Most military shooter games focus on explosions and macho men being macho men. Characters that could be easily found in a 1980s action film where they take on a swarm of faceless, default bad guys with big guns and simple reasons that are connected to family or patriotic values. At least that is the only way I could think of describing a group of people in a multiplayer game for a modern military shooter. However, Electronic Arts might be taking a different direction when talking about Preacher in the new Medal of Honor: Warfighter trailer.
The trailer starts with showing off how the Frostbite 2 Engine (which the trailer does state this was all made in) handles facial animations. Preacher, one of the main characters from a previous Medal of Honor game, is at a train station to head over to Madrid or pick up someone (I don’t know, really). The game has a rather calming nature so far at this point, which seems to make it look like a scene from Heavy Rain. Until a train explodes, then Preacher waking up at a hospital, and finally showing montages of military combat with explosions to satisfy any Michael Bay fan. Oh EA, you nearly had me fooled that Quantic Dream was making this.
Not much else is revealed about Preacher’s role in Medal of Honor: Warfighter game. A few more montage scenes of North American military soldiers shooting down faceless terrorist archetypes in an unknown region are shown; soldiers sneaking in through river to take down guards; and a scene at the end with Preacher, I assume, taking down a hostile bare handed. These scenes are laced with moments back at the hospital where Preacher is laying around, looking at the ceiling or looking out a window at two indistinct characters who I assume are his wife and child.
I don’t play too many military shooters for the multiplayer portion, but I’m not sure how this game would make me interested in the single-player portion for Medal of Honor: Warfighter. The Frostbite 2 Engine seems to handle body animations well and give a unique photo-realistic look. In fact it’s hard to tell at times when this is a game or an actual movie for me. But when you get the close-up scenes you can see the 3D models stick out a bit more. Though my biggest complaint would be how vague this trailer is for explaining Preacher to us. It sounds like he has some back-story with the woman and child, but I’m only speculating on that. But maybe I’m nit-picking on a franchise that is aimed to appeal to multiplayer gamers more, and it looks alright with its explosions and animations. So maybe this will be appealing to fans of the previous Medal of Honor games.
Medal of Honor: Warfighter will be available late October 2012 for the PC, Xbox 360, Playstation 3, Wii U, and Playstation Vita.
