In 1999, Microsoft and Dreamworks Interactive released Medal Of Honor, a military shooter that put you in the shoes of a US soldier serving under the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). The game is directed by Steven Spielberg, who came fresh from the success of his WW2 movie Saving Private Ryan. In the same way that Saving Private Ryan was both a piece of entertainment, and educational in teaching a generation of movie goers about that war, Spielberg wanted to do the same thing for video games with Medal Of Honor. Quite famously, Spielberg even had Dreamworks Interactive recreate the Normandy landing scene that he had in the movie Saving Private Ryan, and made it the introduction to Medal Of Honor.
24 years later, that record of service is coming to an end. Microsoft is shutting down the online multiplayer servers to the remaining Medal Of Honor games that still had them. These would be Medal Of Honor from 2010, Medal Of Honor: Airborne, and Medal Of Honor: Warfighter. All these games would fail to reignite interest in the franchise from over a decade ago. EA went a little bit above and beyond keeping the servers for these games running for the loyal fans within that time given their financial failure. Now, as reported by Insider Gaming, these servers are finally going to be shut down.
Medal of Honor is the grandfather of the modern multiplayer military shooter. It is what Super Mario Bros is to platformers, and Street Fighter 2 is to fighting games.
Prior to Medal of Honor, there was a lot more variety in the shooter genre, muddling in themes like cyberpunk (Deus Ex), fantasy (Powerslave), and spies (No One Lives Forever). However, the appeal of a shooter that taught history on top of being a fun game to play surprisingly struck with veterans and older gamers, aside from younger gamers.
That push for a realistic experience of the war would also influence DICE’s Battlefield 1942 and Infinity Ward’s Call Of Duty, both also WW2 themed military shooters. In time, these two games would outpace Medal of Honor, as the genre would evolve to include online multiplayer on top of their narrative campaign, and eventually made the transition to consoles.
EA would eventually prioritize the Battlefield series over Medal of Honor, as gainful competition for the Call of Duty franchise. But they do have at least one new Medal of Honor game still live with its own servers. However, the VR game Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond had a mixed critical reception, and is also unlikely to make the franchise popular again. With no announcements for new Medal of Honor games from EA, and EA’s own reputation for neglecting its own prodigious library of classic games, this may be the end of Medal of Honor as a franchise.
