I've seen the common "EA just copying COD" comment but that game needs some competition so it doesn't get lazy on us. I'm looking forward to how they are going to go about it.

Not really looking forward to a me too fps, but I wish EA LA well and say, "Ra Ra competition!"

Since DICE is doing the multiplayer for this one, I wonder how it will differ compared to the Bad Company and Battlefield series' online components.

Enh, I guess I'll transpose what I wrote elsewhere...

Maybe this will be games' Generation Kill, or the real Six Days in Fallujah, the war game that treats a real contemporary war seriously; maybe it will just be yet another blockbuster shooter. It's far too soon to tell, but as Chris Remo points out in the comments to the Gamasutra report:

Setting the game definitely in an ongoing war is, if nothing else, ballsy on EA's part, so I'm interested to watch how this pans out.

Does anyone actually think/hope that this might have any sort of mature or adult perspective?

Funny, every friend and relative I have that has served in Afghanistan or Iraq would consider that comment ridiculous.

This could be interesting if, as Ratboy says, this is a more serious take on the situation in the Middle East. The fact that it seems to be about some superhero operator "who takes on missions no one else can handle" does not fill me with hope though.

Because games are just games-- still surrounded by a stigma of being childish "games". Even if the story is as matured as The Hurt Locker, people are still going to see it as wrong simply because of the simple fact that games are made to be fun. Making fun of a situation, no matter how serious a light you shine on that situation, is still making fun of it. I personally understand that sentiment, but it doesn't stop me from enjoying certain games of the sort. At the same time, I'm not necessarily one to let the message of a game influence my reasoning or behavior, so I'm not going to allow myself to be desensitized to the realities of war-- I can differentiate between real war and game war.

On the other hand, what gets me is the blatant immaturity of companies that develop such games and turn them into Mountain Dew-fueled pissing contests so the college bro-hams can feel cool. The games that deal with war through juvenile eyes, so as to make the game "cool" looking (I'm looking at you, Army of Two). The big problem with all of these games about war (Modern or past) is that a large part of the emotion and level of empathy that a good war movie or book brings about is simply lost or glanced over to make way for better gameplay. How often do you empathize with a guy getting shot in the head? No, that behavior is encouraged, no matter what game it's in. And do we see the results? The splattered brains across the wall behind him? The missing chunks of skull? Do we really think about how that guy was a father, brother, son, cousin, uncle? Not often, if ever. Again, in the end a game is made to be fun. Good message or not, that is what a game developer is setting out to create. A good war novel or movie has set out for another purpose-- invoke emotion, garner empathy, make the viewer see a message-- or in the cases of the really good movies, feel a message. A game based on war simply cannot invoke such an emotion, because such a game would fail. Who would willingly choose to set out and kill other people for fun? Who really wants to willing force themselves through such a wave of negative emotions? So they have to dumb down those elements in these kinds of games, and it's sort of sad that it's currently necessary to make a game about modern warfare yet not really make it about modern warfare in all aspects, just the surface bits. Hopefully this genre won't always be this way, but by the time it has evolved to such levels, games will have to completely change their appearance/ stigma to the point that they won't be anything like what we play today.

Or maybe I'm really tired and should go to sleep.

PS. I don't really care about this game, but the art looks good.

If a game managed to pull this off successfully - doing a good enough job of drawing you in to the story beforehand so the events hit home - it would be amazing. I would buy it in a heartbeat.

Piling on this bandwagon, and I'm active duty. It's just a game, nothing more, nothing less. Shoot, in all likelyhood, I'll be back over there before the end of next year.

When I say "A game like 'Generation Kill' would be nice," I mean something a little more restrained than having Army Sergeants running around dual wielding sub-machine guns while calling down nuclear weapons. The Ultra Modern Warfare joke has been done.

And it must be said again, that is one rockin' beard.

To me it just seems exploitative, it's a gut reaction and I can't explain why.

I'm curious - it doesn't sound too far from what the guys behind Six Days in Fallujah - except that MoH will be solely about fictional characters. Thing is - based on that one Shacknews piece, Six Days surely wasn't the realistic experience Atomic had promised, and given the background of the team and the current 'benchmark for success' - Modern Warfare 2 - I doubt it'll be "the story of today's war". Mind you, I don't t think every game has to be an ArmA-like hardcore sim - but it doesn't necessarily have to be the Michael Bay-esque have scripted sh*t explode around the player experience either.

I like these threads and enjoyed participating in the one about the airport massacre in MW2, but after seeing the game in reality it struck me that taking this all very seriously just didn't fit with the reality of a big corporate-financed FPS title in the gaming mass market.

Don't we all know what this game is going to be like? You will be doing a series of missions that involve running around shooting a lot of taliban. Or sneaking around and shooting a lot of taliban. Or sneaking up and knifing a lot of taliban. And you will have taliban in trucks that you will shoot with a rocket. There will also be an occasional civilian that you're not supposed to shoot. And probably an escort mission or two.

And when you've finished doing that for 6-8 hours in single player, you will play multiplayer that's based around ranking up and unlocking new weapons and skills. That's what the awe-inspiring 14-35 year old male demographic will pay $60 to play. They don't want to play a video game version of excellently-reviewed The Hurt Locker, which bombed at the box office.

I'm not going to write this off until I see what they're doing with it - I think it's easy to just say 'meh, aping MW1 & 2', and while that might be superficially true, you never know, they might do something really interesting with it. The focus on beardy, behind-the-lines special ops chaps might make for interesting COIN type stuff like dressing in local clothing and infiltrating enemy camps.

Like I said, I'll wait until I see some footage and/or gameplay before forming an opinion. I'm a sucker for military FPSs anyway (I've bought and played the whole Brothers In Arms series, even though they sort of sucked, as well as a whole load of daft generic shooters - Black, anyone?).

Good points, just one small correction. Hurt Locker didn't bomb. It's considered a pretty big success in the indie film world in terms of business. Great movie though. Definitely worth catching at home if you missed it, or it missed your area.