Medal of Honor Interview

There is a pretty extensive interview with Ritual level designer Benson Russell up at Gamespy. Benson was working at 2015 until November, and so the interview focuses on Medal of Honor: Allied Assault. There are questions about why he left 2015, what people can expect from the full version of the game, research that they did on the title, the movie Saving Private Ryan being a resource for the game, why blood is absent from the game, if there were any features in the game that were a bitch to add, if it was more difficult to work on a WW2 game or the SiN expansion Wages of SiN, some playing tips for the MoH demo and more.

GameSpy: I may as well tackle this early: there's a petition floating around -- a "give us blood" petition from game fans. Can you try and explain what this "blood" issue is about? Benson Russell: EA's goal for the game was to get a teen rating. The game needed to reach as broad an audience as possible, and that meant not putting blood in the game. Personally speaking, at first I was a bit miffed by it because I wanted to see some 'tasteful' blood effects (meaning no over-the-top Quake3 style gibs), but after all the animations were added to the characters, I really didn't miss it. The characters still behave and respond depending upon what location of the body they get hit in a realistic fashion. Plus there is a dust spray effect that happens as it would in real life. The overall effect is convincing enough for me that I don't miss the blood. 2015 has some very talented animators that did an awesome job. [...]