On Monday night, The Medal of Honor team ventured north to San Francisco's historic Presidio to talk about Medal of Honor Rising Sun, the upcoming follow-up to Medal of Honor Frontline. The team also used the event to announce three upcoming titles: Medal of Honor Allied Assault Expansion Pack 2* (working title) for the award-winning PC-CD title Medal of Honor Allied Assault; and Medal of Honor Pacific Assault, the PC-CD follow-up title to Medal of Honor Allied Assault.

Earlier on Monday, EA announced that Medal Of Honor Rising Sun for the PlayStation 2, Nintendo GameCube and Xbox would arrive on store shelves sometime this fall. While the press release lacked details, EA LA's vice president and executive producer Rick Gioltio filled in those blanks quickly by announcing that Rising Sun would be two games, a two-part episodic storyline combining the WWII experiences of Joe and Donny Griffin, two brothers fighting in the Pacific Theatre of Operations.

The first episode of Medal Of Honor Rising Sun, due this fall, begins as the two brothers become separated during a vicious firefight early on in the war. Tarrnie Williams, senior producer for Medal of Honor's console products gave attendees a hint at the game's storyline. Players will assume the role of Marine Corporal Joe Griffin as he is recruited by the OSS for a secret mission to thwart a Japanese plot to plunder the Pacific Rim for their war effort. To complete his mission, he'll have to survive Pearl Harbor, the mango swamps of Guadalcanal, occupied Singapore, the railway of death in Burma, and finally rescuing his brother from a Japanese POW camp in the Philippines.

The second episode of Rising Sun, due next year, will then let players experience a different side of the war through the eyes of Donny Griffin.

New features to Rising Sun will include new weapons, new vehicles, and several new multiplayer options such as a two-player split screen co-operative mode where two players can fight against Japanese forces side-by-side in all 10 missions or teamplay mode for up to four players in split screen mode.

The team then showed an animated storyboard from the midnight raid on Guadalcanal level and while it lacked the polished refinement of a completed product, attendees could already see the major advancements the team had achieved in the game's first ten weeks of development with higher facial detail, a healthy use of lighting and shadow, and a score of new water effects and sounds.

While Rising Sun was the focus of the evening, the crowd was curious about the next two Medal of Honor adventures for the PC: Medal of Honor Allied Assault Expansion Pack 2 and Medal of Honor Pacific Assault. There aren't many details yet but we expect to have more details as development on those titles progresses. While it doesn't have a release date year, Expansion Pack 2 will move players into new theatres of the war from the Italian mountains to the deserts of North Africa. But Medal of Honor Pacific Assault, currently due in January 2004, will be a completely new standalone adventure where players strap on the boots of a WWII solder who must survive the attack on Pearl Harbor and take on Japan's forces to reclaim the Pacific.

There weren't any playable versions of the game but members of the press were quite happy to have heard about so many MOH titles coming so soon. You'll just have to wait until this holiday season to get your next taste of Medal of Honor.