As the game developed, it became evident that splitting the missions up like this just wasn’t working, and the decision was made to fold some of the Pathfinder elements into the current missions, and use the single character of Private Boyd Travers.

Airborne will feature six operations including; Operation Torch the training mission, Operation Husky, Operation Avalanche, Operation Neptune, Operation Market Garden, Operation Varsity (all of which, with the exception of Avalanche, were in Medal of Honor Vanguard), and Der Flakturm. The six campaigns are spread across five nations; Tunisia, Italy, France, Holland and Germany.

Airborne is also the first Medal of Honor game since Medal of Honor: Frontline to feature Michael Giacchino as the main composer.

Gameplay

The main gameplay element in Medal of Honor: Airborne will be the jump at the beginning of each mission. The air jump puts you in control of the chute as you can steer and land almost anywhere in the environment. This will provide infinite ways a mission can unfold and adds a huge replayibilty aspect. With this new air jump came a new obstacle which is the A.I.. To account for this EA has developed the Affordance engine which will place numerical values on objects like sandbags, walls, pillboxes etc.

Objectives

In Airborne, the player will be able to control where they land, altering the course of the subsequent mission. Missions in Airborne also do not have a specific start or end point, with less emphasis on scripted action sequences seen in most first-person shooters.

Weapons

When choosing your load-out before the mission, you could select 2 main weapons, and 1 side-arm. Each weapon, including grenades, will have 3 available upgrades. The upgrades are realistic, based on actual ones soldiers used or made in the field. Some examples are horizontal/vertical stabilizers to reduce bullet-spread, 2 magazines taped together to make every 2nd reload faster, an added sight to a weapon for increased accuracy, anti-tank grenades (Gammon Bombs), shoulder-stock for a pistol, larger capacity magazines, thinner iron sights, higher capacity grenade bag, grenade launcher that can be attached to the end of a rifle, anti-tank (HEAT) rounds, dagger/bayonet, an added pistol grip for an SMG, etc.

As you become better and more proficient with each weapon, you’ll earn the upgrades for that weapon. Achievements such as headshots, X kills in quick succession, melee kills, etc, will earn reward points and your weapon will “level up” and receive an upgrade. When this happens, the game goes into a slow-mo/bullet-time effect, allowing you a chance to see what you have earned, and giving a few precious seconds to plan your next move on the battlefield. The ability for customizable weapons that can be upgraded with authentic parts in Airborne, will be the second time the feature has been included in the Medal of Honor series. As you will get good with a weapon, you get a recommendation of that weapon and you can upgrade it. Weapon upgrades that are unlocked are available permanently throughout the game, to reduce the need of upgrading an identical weapon constantly with the same add-on. Weapons in first person will interact somewhat with the environment, and the grenades will be cookable.

A.I. Awareness

All A.I. characters will have an awareness of affordances in the environment, which are simply features of the terrain or urban infrastructure that provide a tactical advantage. This will theoretically allow A.I. characters to take intelligent combat actions based on surroundings. The game also will not respawn an infinite number of enemies, allowing the player to clear out and hold a territory to stop enemies from appearing. This however works in the opposite, where after a couple minutes of an idled player, enemy soldiers will reclaim their previous position, nullifying the progress the player has made in a given area. Also grenades thrown, causes enemies to immediately flee a given area to minimize their casualties.

Health & Regeneration

Airborne has a health and regeneration system that attendees at the summit seemed to really like. You start off with 4 full bars of health. If you lose a full bar of health, the only way to replenish it is to find a health pack. However, if a bar is not yet quite empty, and you seek cover, the bar will eventually regenerate/refill itself. It will continue being tuned for each difficulty level.

Vehicles

One of the cuts necessary in Airborne was to drivable vehicles, as they no longer fit well into the new design of the game, and would take resources away from other priority game elements.

Multiplayer

The Game will feature three game types, standard TDM where both teams spawn on the ground, Airborne TDM where the US spawns in the air and parachutes in, and an Objective Airborne. This last one plays basically like Call of Duty’s DOM or BF2, where both teams fight for control points sprinkled around the map, and the US spawns in a parachute.

The game will have 6 maps, Destroyed Village, Remagen, The Hunt. While ‘old’ maps, they are totally new and in many ways different than the originals. In addition we will see 3 new maps that are also SP levels, Operation Avalanche, Operation Neptune, & Operation Husky.

Unlike another well-known game publisher, EA has seen fit to include Punkbuster out of the box, and they said they were investigating providing hooks for DMW as well.

Modding

An SDK/MDK will be released with the game. The developers are aiming to make the game mod friendly. In a recent interview Patrick Gilmore stated:

The fact that we are using Unreal III engine means that we have a lot of built-in mod functionality. And we want to take it even further, and open up the game set for people who mod, add on cool things.

— Patrick Gilmore, mohcenter.pl

External links

• Official Website at EA.com
• Medal of Honor: Airborne First Look Includes a first gameplay video and screenshots.
• Total Medal of Honor Airborne - Total Medal of Honor Airborne is a Game site that is dedicated to MOH-Airborne.
• Planet Medal of Honor - Planet Medal of Honor is one of the largest inclusive Web site for the Medal of Honor franchise.