Medal of Honor's Greg Goodrich

On respect, authenticity and why they chose Afghanistan.

Interview by Tom Bramwell Former Editor-in-Chief

Updated on Sept. 17, 2010

Eurogamer You said earlier that you have a bunch of veterans from the original Medal of Honor team on your team now, along with various other imports. I was wondering if you scooped up any of the Infinity Ward guys who fled after that whole debacle, since everyone assumed they all went to Respawn?

Greg Goodrich

A lot of them did, a lot of them are still there. We have members that have been on every Medal of Honor, we have members who have been on just a few. We have individuals that this is their first Medal of Honor - this is my first Medal of Honor.

Rich Farley, our senior creative director - he and I worked together years ago on shooters, and then he was on COD for many years at Treyarch. We have people from all over the place. You need fresh new blood, you need veterans, you need all types, and I think we have a good mix.

Eurogamer I think the expectation is - especially given what John Riccitiello's said about wanting to be in a position of dominance in the shooter space within a couple of years - that you guys are going to start work on another Medal of Honor. Do you think you'll stick with the Tier One Operators?

Greg Goodrich

To back up a little bit, for us it's all just about making a great game. We concentrate on the work. We don't have a big pie-chart of percentages of the shooter market, at least not on the development team. Hopefully, if gamers like this game and it does well, they'll allow us to do another one. We love this franchise, we love what it stands for, and we'd love to keep doing more of them, but we'll wait and see how fans take hold of this one. We certainly have ideas on what we want to do next...

Eurogamer Do you think you'll draw on the Tier Ones? Are there more stories to tell within that?

Greg Goodrich

Oh goodness yes. Oh yes. There's lots of stories with these guys. Like I said, we're still focused on the initial part of this conflict, and... Yeah, if they want to go another round, I don't know - after this one, who knows if they will!

Eurogamer Going all the way back to the original game, there was that connection with Steven Spielberg. Do you know if he's seen what you're doing with this one and if he approves of it?

Greg Goodrich

[Turns to PR] How do I answer that? It's a very loaded question.

Eurogamer Just a yes or no.

Greg Goodrich

I'll say this - there is a connection, but he's not involved in our game. Clearly though there are moments when we pay tribute to where we came from. Clearly on this Ranger landing in the Shahikot, this is our Normandy beach invasion. There's even a moment where Hernandez sits down and says, "Hey, switch with me, I've seen this movie." And with Jim Patterson - he's the grandson of Lieutenant Jimmy Patterson from Medal of Honor and Frontline. So there's certain moments that we give winks and nods to Medal of Honors gone by.

Eurogamer But you hope that Spielberg, if he did see what you were up to, would approve of the authenticity, of that through line of context?

Greg Goodrich

I would hope so. Nothing's changed as far as our intent and our tone. There's been a lot of things in the press recently about what we're doing, but if you pay attention, you understand and you know games and what Medal of Honor is about, you'll notice that even though we're out of World War II, those core tenets of respect and authenticity still remain.

Greg Goodrich is executive producer on Medal of Honor, which is due out for PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 on 15th October.