The title of this entry comes from a line of VO in the Neptune mission of Medal Of Honor: Airborne for the PC, Xbox360, and PS3.
I worked on the game as a Level Designer for Electronic Arts and lived at the Oakwood Apartments in Marina Del Rey. In one way or another I contributed to every mission (long live Flak Tower!), but I was designated Mission Lead for Operation Neptune. In the mission, the player would jump with the 82nd Airborne division over Normandy France and push through enemy defenses towards the beach, where thousands of Allied troops landed on the morning of D-Day.
The level design was literally an uphill battle. The majority of the playspace was cast upon sloped terrain and this had a trickle-down effect to almost every gameplay system including placing objects, creating AI cover nodes and path nodes, AI locomotion and animation, player navigation, and sightlines. I had two veteran FPS Designers at my command, and even they were as weary and beaten down by the problems with Neptune as I was near the end.
The Airborne team kept its spirits up by hosting finger-rocket capture the flag tournaments, actively contributing to a bloopers screenshots folder, and passing around Photoshopped images of team members. I received recognition from the team (earned my 'wings') in January 2007 for standing up all of our missions in pre-production before we went on Christmas break but my real morale boost would come unexpectedly and from a person outside of the team.
One early morning in the spring of 2007 I walked through the halls towards my hex and overheard, "Is Steven in yet?", and, "No, but he's due any minute." "I'm right here!" I replied, and quickly realized that they were talking about Steven Spielberg. I went about the business of D-Day victory as usual when my Development Director asked me to be ready to demo Neptune for Spielberg in 30 minutes.
I had watched "Saving Private Ryan" even before working on Airborne, and pored over numerous historical books and documents on the subject, but wasn't prepared to have Steven Spielberg scrutinize my struggle with Neptune. I prepared for the meeting like I prepare for most things: by not preparing and simply letting it happen.
I walked into the meeting room and shook Steven's hand, being introduced by my Development Director, noticing that his hand was silky soft to the touch. I proceeded to explain the Neptune mission, the Allied objectives and the Axis defenses, the airdrop, and the historical authenticity to him, knowing that he must be well versed in each detail, perhaps even more so than I. As my in-game avatar dropped out of the C-47, I steered the parachute towards each objective: there was a Tiger tank, a spotting tower, and a radar antenna that the player had to knock out in any order desired.
I landed and ran towards the radar antenna objective, killing Nazi soldiers nonchalantly as I nimbly picked my way over carefully-placed obstacles and terrain as I did hundreds of times in the editor and in my sleep. I entered the encounter space and pulled up behind a shattered stone wall with a couple other Allied paratroopers. I peeked over the cover object in a practiced scripted fashion in order to play up the firefight and to get a good look at the main objective - the radar antenna. That's when Spielberg remarked, "Hey, that's the radar from my 'Ryan' set." Yes indeed, Mr. Spielberg, we drew much inspiration from your film. We also did our homework and ultimately settled on the radar antenna from the movie even though it looks like the skeleton of a drive-in movie theater screen from a distance.
Thanks for noticing Steven!
One thing that someone didn't do their homework on relates to this "Medal Of Honor: Airborne mystery picture" that I sent to the development team:
Deep within a German bunker somewhere, there is an eraser with the word 'eraser' on it. I much prefer the babelfish-translated word, 'Radiergummi'; sounds much more Nazi!
Geronimo!
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