MOH: New game and expansion on PC

EA has announced plans to release two new Medal of Honor titles on the PC. The first is a full-blown sequel to Allied Assault called, fittingly enough, Pacific Assault, which has been in the hands of EA's LA studio since MOHAA expansion Spearhead was completed last November. And because Pacific Assault shared pre-production work (location research, etc) with console FPS Rising Sun - announced last week - we can expect to see it by next January.

The game will focus on the Pacific campaign, beginning with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour (in a scene equivalent to Allied Assault's D-Day landing) and escalating, as the Yanks get well and truly involved in World War II after a nervous start. EA LA is unsurprisingly promising to follow Allied Assault's approach to the letter, with slow-paced but heavily-scripted action sequences, AI-controlled squad mates and a reasonable story - which focuses on how your character changes mentally and physically after months at the front.

EA LA is deviating slightly in introducing slightly more non-linear levels with multiple paths to explore (God knows how your poor little compass will keep up) and things to consider - like whether you take on a couple of tanks down one road or carve up some soldiers on another, knowing that ignoring your duties could come back and shoot you in the arse with a 88mm shell.

On the graphical front, EA claims to have rewritten the game's renderer to compete with next year's visuals, scavenging only the most fundamental bits and bobs from the underlying Quake III engine. There will be support for much more on-screen action and new lighting effects, and we look forward to seeing these for ourselves, but at the moment EA still considers the game pre-production, so no screenshots for now. We'll let you know when that changes.

Meanwhile, EA has farmed out production of a second MOHAA expansion, currently untitled, to external developer TKO Software, perhaps with a view to buying them if they prove successful. The developer, headed up by Jedi Knight designer Justin Chin, has already promised a longer expansion with more drawn out action sequences, a new multi-player mode and various new maps as the series takes a trip through the deserts of North Africa and the mountains of Italy.