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Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond director talks developing for VR

"It makes you feel like you're back there in World War 2," said game director Peter Hirschmann.

Brittany Vincent

September 30, 2019 2:35 PM

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Medal of Honor is coming back, but perhaps not in the way you might have expected. The classic first-person shooter franchise Medal of Honor is returning as a virtual reality title for Oculus Rift.

Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond is set to head out to Oculus Rift in 2020, developed by Respawn. Shacknews went hands-on with the game, chatting with game director Peter Hirschmann. Hirschmann spoke on the title's 2.5 years in development, touching on how to map natural human movement to a game controller, the difficulties with creating for VR, and the immersive effect the genre brings.

"We went all in 2.5 years ago," said Hirschmann, of the game's development cycle in the interview aboce. "Oculus has such amazing foresight into how they plan their hardware. They're putting a lot of effort into ensuring the content that's being built before and after has a really long (if you'll pardon the expression) half-life long into the future," he said. "Oculus is a good partner to content creators because they're always thinking about that stuff." He also spoke briefly on keeping things authentic as well as retaining the game's immersion factor. 

"The immersiveness makes it more fun and it's finding that sweet spot where it feels authentic, but it's fun and not a burden to the player." He detailed how players' physical items are stored on them in VR, and how you could pull out your Cold 45 and shooting downrage. But holstering guns isn't fun, and that's one of the ways the team "looked for the sweet spot" of giving authenticity but not burdening the player with aspects that weren't fun."

Be sure to check out the full interview for more great details on the latest Medal of Honor title. For more great interviews like this, be sure to head over and subscribe to both Shacknews and GamerhubTV on YouTube.

Brittany Vincent

Senior Editor

Fueled by horror, rainbow-sugar-pixel-rushes, and video games, Brittany is a Senior Editor at Shacknews who thrives on surrealism and ultraviolence. Follow her on Twitter @MolotovCupcake and check out her portfolio for more. Like a fabulous shooter once said, get psyched!