13 Years Ago, EA Killed a Series That Should’ve Gone Toe to Toe With Battlefield and CoD

13 years ago marked the end of one of EA’s most important franchises, and it should’ve stayed alive to compete with games like Call of Duty. The first-person shooter genre is a pretty crowded one and is, unfortunately, largely dominated by one big name these days: Call of Duty. A lot of the competition has either completely died or has lost a large amount of its relevance. Battlefield is starting to regain some steam to challenge Call of Duty once more and that may spice things up a bit, but it’s hard to imagine it serving as a catalyst for other franchises to be resurrected to directly challenge the series.

One franchise that should’ve been able to compete with Call of Duty was Medal of Honor. For those that don’t know, Call of Duty was actually developed as a Medal of Honor “killer”. Some ex-developers on the franchise were hired by Activision to make a first-person shooter that could directly compete with EA’s highly lucrative World War II shooter franchise. Obviously, Call of Duty found a lot of success in this. The two franchises continued to release games in competition for a number of years, but it wouldn’t be long before Call of Duty would permanently overtake it.

What Happened to Medal of Honor?

The moment Call of Duty seriously overtook Medal of Honor in a really big way was with Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare in 2007. The franchise left World War II for the first time, embraced a gritty M-rating, and innovated in a number of key areas. It would take three years for Medal of Honor to play catch-up with a simply titled modern day reboot known as Medal of Honor with Battlefield developer DICE handling the multiplayer. It was a solid modern-day FPS that had a more grounded take compared to Call of Duty, thanks to a campaign that loosely pulled from true stories provided by military consultants on the game. Sadly for EA, at this point, we’d also gotten Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, which blew everything around it out of the water.

Still, EA took another crack at things with Medal of Honor: Warfighter in 2012, a game that failed to impress critics and fans alike. The story was poor, the game was busted, and it was largely completely unremarkable, only to be overshadowed by Black Ops 2 a few weeks later. This was the last mainline game in the franchise, but a new VR entry in the series known as Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond was developed by Respawn Entertainment in 2020. Ironically, that game made history and won an Oscar thanks to the fact it included a live-action short documentary that won the Academy Award that year.

Unfortunately, EA shelved Medal of Honor in the 2010s because it was underperforming and not meeting standards. The series just couldn’t compete with Call of Duty, much to the dismay of fans. A once legendary franchise just receded into the shadows after paving the way for the genre.

Why Medal of Honor Should Make a Comeback

Call of Duty is in a place where fans seem to be very divided on things right now. Battlefield 6 is a strong competitor and has seemingly put pressure on Call of Duty to change, but it is still a completely different experience. Battlefield is large-scale warfare with vehicles, 64-players, and destruction. Medal of Honor was much closer to Call of Duty by comparison and had more traditional, smaller-scale PVP.

With Call of Duty being in a weaker place, now seems like the perfect time for Medal of Honor to strike. It would be awesome to see EA invest the money in developing a Call of Duty killer, just like Activision did against Medal of Honor. It doesn’t necessarily have to literally end Call of Duty, but having such a fierce competitor that takes the gritty modern-day setting and uses it in a completely different way from Battlefield would be really compelling.

This ultimately seems unlikely given how many EA studios are working on Battlefield. It would likely require EA to spin up an entirely new studio or lean on a company like Respawn, which may not be particularly interested in such a project. However, there is a way for Battlefield and Medal of Honor to exist, especially as there are bigger gaps between video game releases these days. These two could alternate without ever eating into each other significantly. Whether that ever happens remains to be seen, but it’s a shame EA threw in the towel on the Medal of Honor franchise.

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