Medal of Honor: Frontline

Enigma machine

During the second mission of chapter two, "Storm in the Port", you are on a German U-Boat and have to steal any information you can and sabotage the boat. However, the level contains a bonus objective that is not told to you by the game. You can find a German Enigma Machine, and by pressing the action button can take the machine's codes and complete the bonus objective, and earn a medal for the action.

The German Enigma coding machine was not fictitious. It was in fact real. The Enigma was an encryption and cipher machine that the Germans used most famously in WWII. The system of encryption for the Enigma was extremely complex, and only through operator error, procedural error, or captured codebooks (a.k.a cipher) could the Allies decipher the messages. As a result, the Enigma's codebooks and secrets were extremely well-guarded. The simple fact that you can walk up to the machine and steal the codebook is questionable in the game, though such a feat certainly would have been awarded.

There is also the matter of historical accuracy. During WWII, only 15 cipher books had been captured, and the Americans and Canadians had one each. The rest were performed by the British. As well, the Naval Enigma cipher was actually captured by a British boarding crew on the U-110, not a single American soldier.

Besides the historical background, the little objective is also a reference to the WWII movie U-571. The plot of the movie details an American naval crew attempting to capture the Naval Enigma cipher aboard the U-Boat U-571. This movie is also just as historically inaccurate as the game, which suggests, perhaps, that it was even the basis for which the objective was based on.

Another funny reference is that in the cheat menu, the typewriter you enter in cheats on is actually the Enigma itself.

German version

In Germany the game had to be pulled from the shelves and all the covers had to be reprinted, because there was a swastika on the back cover and Nazi symbols aren't allowed in (or on) games there. For the same reason all Nazi flags in the game were replaced. Additionally all level statistics (except time and overall evaluation) were removed, the cutscenes using historical film material were re-cut and all words like "Nazi", "Hitler" or "Führer" were avoided during localization. A detailed list of changes can be found on schnittberichte.com (German).

Nazis

All of the Nazis speak real German. If you go to the cheat menu, and turn on subtitles, you can see what they say if you sneak up on them unnoticed. Some of the conversations they have are quite humorous, and can be pretty long as well.

References

Several of the chapters in the game are actually modeled off of famous WWII movies and novels.

The first and most obvious one is the "D-Day" mission, modeling its missions, plot, and setting to the movie Saving Private Ryan. Besides the entire plot and completely recreated setting, several elements are borrowed from the movie, including the hopeless abandonment on the beach, the frantic bunker gunfire, shelling, and storming the seawall.

Chapter two, "Storm in the Port" also takes its setting from Saving Private Ryan. The first mission is a reenactment of the climax of the movie, where you must fight through the broken wreckage of a French town to help the Allies in their struggle against advancing Axis soldiers and tanks. The second part of the chapter, storming the German U-Boat pen, also models quite a bit of its scenery and costume design off of cliche German submarine movies.

It makes sense that the game would borrow heavily from Saving Private Ryan; Steven Spielberg directed the movie, and also had a major part in the production of the game.

Another one of these chapters in the game is titled "Several Bridges Too Far". This is an homage to the WWII 1970's book and movie A Bridge Too Far. The plot of the book and movie detailed Operation Market Garden, the failed Allied attempt to break through German lines at Arnhem in the occupied Netherlands.

In an reenactment, the chapter in the game puts you on the front lines of Operation Market Garden. The missions take you through the war-swept city of Arnhem, where you actually rendezvous with the men trapped behind enemy lines in Nazi occupied Netherlands. Throughout the chapter, you even meet most of the characters that are portrayed in the movie.

Information also contributed by Matt Neueboom