Falstein’s contribution didn’t go unacknowledged, though: he’s included as a character, complete with Hawaiian shirt, in Medal Of Honor’s multiplayer.Īt the time, there was little enthusiasm for the project among DWI’s corporate management. “You’d go back and forth flipping between missions and 12 days after D-Day the brothers would meet up.” Concerned that players would baulk at a game set 50 years in the past, DWI’s management pulled the plug after six months of work. “My concept was that you would follow two brothers – one assaulting the beach and another who was a paratrooper who came in the night before and landed behind German lines,” says Falstein. Veteran game designer Noah Falstein, who met Spielberg during his visits to LucasArts in the early ’90s, was DWI’s third employee and in 1995 worked on Normandy Beach (aka Beach Ball), a squad-based game set around the D-Day landings. Steven Spielberg’s desire to make a war game began much earlier than 1997. His R-rated movie was too bloody for kids but, inspired by his teenage son Max’s love of GoldenEye, the director wanted to share his deeply ingrained interest in WW2 with younger audiences via video games. Spielberg, at the time deep in post-production on Saving Private Ryan, outlined his idea for a game to DWI’s team. The story behind Medal of Honor began, appropriately enough, on the 11th day of the 11th month of 1997. “He thought games could unlock new ways to tell stories.” “I think he was inspired by the invention and toy-like sense of creation and engagement that overtook people in the games business,” explains Medal of Honor’s executive producer Patrick Gilmore. It wasn’t a vanity play more a sign of how much he loved video games. At DreamWorks Interactive (DWI) he finally had a chance to get some skin in the game personally. Over the years he’d exerted a largely unacknowledged influence over the medium’s early evolution, working as an unofficial consultant at both Atari and LucasArts.

The bearded director and DreamWorks co-founder recognised the appeal of interactive entertainment earlier than anyone else in Hollywood.

Medal of honor game case