WOLFENSTEIN II: THE NEW COLOSSUS
We did alt-right that coming.
Arcade Berg is the Senior Game Designer at MachineGames, making him the man to go to for the answers to any questions we might have about the upcoming Nazi alternate history game, Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus. For those unfamiliar with Wolfenstein, the long running series has gone through a number of iterations over the years, first appearing in 1981, but really coming to popular attention in 1992 with the launch of Wolfenstein 3D, the first game in the series to feature the now synonymous series hero, American soldier-cum-spy, William “B.J.” Blazkowicz. After a sequel/expansion in the same year, Wolfenstein fell quiet for almost another decade before being rebooted with the 2001 FPS Return to Castle Wolfenstein, in which Blazkowicz faced off against Nazis as well as the undead. A multiplayer only expansion/sequel followed in 2003, and aside from another attempt to reboot the series with the 2009 supernatural shooter simply titled Wolfenstein, that was the last anyone heard of the series and B.J. until 2014 and the launch of the start of a new series with Wolfenstein: The New Order. Unlike previous games, The New Order wasn’t a WWII shooter with some Nazi occult elements, but was instead set in an alternate history in which the Nazis won the war and conquered the world.
Time has not been particularly kind to B.J. Blazkowicz. When he first started murdering the hell out of Nazis he was little more than a sentient grimace and a hand. Later, when fighting against zombies and other supernatural baddies he was a rather stereotypical gruff man of action with about as much depth as his stubble. Given the treatment the character has had since appearing in The New Order, the first question we had to ask Arcade was this – what the hell does MachineGames have against B.J. Blazkowicz? “He seems to have a bit of bad luck but we love him.”
Mr Berg’s comment is a bit of an understatement. After the first mission in
B.J. muscles himself into a wheelchair and does his best tank impression
The New Order, Blazkowicz is left with cranial trauma and languishes in a coma for 14 years, waking to find that all his friends are dead and the Nazis won the war. The last mission sees him wounded even more severely. When we’re reintroduced to Blazkowicz in Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus he is a shell of a man; a mass of scar tissue, failing organs and useless legs. He’s also spent another five months in a coma. He seems to like those. “We just want to see him grow and be a strong badass character.” explained Arcade, “It could seem that there’s some spite there but we like him, I think we’re all fans.”
We’ve played two missions of Wolfenstein II and they couldn’t be more different from each other. The first mission we played, presumably the first given that it begins with B.J. waking from another coma feels kind of fitting for both the character and the series so far. The opening mission of The New Order was in no way indicative of the game that was to follow; the first mission in The New Colossus (or at least the first we played) felt somewhat divorced from the second we played in a mechanical sense. That said, the mission showed a level of nuance and humour mostly absent from the opening of The New Order, making it the far superior outing. In it, Blazkowicz wakes from his coma at the best/worst time possible, the forces of Frau Irene Engel have discovered the submarine base of the remaining resistance members and are hell-bent on capturing Blazkowicz and extracting revenge for his killing of Oberstgrupperfuhrer Wilhelm “Deathshead” Strasse in the first game, as well as the mutilation of her face.
In his weakened state, B.J. isn’t a man of action so much as a broken man with a mission. The mission charges him with navigating his way through the sub to find his heavily pregnant lady love, Anya and hopefully escape the clutches of angry, revenge minded Nazis. Dragging himself across the ground training his useless legs behind himself, B.J. muscles himself into a wheelchair, grabs a gun and does his best impression of a remarkably fragile tank. Being confined to a wheelchair limits movement speed as well as movement options. Stairs can be traversed, but only down, so trying to ascend the levels is a matter of finding lifts, moving walkways, conveyor belts and other mechanical contrivances. Needing to use one hand to wheel the chair also means that B.J. is limited in how he can approach combat. Dual wielding appears to be out of the question, and stealth isn’t the easiest thing to achieve when you’re on wheels. That said, sneaking up on a Nazi and murdering him with your bare hands when you’re confined to a chair is pretty damn satisfying.
Rather than being an action spectacle, the opening mission plays more like a first-person puzzle game with occasional murder thrown in to spice things up, with B.J. having to work out which traps to arm and disarm to give him access to the next area, or how to ascend to the next level. After making his way through the ship, salvation isn’t at hand. The Nazis are an overwhelming force, and even an avenging angel in the form of a power-armour clad Caroline Becker, leader of the Kreisau Circle resistance network (a paraplegic able to use her legs thanks to the armour) cannot save the crew. They will only be spared if Blazkowicz surrenders himself to Frau Engel. Being a genuine hero, B.J. of course surrenders himself, but if the snippet of cutscene we saw was any indication, Nazis aren’t particularly good at keeping their word.
In the trailer for The New Colossus debuted at E3, a cutscene showed Blazkowicz fully armoured in the cybernetic suit, and in-game footage shows his hands armoured, brushing bullets aside and taking down Nazis. Although B.J. was clearly wearing the armour under his clothes in the second mission we played enabling him to walk and function like a regular, somewhat scarred human being, no other functionality of the suit was available. Given the cutscene in the trailer, we assume that at some point in the game Blazkowicz will be able to access the full capabilities of the armour (most probably for limited periods before needing to recharge). We asked Arcade about how the armour would come into play but instead of answering the question he simply told us to, “Play it and find out.”
The second mission we played saw Blazkowicz having to infiltrate a secret underground Nazi base in Roswell, New Mexico, Area 52, to place a portable nuclear bomb and let the rest of America (and the world) know that the resistance is alive and well. The cutscene proceeding the mission featured a cast of new and returning characters, one of whom really stood out: Frau Engel’s own daughter (mercilessly emotionally abused by her mother in the first mission). While this may add a little nuance to one of the Nazi characters, Arcade assured us that we didn’t have to worry about feeling bad for shooting Nazis in the face. “It’s a fictitious rendering and it’s the whole Nazi concept in Wolfenstein is like a hive mind. You are killing the Nazi threat, like it’s one big ball of Nazi. We’re not trying to portray this family man working to support his two children in America.”
The mission opens with Blazkowicz dressed as a fireman. This disguise serves two purposes. B.J. is the most wanted man in America and his face is on posters everywhere, so the outfit gives him some degree of anonymity. It also gives him a reason to be carrying around a bulky fire extinguisher, the housing for the portable nuke. The streets of small town America are a twisted mirror image of nostalgic Americana. Newsies yell the headlines from street corners, but the headlines are about sedition and the power of the Reich. Klansmen proudly wear their sheets in public, but if you take the time to listen in on their conversations
they come across as little more than uneducated rednecks. A military parade makes its way down Main Street, but instead of returned war heroes, goose-stepping, jackbooted Stormtroopers deliver an intimidating display of power and precision. Greasy spoon diners sell German food.
B.J. makes his way to a diner to meet a contact who can get him into Area 52. After a brutal but necessary murder – Blazkowicz is recognised by a Nazi in a confrontation reminiscent of the bar scene in Inglourious Basterds – he is led into what can only be described as a conspiracy theorist’s evidence bunker. The contact is sure that the Nazis have been working with space aliens to take over the world, and nothing B.J. says can dissuade him of the idea. The rant is funny and oddly touching, highlighting one of the real strengths of the writing of the new Wolfenstein series, the heady combination of pathos and dark comedy. To get into Area 52, all Blazkowicz has to do is infiltrate a Nazi base, hijack a train and then ride the train to his destination. Once there he must again make his way through a military base, plant the portable nuke in the base’s nuclear reactor so it can’t be discovered, recovered or defused and then escape without falling afoul of the guards and the giant Nazi robot, the Obercommando. Easy, right?
First hijacking the train and then infiltrating Area 52 proper showed off a lot more of what makes the Wolfenstein games so mechanically satisfying, with players free to approach combat how they see fit. As with the previous games, players are rewarded for playing the game rather than the way the developers intend, unlocking upgrades through stealth and run and gun combat equally. A range of new weapons and enemies mix things up nicely. Heavily armoured shock troopers dual wielding heavy cutting lasers are a genuine threat capable of doing serious damage at range and knocking down B.J. up close. Fast and erratically moving robots are another new threat. Nearly impossible to target with anything other than an automatic shotgun, these robots aren’t heavy hitters but can really pose a problem if not disposed of.
There are three major changes to combat that really change up how the game plays. Blazkowicz is no longer armed with a knife for stealth takedowns and melee attacks. This time around he wields a hatchet, and the difference isn’t nearly as small as you would think. In The New Order, completing stealth objectives could unlock up to three thrown knives for distance stealth takedowns. These knives were extremely powerful and capable of killing pretty much any enemy silently at quite a range. The hatchet can still be thrown, but it no longer has the straight trajectory of the knife, meaning that players have to judge an arc when aiming for a distance stealth kill. The weight of the hatchet also makes it a more visceral and ugly weapon at close range, giving melee combat a really satisfying edge.
Although we didn’t have a chance to experience it, all weapons, new and returning, now have an upgrade path allowing players to customise the handling of weapons to suit their play style. Previously only a few weapons could be upgrades in a linear path – adding a silencer to a pistol or increasing the power of a laser cutter. Now each weapon will have multiple avenues for upgrade and specialisation. As Arcade explained, “A lot of the upgrades are not necessarily just better for every player, there’s something changes that might not suit you. For example, a fully automatic rifle could be modded to more powerful single fire, right? That’s great for the people who would like to aim and maybe are a bit calmer in a tactical sense, whereas a player just wanting to cause mayhem, he might go for other things that just makes the whole thing more chaotic, but it’s not the very precise weapon anymore. I think that’s where we now take a -- like a side turn on what the Wolfenstein arsenal is.”
For Arcade, and we dare say, a number of players, the biggest and most exciting change when it comes to combat is the new approach to dual wielding weapons. In the past, B.J. was capable of wielding a weapon in each hand under the proviso that the weapons were the same – two pistols, two shotguns, two assault rifles, etc. That is no longer the case. In Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus, players can wield any weapon in each hand. “Separate weapons, that’s something I wanted from before day one. I was like, ‘we need this because we were now stable in dual wielding’. You can dual wield with assault rifles, you can dual wield with shotguns in The New Order and all that. This is what we do now, this is like - this is
all weapons have an upgrade path so players can customise their play style
what defines us. We need to take this even further. It’s not a hard concept to develop, but to have to program and animate to figure everything out is hard. They [the programmers] weren’t as happy.”
Having a different weapon in each hand opens up a wealth of possibilities when it comes to approach. Someone more attuned to the stealth approach could carry a silenced pistol in one hand for silent takedowns, and an auto shotgun in the other just in case things go bad and you don’t have time to switch weapons. Of course, having those different approaches and weapon sizes made life even more difficult for the programmers according to Berg. “It was such a beast. We have this full body, when you look down you actually have your entire body. It’s not just a floating camera in space, there’s so much for fidelity. You are in the world. You are there. When you fall over you see everything. It puts a lot of pressure and challenges for us to make everything work with reloading and switching weapon and stuff with the two different weapons. We made it so much worse [ for the coders], but we nailed it.”
After planting the bomb, the massive, mortar spewing Obercommando comes out to say hi. Again players have the choice of how they want to approach the fight. The robot can be destroy with overwhelming firepower, can be taken down by targeting weak points on the back, or even avoided altogether if players decide to beat feet instead of going toe-to-toe with a Nazi superweapon. Win and leave head held high or simply run away and the result is the same – Blazkowicz reaches a relatively safe distance, detonates the nuke and sends a rather unsubtle message to the Nazi leadership. B.J. is back and he means business. We can’t wait to help him take down the Reich when the game releases in a few short months time.