10 Mind-Blowing "What If?" Video Game Scenarios That Almost Happened

4. Call Of Duty Doesn't Kill Medal Of Honor

Activision

Although Medal of Honor is known as being something of a relic these days, what with it y'know, not existing anymore and all, there was a time when it was the proverbial king of the FPS genre, certainly in respect to World War II.

Allied Assault, Rising Sun, Frontline - all of these games dominated the genre at the dawn of the millennium. EA were in the driving seat, and Activision, the other company trying to make waves on the FPS scene, were none too pleased.

In came Infinity Ward, a development studio founded by former leads on Allied Assault who set about making a title with the sole intention of it being the Medal of Honor 'killer'. We've seen that phrase touted time and time again in regards to other franchises staking a claim to Halo's or, ironically, Call of Duty's crown, but there was real bad blood between EA and Activision in this period, with the first Call of Duty's codename during development actually being dubbed 'Medal of Honor Killer'.

We all know Call of Duty would come out on top in the end, but if it hadn't, Activision would be nowhere near as dominant on the console market as they have been in recent years, and Medal of Honor - having lagged behind its revival for some time - would probably still be with us.

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Content Producer/Presenter

WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.