Medal of Honor Heroes 2 Interview

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Eurogamer: What is the thinking behind making separate Medal of Honor games for different platforms? First Heroes for PSP, then Vanguard for PS2 and Wii, now this...

Matt Tomprowski: Without trying to speak for the entire Medal of Honor franchise, I can say that with the original Medal of Honor Heroes and now in Medal of Honor Heroes 2, we have really focused on designing and building Medal of Honor experiences that are truly unique to, and designed for the platform. We've tried to listen to what consumers have said about wanting these unique experiences for their platform of choice rather than just having one game to play that has been ported to every platform. While there are some core tenets that are shared by all Medal of Honor games, like authenticity, heroism, action, and storytelling, there are definitely great opportunities to deliver unique experiences for the different platforms like the PSP and the Wii. We agree with the feedback we've received and think that these platforms deserve their own unique game. Also, with the fascinating history of WWII, the courageous and heroic battles, the unique weaponry and the tremendous drama of the Allied versus Axis, it's a time period and genre that has many unique stories to tell.

Eurogamer: The Wii version of Heroes 2 has Zapper support we note, and an intriguing 'on rails' mode that essentially lets you play it like an old school arcade lightgun shooter. Did you decide to do this purely because the controls lend themselves so well (especially in 'Zapper' form) to the console, or because of the demands of the Wii audience demographic?

Matt Tomprowski: We are really excited about our new a new mode for casual gamers in Medal of Honor Heroes 2 for the Wii. We definitely wanted to design something that was unique for the Wii controls, and when we discussed the Zapper peripheral with Nintendo we all saw a perfect fit. We've designed the new mode like the old school arcade shooters so that anyone can pick up and play right out of the box, regardless of skill level or experience with shooter games. We feel this will appeal to casual Wii consumers and we've designed it in a way to help train and bridge them to the more traditional single player FPS experience found in our campaign and multiplayer modes. We also think the fast-paced, intense action of this mode will appeal to existing Medal of Honor and FPS fans who are looking for a "quickplay" type of mode that utilizes the Wii controls or Nintendo Zapper in a totally immersive and intuitive way. It's a lot of fun and in our focus testing we've found that people can't seem to put it down, which is very encouraging.

Eurogamer: Will the on-rails version of Heroes 2 still be set in the same locations as the fully-fledged single player campaign?

Matt Tomprowski: While the new mode shares the same levels as the campaign mode, they have been totally re-designed to suit each particular game mode, so each level plays out quite differently depending on which mode you are in.

Eurogamer: Given that the PS2 has a well-established market for light gun games, why didn't you do a PS2 version as well?

Matt Tomprowski: We wanted to leverage the experience and technology of the Medal of Honor Heroes development team and that led us to the PSP and Wii platforms. The Zapper peripheral actually only became an option much later in our development cycle so the decision to develop on the Wii was not based on the Zapper peripheral at all.

Eurogamer: We didn't hear any mention of co-op multiplayer in the on-rails version. Can you confirm it won't be in there, and if so, why?

Matt Tomprowski: We wanted to focus our multiplayer efforts on delivering the best 32 player online multiplayer FPS experience for Wii gamers. We also feature full support of the Zapper in all of our game modes, including multiplayer.

Eurogamer: The PSP version will have the same single player campaign - is that correct? What compromises had to be made to get the game on the handheld?

Matt Tomprowski: We haven't had to make any compromises in designing the levels for the different platforms. The Wii version does have unique gesture-based moments that are not in the PSP version, but other than that the levels play very similarly. There are of course technical differences between the two platforms which require some PSP optimizations and controller differences, but with a console-length single-player campaign and 32-player online multiplayer we think the PSP version stands on its own as the definitive FPS title for the PSP.

Eurogamer: Has the lifting of the PSP's CPU speed cap helped you raise your ambitions? In what way has it helped?

Matt Tomprowski: The game runs at a solid and smooth frame rate without any changes to the CPU cap in both single player and in 32-player multiplayer so fortunately we have not needed to make any changes there. This worked out well for us since these updates probably came too late in our development cycle to integrate them

Eurogamer: Does the lack of a second PSP stick cause a problem? We've had major issues playing action games because of this, so how have you overcome this on PSP?

Matt Tomprowski: We were really happy with the controls established in the original Medal of Honor Heroes on the PSP and received a lot of good feedback from consumers. However, there's always room for improvement so we've continued to fine tune the controls and to use focus testing to ensure we have the best possible controls for an FPS on the PSP and we feel we've achieved that.

Eurogamer: 32 player on-the-move multiplayer for the PSP eh? Sounds impressive - how have you pulled that off, and what modes can we expect? How many maps?

Matt Tomprowski: While establishing 32 player online multiplayer on the PSP with the original Medal of Honor Heroes was a great accomplishment for the team, we approached Medal of Honor Heroes 2 with a mindset to learn from the previous version, build on its strengths and to improve it as much as possible. With those goals in mind we looked at the online user stats and forums from the original Medal of Honor Heroes and decided to focus in on the most popular game modes - Deathmatch and Infiltration (Capture the Flag) while also adding the much requested Team Deathmatch mode. We've also fine-tuned the weapon balancing and added six all-new maps that vary in environment and size. Of course, we still support continuous-joining servers so players can jump in and out of games anytime, anywhere and we also still have super customizable server options and support a ton of online stats and leaderboards.

Eurogamer: Which development team(s) were responsible for the game, and did they have a hand in any of the previous Medal of Honor titles? If so, which ones?

Matt Tomprowski: Medal of Honor Heroes 2 was designed and developed by the team at EA Canada, the same team that created the original Medal of Honor Heroes in collaboration with the Medal of Honor franchise team at EALA.