Respawn Entertainment, developer of Apex Legends and the Titanfall games, is returning to its roots and making a new Medal of Honor game. The new World War 2 shooter will put you in the shoes of an OSS agent operating in occupied Europe, fighting German forces in mainland France, but also in missions that take place in submarines, on sinking battleships, and on snowy mountain sides. Oh, and the whole game is in virtual reality. It looks excellent.
We've known that Respawn Entertainment was working on a virtual reality game for Facebook's Oculus VR headsets for two years now, but it's only today that it's been announced that the team is returning to Medal of Honor. The founders of Respawn Entertainment formerly founded Infinity Ward, the studio responsible for creating the Medal of Honor games and later Call of Duty.
You can see the first trailer for Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond below:
Above and Beyond looks surprisingly playful despite its setting. You can catch German grenades out of the air and throw back at your enemies, pull out grenade pins with your teeth, throw your combat knife, and do things like climb ropes and chains. There's an impressive-looking set piece on a battleship in which you're climbing up the now-vertical deck of the ship as it sinks into the ocean. In another you see the player climbing a mountainside and, with one hand holding the rope, pulling their gun out with the other and shooting a German soldier above them.
While VR may still not be a mainstream gaming platform, Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond, looks like a full-on first-person shooter of the type you'd expect on consoles. We're going hands-on (and face first) with the game soon, so we'll have impressions and an interview with the developer going live in the next few days.
With many shooter developers moving away from the World War 2 setting over the past decade, there's a lot about Above and Beyond to be excited about.
Featured Image Credit: EATopics: Respawn Entertainment, virtual reality, EA