Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault interview

Computer and Video Games interviews lead designer Dave Nash about Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault, the latest game in the popular Medal of Honor series:

How much, and what types of, research are you undertaking for the game?

Nash: Our research for this game has been intense and wide-ranging. We've done what you might expect, such as reading autobiographies by the men who fought in the war, watching films and documentaries, and scouring the Internet for pictures, stories and any other pertinent information we could find about the Pacific during World War II.

But we've also had teams of people fly to many of the battle locations, escorted by veterans who were actually there during the fighting. For our boot camp section of the game, we had one of the last remaining World War II drill instructors ("Tiny" Renaker) come in for an afternoon to break down what it was like for the kids entering the war back then.

Last but not least, Captain Dale Dye spent a couple of days with us, first teaching us about some of the differences between Japanese and American battle tactics and then showing us how they actually work in practice by taking the team to a paintball field, splitting us up into squads, and lettings us go at it.

I could continue giving examples, as the list really does go on and on, but I can't recall another project I've been on that did nearly as much research as we have.