Picture the American war machine as a pyramid. It's lucky they don't go into battles this way, because they'd never win anything. Anyway, there are two million men and women in the US military. Of those, 50,000 are spec ops. Of those, only 200 are Tier One. They're the elite of the elite, never used except in the deadliest, trickiest, absolutely most urgent of situations.
It's invitations-only, apparently, although I can't imagine it's an invitation that would particularly cheer most people. EA has been in very close consultation with a few of these mysterious characters, and their peculiar lives are the fascinating backbone of the Medal of Honor reboot - the first game, following in some rather large footsteps, to bring the franchise to the present day.
If you're imagining this elite squad of super-soldiers picking their way through the Ambassador's Reception in one of the great cities of Europe, ducking past trays of Ferrero Rocher as they move in on a sinister autocrat with an eye patch, you've got the wrong idea. The average Tier One - sorry, I forgot, none of them are average - is somewhere on the windswept crags of a lonely mountain range, probably disguised as a shepherd, and sporting an amazing beard.
Beards and goats: unlikely as it seems, that's what makes Medal of Honor seem pretty exciting. It doesn't appear to be a glitzy neo-con fantasy. It hasn't redrawn conflicts to make the enemies more old school and simplistic - "Phew, it's only the Russians again" - and it seems to want to deliver something other than vivid spectacle as it tells its story.