How did the classic FPS Series Medal of Honor decline?

The birth, prosperity and decline of a generation of classics

The name medal of honor must be familiar to everyone. In the early years, it, Battlefield and Call of Duty were called the Big Three of FPS by players, which became childhood memories of many players. Today, the call of duty and the battlefield in the "Big Three" are still active in the public eye, but the medal of honor has long since disappeared, and it is no longer the glory of the past.

How was the Medal of Honor born? How did a generation of classic IP get to this point? What's the story behind the game? This article will lead you to review the past lives of this game series.

Speaking of the original Medal of Honor, we have to mention a legendary Hollywood director-Steven Allan Spielberg.

1997, Steven Allan Spielberg was filming the famous war film Saving Private Ryan. However, when the film was about to be completed, the director learned that the restricted film could not have a great impact on the younger generation, so he decided to create his own studio-DreamWorks Interactive.

After the establishment of the studio, Spielberg asked employees to create a game, which not only excited the players in the scene, but also let young players know about the famous events in World War II.

However, this idea did not get enthusiastic support from studio members. They think that the realistic shooting game with the theme of World War II is difficult to achieve good results in the market dominated by a number of sci-fi shooting games represented by Hammer of Thor.

Finally, at the insistence of director Spielberg, the company's development team spent a week developing a Demo, which finally helped to complete the idea of director Spielberg and gave the company a green light to make games.

In order to make the Medal of Honor conform to the historical facts as much as possible, dale dye, the team's military adviser, led the production team into the boot camp to help them correct the historical mistakes in the game campaign and personally explained the opening of the game.

At 1999, just as the game development entered the final stage, the chairman of the Congressional Medal of Honor Association came to the door and tried to persuade the director Spielberg to give up the name. He thinks it's disgusting to make a game out of veterans' experiences. But after seeing the game's respect for this theme, he expressed his recognition and understanding of the game.

Immediately, the Medal of Honor was successfully sold during Veterans' Day (199911). Once the game was released, it was widely praised, and its excellent picture and true restored history were praised a lot. Every part of the game is full of very detailed narrative information, including historical real images appearing in the game.

The success of the first generation of Medal of Honor is very rapid and far-reaching, and a game series that will dominate the FPS of World War II in the next decade was born.

Time came to 2000. At this time, the Medal of Honor series has accumulated a lot of popularity on the host platform. EA also renamed DreamWorks Interactive EA Los Angeles Studio, and let this team devote themselves to developing a new series of medals of honor on the new generation of mainframes.

In May of that year, director Spielberg took a fancy to a budding studio, Studio 20 15, and asked them if they were interested in developing a new generation of PC-specific Medal of Honor.

At that time, this team, which only developed a game expansion called SIN, spent two years developing this new generation medal of honor and sent it to EA for distribution, which caused a great sensation and created a masterpiece.

This work, which has made great contributions to the medal of honor series, is one of the trilogy of the medal of honor that domestic players are most familiar with, Medal of Honor: Joint Attack.

This work has brought unforgettable Normandy beach landing campaign to players, even comparable to Spielberg's own movie "Saving Private Ryan" in the cinema, and the joint attack has pushed the Medal of Honor series to a new height.

If the first generation medal of honor created the shooting game of World War II, the joint attack created the whole market of the shooting game of World War II. Let the game become a narrative carrier, so that players can experience the feeling of being suppressed by machine guns when the allies land in the mainland. There are all kinds of intense task flows and a lot of script events in the game, and the whole single-player game has a smooth narrative and unforgettable game experience like a movie.

The trilogy of Joint Raid and Pioneer and Breakthrough sets the overall tone for the World War II shooting game market in the next decade, and also shows the world that the game can perfectly restore and review the war.

It gives players the perfect war experience of landing from Normandy beach and marching all the way to Germany. At the same time, it has become a template copied by countless people in the World War II shooting game market, and it has also intensified the competition in the World War II shooting game market.

However, after the successful joint raid, EA decided to acquire 20 15 Studio. This caused strong dissatisfaction among game creators, so a group of producers left the studio 20 15 and decided to start their own businesses. They then formed a new team, known as Infinity Ward, and began to make a new game codenamed "Medal of Honor Black Boy".

Since then, the famous Call of Duty series was born. This game will also be a thorn in e a's side in the future, which will eventually play an important role in the decline of Medal of Honor.

Although the studio 20 15, which brought the game to the peak, left collectively, and switched to activision to set up Infinity Ward, and created a call of duty series to pull the future medal of honor down the altar. But in this part of the World War II shooting game market, the Medal of Honor series still maintains a leading position. A bloody battle in the Pacific is a brand-new war perspective, the open level design of A bloody battle in Europe and the airborne battle of Airborne Magic are all eye-catching.

However, with the increasing popularity of the Battlefield series and Star Wars: Frontline (released by LucasArts on September 18, 2004), the focus of shooting games has gradually shifted from single-player to fierce multi-player confrontation.

However, the Medal of Honor series did not pay attention to the development of multiplayer mode. Although relying on excellent single-player campaign, the sales volume of the game is still good, but due to the lack of bright spots except single-player campaign, its game life has also suffered a lot.

By 2007, the World War II shooting game market has been inseparable from the Medal of Honor and Call of Duty. At this time, EA intends to strike hard, and with the three major medal of honor series launched within one year, it completely won the World War II shooting game market of PC and host platform.

However, just as EA tried to beat Call of Duty with this set of three consecutive titles, Call of Duty also launched its own bold and innovative work-Modern War Series in 2007. Infinity Ward is pushing EA's greatest game series off the throne with its outstanding performance in modern wars.

Obviously, the decline of the medal of honor series is becoming more and more obvious. The whole series has lost its way and needs to stop for a while and find its own direction again.

In order to reshape the whole series, EA Los Angeles Studio was reorganized into Danger Close Games to reshape the Medal of Honor series and develop a new generation of products.

After three years of closed training, Medal of Honor 20 10 took the whole series away from the devastated battlefield of World War II and came to the controversial modern battlefield in the Middle East. Obviously EA intends to continue to reinvent this series in the modern battlefield, just as Call of Duty defeated the Medal of Honor in the modern battlefield three years ago.

The multiplayer mode in the game allows players to play Taliban members against American troops. This setting caused protests from many politicians and military officials, and EA was finally forced to change the name of the Taliban camp in the game to "Rebels". However, this move did not change the military's ban on it, making the game banned from selling at all military bases around the world.

Despite a lot of controversy, this game has successfully opened up its own path and attracted a group of loyal players with the excellent single-player and multiplayer battles produced by DICE. Its sales of 5 million copies also ensure that EA will continue to make sequels for the series in this direction.

However, the sequel Medal of Honor: Warrior, released on 20 12, put a coffin lid on this classic shooting game series in disappointing sales and mediocre evaluation and criticism of game media. The bleak sales also forced EA to freeze this series, and Danger Close Games Studio was dissolved and reorganized into DICE Los Angeles. The progress and achievements brought by the whole series of works also collapsed under this tragic failure.

For the Medal of Honor, which once proved to the world that video games can tell the difficult times of human nature in a way that books or movies can't, no FPS game fan can ignore its glory. We will remember the glory of landing on Omaha beach in the joint raid and lament its regrettable ending.

Veterans don't die, they just fade away.

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