Upcoming VR-exclusive Medal of Honor: Above And Beyond has enrolled series veteran Michael Giacchino and Nami Melumad for its soundtrack, and you can listen to the main theme now.
Giacchino himself will be best known for recent Hollywood projects like Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and Spider-Man: Far From Home, but actually has a long history with the Medal of Honor series itself. He’s worked on almost every entry in the series since its first release in 1999 (including the very excellent score for Medal of Honor: Frontline). Bringing him on board for Above and Beyond is a bit of a full-circle moment, as the game’s also developed by members of the original Medal of Honor team at Respawn Entertainment.
Melumad, meanwhile, is a series newcomer that’s recently worked on TV series like Absentia and Dead End. Together the pair have released the main theme for the game, which is available to stream now. If you’re familiar with the series’ older entries (and not the more recent modern-era games) then this will sound pretty nostalgic; lots of soothing patriotic theatrics and warming lulls to be found here.
Not long to go now – Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond arrives on PC VR (both the Oculus Store and SteamVR) on December 11th. The game promises a highly-polished single-player campaign paired with multiplayer modes too.
Recently publisher Facebook confirmed that it would look into bringing the game to the Oculus Quest after release, but the studio won’t compromise the PC version in order to make it happen. “Once the PC content is final, we will assess what it would take to get Above and Beyond on Quest, and with that exercise complete we’ll be able to make a decision,” Oculus Studios producer Mike Doran told us. “Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond is an extremely large, complicated game. Such a port would not be trivial and we won’t do it if we don’t think we can deliver on quality.”
When the original Medal of Honor launched way back in 1999 it included a feature called ‘The Gallery’, with stories from veterans of WWII. When Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond was announced last year Respawn Entertainment said it would be making a return, with a newly released trailer giving a first look.
A model of the Peenemünde testing and production grounds from Reiner Sigmund’s onsite museum
The Gallery will be a collection of short documentary films featuring interviews and stories recounted by WWII veterans. The studio brought in Emmy-winning filmmaker Anthony Giacchino to create the pieces, who then added a further dimension by taking some of the veterans to locations where they stood in Europe 75+ years previously to recant their experiences.
“The goal of Medal of Honor is to be grounded and emotionally authentic. To be as true as we can to the people who actually fought in it and lived in it,” said Peter Hirschmann, game director of Medal of Honor: Above and Beyondin a blog post. “The goal is to tell and show as much truth as possible and let people get the tiniest of glimpses of what it must’ve been like.”
Also included in The Gallery will be 360° VR footage of pivotal locations from throughout WWII such as Omaha Beach.
While Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond has been confirmed for PC VR headsets, there’s also a possibility of Oculus Quest support in the future. Nothing is guaranteed yet but in a recent Reddit post, Oculus Studios Executive Producer Mike Doran responded to a question regarding native support for Oculus Quest 2 by saying: “We are going to try, once the PC sku is finished.”
When it arrives next month Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond will feature a single-player campaign with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) aiding the French Resistance on daring raids against Nazi bases. The title will also feature a multiplayer, with five modes and 10 maps for 12 player matches.
Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond will launch on the Oculus Store and Steam on 11th December 2020, supporting Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and Valve Index. For further updates, keep reading VRFocus.
It looks like the Oculus Studios-funded Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond from Respawn Entertainment and EA has a chance of getting an Oculus Quest port after all — although it might only be for Quest 2.
On Reddit today, Oculus Studios producer Mike Doran replied to a comment asking about whether or not the PC VR-exclusive first-person shooter, Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond, ever had a chance of coming to “Quest 2 natively.” Doran said that they are “going to try, once the PC SKU is finished,” and that Respawn/EA are “fully involved and onboard with this ambition.” He then added they “don’t know yet” how long that would possibly take.
This is pretty big news. Every bit of information we’ve heard about Medal of Honor seemed to indicate that it would remain a PC VR exclusive game given the scope of the project. I got a chance to go hands-on with it briefly over a year ago on Oculus Rift S and came away impressed with the direction the campaign is taking and am eager to see how multiplayer shapes up.
As exciting as this news is, it isn’t entirely surprising. Back when Medal of Honor VR was first revealed I asked Game Director Peter Hirschmann from Respawn about a Quest version and he didn’t deny it. Instead, he told me the company was “focusing on Rift” but then added that they “love the Quest” as well.
We’ve reached out to Facebook for further comment and will update this story if we hear back.
Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond, the next big Oculus Studios game, is set to launch on December 11th. A new trailer for the title highlights the in-game ‘gallery’ which includes documentary short films featuring World War II veterans.
Many big game productions often see developers trying to get as close to the source material as they can, whether that be visiting inspirational locations, using photogrammetry to capture real assets, or recording authentic sound effects from real-world vehicles, guns, and more.
Respawn Entertainment, the studio behind Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond, is going… erm… above and beyond with this sort of background research in an effort not only to bring authenticity to the game but also present & preserve the stories of real World War II veterans whose trials and tribulations inspired the game. The studio says the game will include a ‘gallery’ where players will be able to view short-form documentary films shot during the game’s production.
In a new trailer released today, the studio made it clear how seriously it’s taking this venture. While it’s said that the game doesn’t depict any specific stories from the veterans interviewed, Respawn says the stories help to unscore the real-world emotion and gravity of the heroic feats that players will experience.
Though the trailer mentions that 360° cameras were used at some points during the production, it isn’t clear if the included documentary shorts will be presented in an immersive format or just traditional video.
Oculus Studios
What is clear is that beyond just making a compelling VR game based on WWII, the studio wants to show reverence for the people that actually had to live through the events in so that others could be entertained by them decades later from the safety of a simulation.
Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond is set to launch on December 11th on both Oculus PC and Steam (which will make it the first Oculus Studios title to also launch on Steam).
A new trailer for Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond details the efforts of designers to focus on authenticity while building the VR game.
The 6-minute trailer focuses on the game’s “Gallery” feature which includes a “collection of short documentary films featuring WWII veterans that players will be able to view within the game.” The highly anticipated Facebook-funded PC VR game revives a beloved gaming franchise in VR from developer Respawn Entertainment. It hits the Oculus Store and Steam on December 11.
Respawn was acquired by gaming giant Electronic Arts in 2017 and the PC VR game’s launch may represent a kind of end to Facebook’s first chapter trying to make virtual reality a mainstream technology. Medal of Honor on an Oculus Quest or Quest 2 officially requires an Oculus Link wired connection to a gaming PC in order to play, though it is likely you’ll be able to get it running wirelessly with a solution like Virtual Desktop as well, with some performance caveats.
We’re of course eager to dive into the full game and see how it lives up to the hype. The game launching on Steam is an unexpected move for a Facebook-funded project and we’ll be curious to see if it becomes part of a trend. Facebook is ending the Rift PC-required product line early next year and we’re curious to see what becomes of the forthcoming Lone Echo 2 and other previously-released Oculus exclusives. Facebook acquired Lone Echo’s studio Ready At Dawn so there’s some complications there, but is it possible that other previously-released Oculus exclusives could make the jump to Steam as well?
Former Oculus Rift exclusive, Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond, will be launching on SteamVR too, publisher Facebook has confirmed. Not only that, but we know the release date too.
Medal of Honor VR will launch on both the Oculus Rift platform and SteamVR on December 11th. The news was announced during the Facebook Connect livestream. Appearing on SteamVR will mean that owners of headsets like the HTC Vive, Valve Index and the upcoming HP Reverb G2 will get to play the game too. Above and Beyond was first announced last year and is highly anticipated for its single-player campaign and as-yet-unrevealed multiplayer modes too.
This is a surprising move for Facebook, but it makes sense given the timing. The company also announced the Quest 2 standalone headset today, which supports PC via Oculus Link. The company is also killing Rift, which is a PC-only headset line. But with some Rift exclusives like Medal of Honor still in development, you can see why the company is opening the game up to more platforms.
Still, the move is a big one. Facebook has published numerous Rift-exclusive titles under its Oculus Studios label over the past four years. In fact, we asked the company if it would give other headsets access to the Oculus Store when we first heard that the Rift line was going away, but it declined to comment. It remains to be seen if the upcoming Lone Echo 2 and previously-released Oculus exclusives will come to SteamVR too.
Will you be playing Medal of Honor VR on SteamVR or the Oculus Store? Let us know in the comments below!
The upcoming Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond will let you skip its “intense sequences”, developer Respawn has confirmed.
Game Director Peter Hirschmann confirmed as much in a deep-dive into last month’s new trailer with IGN. At one point, the trailer shows the player jumping out of a B-17 bomber in a dramatic sequence.
“Doing this in VR is especially insane, you feel like you’re really falling,” Hirschmann notes. “We do give players the option to skip intense sequences and the ability to revisit them once they’re feeling up to it.”
This seems like a wise choice. Though blockbuster action moments such as this are one of the reasons we’re really looking forward to Above and Beyond, they definitely look like they could be too much for more sensitive or first-time VR users. Having the option to revisit them easily also means no one’s really losing out on anything.
The deep-drive also reveals a new character making his debut in the game and talks about the process of bringing D-Day to life in VR. We recently spoke to Hirschmann ourselves about the game. You can read our full interview here, in which he talks about the game’s cinematic qualities and its length.
Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond is due out this holiday season on the Oculus Rift. You can also play it on Oculus Quest via the Link option, but there’s no dedicated port of the game to talk about yet. Will you be picking the experience up? Let us know in the comments below!
Last week we had the chance to speak with Peter Hirschmann, Game Director at Respawn Entertainment on Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond.
We already published part of that interview in which Hirschmann discussed the upcoming VR shooter’s multiplayer game modes. Now you can read the majority of the complete interview transcribed down below. Some sections have been left out to improve clarity and flow and some passages have been lightly edited for consistency without altering any meanings.
UploadVR: Let’s get started by talking about the new trailer. I thought it was great! As a piece of entertainment in and of itself it was very well done and very cinematic with lots of action. Last year we spoke about Medal of Honor as a concept was inspired by Saving Private Ryan and Spielberg as the origin of the franchise. The trailer felt like a return to those roots. Is that true for the rest of the game too?
Peter Hirschmann: The game as well? Well, you say it’s cinematic. When someone refers to something that’s cinematic, I think they’re typically referring to something that had an emotional impact through the combination of the cinematography, the lighting, the performances, the music, you know, it’s just such a key part of it all. And most importantly, whatever was happening from a story perspective around the characters, all those come together to create a cinematic moment. But a spectacle by itself is just gratuitous and pointless.
But if there’s stakes involved, especially involving characters that you’ve gotten to know, that’s when you have those cinematic moments. So with Medal of Honor, we’re trying to create those emotional moments and with VR, as you know, your head is the camera, so there’s no cutting, there’s no edits. Everything you experience, you experience literally in first person. You could say we’re putting the first-person back in first-person shooters. You don’t spend any time in cutaways, looking at other characters or looking at yourself in third person or seeing scenes that you’re not privy to. The entire experience, the entire game, is something that you experience in real-time, in first-person, from your perspective.
And the story, the immersion and stereoscopic nature of wearing an HMD just does not come through in trailers, you’re literally removing a dimension from the experience.
UploadVR: Kind of shifting gears a little bit, I know last year we talked about the length and the format of the game. I think you said it was shooting for around 10 -12 hours and there were 50 mission segments, that’s how you described it. Is that similar to how the game is structured now?
Peter Hirschmann: 54.
UploadVR: Oh! 54, okay.
Peter Hirschmann: Yeah. I think we’ve netted out it’s about 10 hours. If you play it with a consistent pace, it can certainly stretch much longer if you go after every collectible and go into every nook and cranny. But some levels are very linear, like the U-Boat. It’s just a giant metal tube. So, you know, you start at one end and fight to the back, but most of the segments are multiple paths, sometimes three or four different ways to play through it.
There are lots of different ways to play, just even one piece of geography. So if you’re not speed-running, but if you’re playing at a natural pace and experiencing the story, it’s netted out to about 10.
And when you add, well, we haven’t talked about these much, but we have what we call combat exercises. The final name might be a little different, the shipping version, but they’re sort of just shooting Nazis because it’s fun.
I gotta be careful here, I don’t want to say gauntlet-style levels, but they’re sort of challenges. We just put you into a small map and just waves come at you while we let you kind of play with different weapons.
UploadVR: Oh, great. That kind of stuff is quite popular. I feel like it’s even more popular in VR, because I feel like with a lot of VR games, especially shooters, it’s difficult to take the time to appreciate how a weapon handles when you’re in the middle of a mission. So I think people love those sorts of shooting gallery / wave arenas where they can just kind of adlib a little bit more.
Peter Hirschmann: That’s exactly it. It came out of honestly our gray box test level that we literally have as just a giant gray box that we would use to test weapons.
And then we just added some Nazis walking around that would react. And it was like, s***, this is pretty fun. And like, can we gamify this? And then, the idea of it even becoming not just a mini game, but giving the player the opportunity to play with the weapons before they’re in the mission. Thematically, it’s like you’re visiting the quartermaster and they say, ‘Here you go. Take all the time you want!’ And the gamified leap is, you know, you’re using your imagination that instead of shooting targets we give you actual fully-animated characters to shoot at as the gamey conceit.
UploadVR: Yeah, you can tell modes like this are quite popular. For Boneworks, back whenever that first came out, one of the first things people were asking for was that kind of content because when they were doing YouTube videos and stuff during development they had that sort of gray box test level that they would show off all the weapons and physics. And everyone was like, ‘Wait! Hold on! Where’s this level, I just beat the game. I never got to go there!’
Switching gears again, can you divulge any details about the opening mission? Yeah. I don’t remember if we talked about this last time.
Peter Hirschmann: Yeah. Well, the opening, the prologue, we have a prologue, so the prologue, you know, and this is getting back to. Again, pulling some elements from those original Medal of Honor games forward into this game, one of the key narrative pieces of that original Medal of Honor was the character you’re playing being nominated for the Medal of Honor before the game starts. That’s what gets you the attention of the group that recruits you.
The Medal of Honor is a sacred award. The Medal of Honor is not something that you should be earning points to unlock. It’s in the language of the Medal of Honor itself. You never talk about people winning, people are awarded it.
So we thought let’s bring that idea forward to this game. In earlier MoH games it always happened off-screen but we thought we could give you just a little taste of your character. The prologue starts at North Africa and originally it was just gonna be an of-screen sort of thing that the player goes in and does a daring rescue mission to to save some allied troops.
But that implies an existing high-level of skill and we don’t know want the player to have to do that at the very beginning of the game. So we have this conceit that you’re wounded, you’re hurt in the execution of that mission, which is true to the nature of the award. If you ever meet a living Medal of Honor recipient you’re meeting someone who should have died.
UploadVR: So essentially you play as Tom Hanks in Saving Private Ryan, but if he had lived at the end.
Peter Hirschmann: Yeah, yeah, yeah. You’re waking up. I never actually made that connection, but yeah, that’s a good one to make. The medic gets you in time. And, the thing is, it’s a game about shooting Nazis. We wanted you to be able to shoot a Nazi literally in the first 15 seconds of the game.
So as you awake and look around it’s North Africa, there’s Desert Corps running around, Palm trees, and as you’re coming to the NPC allies are quickly give you context of everything.
By now you know you did something heroic. Then out in the distance you see a Nazi running at you and we give you the chance to pull your pistol out and shoot that first Nazi right then within the first 10-15 seconds of the game.
UploadVR: Going back to something you mentioned earlier about ‘Putting the first-person back in first-person shooters,’ my question about that is now that we’re almost five years into consumer-grade VR we’ve obviously had a lot of first-person shooters in VR. What are some of the ways that you feel Medal of Honor differentiates itself?
We’ve all played Onward, Pavlov, DOOM, Farpoint, Firewall, and all those kinds of games. So where does Medal of Honor sit on that spectrum and how is it different?
Peter Hirschmann: Well, every game you just named is great. We’ve played and loved and learned from them all to be sure.
We want to make it as accessible as possible. Accessibility for us is a term that has a lot of important meanings that applies to different elements of the game. Of course, you start with the controls. I mean we are on this cutting edge state-of-the-art platform and it’s one of Miyamoto’s tenants going all the way back to the early days of console: It all starts with the controller. Back then, it was a D-pad and two buttons and now, you know, it’s motion controls. I mean, it’s crazy, but that core still applies. It all starts with the controls.
We spent two years just iterating on the weapons stuff. We wanted to build something that felt immersive but didn’t overwhelm the player.
UploadVR: If I remember correctly, the reloading is not like a one-to-one simulation, like in something such as Onward. It was kind of a halfway point.
Peter Hirschmann: Yeah, that’s a great way to put it. For most weapons it’s a three-step process. Eject the clip, grab a new one, slam it in and charge the weapon. And then every weapon is a little bit different. Like, maybe the bolt is on a different side, where you load it’s a little different, and so on. It’s something that becomes a slightly skill-based activity, but you build a muscle memory for it.
UploadVR: Can you tell me anything about multiplayer?
Peter Hirschmann: You know, we have conventional modes that just by the nature of being in VR and being the nature of our systems, it’s a different experience. It’s just the locomotion and being able to lean and peek and hide and say cover.
That adds a depth beyond just straight death match and TDM [team deathmatch] that’s cool. Our take on sabotage is something that you can only do in VR because of how you interact with the environment and how you interact with the mode playing off of bomb placement for bomb diffusal fantasy.
You know, there are things you can do in VR. And again, we abstract it down to the most accessible mechanics. But with VR where you’re interacting with the world and every surface is available to you. There’s things you can do that are really cool, that would be hard to do on a flat screen.
That would be hard to do with just a conventional controller. And those are the kinds of things that we really leaned into and went deep on because it’s like, wow, this again, death match, team death match, domination, whoop — gave one away!
When you put them in a VR environment you still put them in our maps. So due to the weapon handling and nature of the platform, they’re going to feel different. But at least the rule sets are the rule sets and conventional and easy to get.
UploadVR: Cool! I’m really excited to hopefully learn more about the multiplayer soon.
Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond still doesn’t have a release date, but the latest trailer from Gamescom indicates it’s still coming this year exclusively to the PC VR Rift platform. Stay up to date with all the latest Medal of Honor VR news in our coverage hub for the game right here.
What do you think of how it sounds? Let us know down in the comments below!
Last week Game Director on Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond, Peter Hirschmann, revealed a bunch of new details about the VR shooter’s multiplayer modes.
Prior to the interview Hirschmann teased that the multiplayer felt so unique and special to play that it included things “you can only do in VR” which seems like a pretty drastic statement. Upon further investigation though, via talking to Hirschmann himself, it sounds like this was just his way of explaining how exciting it is to play this sort of game in VR.
“You know, we have conventional modes that just by the nature of being in VR and being the nature of our systems, it’s a different experience. It’s just the locomotion and being able to lean and peek and hide and say cover.
That’s just, that adds a depth to just straight death match and TDM [team deathmatch] that’s cool. Uh, I, our, our take on sabotage is something that you can only do in VR because of how you interact with the environment and how you interact with the mode playing off of bomb placement for bomb diffusal fantasy.
You know, there are things you can do in VR. And again, we abstract it down to the most accessible mechanics. But with VR where you’re interacting with the world and every surface is available to you. There’s things you can do that are really cool, that would be hard to do on a flat screen.
That would be hard to do with just a conventional controller. And those are the kinds of things that we really leaned into and went deep on because it’s like, wow, this again, death match, team death match, domination, whoop — gave one away!
That again, you put them in a VR environment, you put them in our maps. Um, you know, it’s in the, in our weapon handling, it’s just, it just by the nature of the platform, they’re going to feel different. Um, but at least the rule sets are the rule sets are, are very convinced. The rule sets are conventional and easy to get.”
Peter Hirschmann, Game Director at Respawn Entertainment, says the upcoming Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond features multiplayer modes “you can only do in VR”.
Above and Beyond, which revealed a new trailer yesterday, is of course a VR exclusive. By modes you can only “do” in VR, then, Hirschmann likely means gameplay styles that would only be possible on the new platform.
“The thing about VR is — I’ve spent so […] much of my career trying to map human movements to a controller and just figuring out, like, making movement feel good.” Hirschmann explained during an interview on yesterday’s Gamescom Opening Night Live event. “And one of the hardest ones is leaning. And, in VR, you know how you duck? You just duck. And how you lean in VR? You just lean. And so the ability to lean around the corner, just peek around the corner is just — it heightens the tension so much. It makes it feel all the more real.”
“You put that into a multiplayer experience, it just raises that to a whole other level,” the developer continued. “So we are shipping — in addition to the campaign — we are shipping a full suite of VR modes, including a few that you can only do in VR, and we’re really excited about people playing those.”
Yesterday’s trailer featured new footage for the single-player campaign, but Respawn still hasn’t shared much about multiplayer. We’ll definitely be curious to see what the developer means by modes that can only be done in VR. Will you be playing the Medal of Honor VR multiplayer modes later this year? Let us know in the comments below!
