Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but turnabout is fair play. Although EA’s revival of its long-dormant Medal Of Honor franchise may feature the same Middle-Eastern setting and other general similarities to Activision’s Modern Warfare series, Infinity Ward proved when it pitched the first Call Of Duty against Medal Of Honor in 2003 that it wasn’t the thematic similarities that mattered – it was the differences in the marriages of these settings to respective game mechanics that was most important.

The original Call Of Duty curtailed the previously dominant MOH series’ position as the premier World War II shooter so astonishingly swiftly that EA – and Medal Of Honor itself – had no chance at recovery. The nascent Infinity Ward studio, its nucleus formed from influential members of 2015, Inc (which had developed the excellent Medal Of Honor Allied Assault for EA), had conquered not just only the WWII sub-genre, it had staked a bona fide claim to be one of the best games in the entire FPS oeuvre.

EA now has a similar mission on their hands. The former biggest publisher in the world has suffered the ignominy of watching Activision-Blizzard usurp it in the same manner Call Of Duty did to Medal Of Honor, and now it wants both positions back. To do so, and escape the grasping shadow of the franchise that pilfered from it so profitably, it’s going to have to be good. Really good.

Series alumni EA Los Angeles (formerly DreamWorks Interactive) has developed every main console entry in the series and is handling the single-player component. Following the exploits of a group of Special Forces Tier 1 Operatives as they battle against insurgents in Afghanistan, players will be tasked with everything from house-to-house fighting to piloting attack helicopters on bombing raids in the Afghan mountain ranges.

As is usual, EA LA has enlisted the help of several real-life Tier 1s to consult with regards to various facets of the game, but that doesn’t mean Medal Of Honor is going to become overtly realistic. The series made its name meshing real conflicts and Hollywood action with orchestral scores, action-movie point-to-point fighting and an overall feeling of heroic deeds done for the good of liberty. We would be very surprised to see the same not occur here, especially as Call Of Duty essentially took over the world with this same blueprint.

Still, this doesn’t mean that Electronic Arts will (or should) avoid making reference to some of the more controversial elements of the ‘War on Terror’. With regards to this, footage from the trailer that appears to show a man strapped to a chair covered in C4 explosives, as well as what appears to be an interrogation scene. It’s a fine line to judge – the purpose of the product is ostensibly entertainment, but to avoid or omit the more unsavoury elements of the war would be remiss on EA’s part. The clearly defined morality of the Second World War is a luxury that EA can no longer fall back on, and it will be of great interest to see how it interprets the shades of grey of this conflict.

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