Medal of Honor has just accomplished something no other video game has done, after an in-game documentary short produced for Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond won an Oscar.
The Oscar was for Colette, a short film about a French resistance fighter and one of the last surviving members of the French resistance. The documentary was one of several in-game short docos you could watch in Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond. They were created because developers Respawn wanted to honour the stories and experiences of WW2 veterans.
Colette, however, was always a special case. The documentary had won the Best Short at the Big Sky Festival well before Above and Beyond was released. That allowed Colette to be submitted to the Academy Awards, where it also won the Best Documentary Short Subject gong, making Respawn the first video game studio to receive an Oscar nomination. And as of this morning, Respawn, and by extension a Medal of Honor VR game, now has a legitimate Oscar award under their belt for Best Documentary Short Subject as well.
The in-game documentary is 24 minutes long, and covers the story of Colette Marin-Catherine as she returns to Germany for the first time in over seven decades. It also shares the story of a young history student, who convinces the former Resistance member to visit the concentration camp where Nazis killed her brother.
The documentary can be viewed within Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond, but it was also released online by The Guardian after the bought the rights to the film. If you want to view it in VR, it’s also available through Oculus TV here.
To put the achievement into context, Respawn composer Stephen Barton said this back in March:
Most film companies don’t get Oscar nominated within their first decade of existence. Most *never* get one. Respawn just became the first game studio ever to be nominated.
Well done, Respawn.
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