Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus

In this gameplay screenshot, protagonist William "B.J." Blazkowicz is dual-wielding a weapon. The heads-up display shows BJ's health and armor.

Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus is an action-adventure shooter game played from a first-person perspective. To progress through the story, players battle enemies throughout levels. The game utilizes a health system in which players' health is divided into separate sections that regenerate; if an entire section is lost, players must use a health pack to replenish the missing health.[2] Players use melee attacks, firearms, and explosives to fight enemies, and may run, jump, crawl, and occasionally swim to navigate through the locations. Melee attacks can be used to silently take down enemies without being detected. Alternatively, players can ambush enemies, which often results in an intense firefight between the two parties. Enemy commanders can call for reinforcements several times.[3]

A cover system can be used in combat as assistance against enemies. Players have the ability to lean around, over, and under cover, which can be used as a tactical advantage during shootouts and stealth levels.[3] Stilts are also available during some game segments for a further tactical advantage.[4] The game gives players a wide variety of weapon options; they can be found on the ground, retrieved from dead enemies, or removed from their stationary position and carried around. Weapon ammunition must be manually retrieved from the ground or from dead enemies. Players have access to a weapon inventory, which allows them to carry as many weapons as they find. Players have the ability to freely mix weapons for dual wielding, giving them an advantage over enemies by dealing twice as much damage.[3] Players can also customize weapons through the use of upgrades.[5] Scopes and suppressors can also be attached to weapons.[3]

During the final events of Wolfenstein: The New Order, Kreisau Circle retrieves a critically injured William "B.J." Blazkowicz (Brian Bloom) from Deathshead's fortress before destroying it with a nuclear cannon. Blazkowicz falls into a 5-month long coma. As he fades in and out of consciousness aboard the U-boat Eva's Hammer, it is revealed that Anya, Blazkowicz's love interest, is pregnant with twins. The U-boat is attacked by SS-Obergruppenfuhrer Irene Engel, a sadistic Nazi commander who captures Caroline and Fergus or Wyatt (depending on who the player let Deathshead kill in a flashback). Blazkowicz devises a plan to get himself captured and taken to Engel's airship, the Ausmerzer, which is suspending the U-boat above water. Engel tries to get her daughter Sigrun to decapitate Caroline, but the former refuses, resulting in Engel killing Caroline herself. Sigrun refuses and tackles Engel, allowing Blazkowicz to use Caroline's armor. Blazkowicz disconnects Eva's Hammer from the Ausmerzer and flees back to the U-boat with Sigrun and Caroline's body.

After Caroline's funeral, the group decides to carry out what would have been the next step in her plan to end the Nazi regime: liberate America and use it as a central base from which to free the rest of the world. The group sets out to contact a resistance group hiding in the Empire State Building amid the ruins of Manhattan, which was destroyed by a Nazi atomic bomb. Blazkowicz finds and recruits Grace Walker, a passionate, scarred African-American, and Norman "Super Spesh" Caldwell, a lawyer-turned-conspiracy theorist. Grace informs the Circle of her plan to kill the top Nazi leaders by destroying the Oberkommando, in Roswell, New Mexico near the site of an unearthed Da'at Yichud cache. Blazkowicz travels to Roswell with a portable nuclear warhead, before heading to Super Spesh's hideout. Spesh takes him to his bunker and to a tunnel that leads to the Oberkommando, where Blazkowicz deposits the bomb in the base's reactor and detonates it.

After escaping Roswell, he takes a detour to Mesquite, his hometown. Blazkowicz's abusive father Rip appears and chastises him, justifying his abuse of Blazkowicz and his mother, and allowing her to be taken by the Nazis because she was Jewish, and that he intends to hand him over to the Nazis. Blazkowicz kills his father as Engel's forces arrive and he is captured once more. Super Spesh later visits Blazkowicz under the guise of his lawyer, telling him of their plan to break him out. However, Engel kills Spesh, having known his ruse.

Blazkowicz is sentenced to death and beheaded at the Lincoln Memorial, Washington D.C. in front of millions in a televised event. However, the Kreisau Circle recovers his head and Set surgically grafts it onto a bioengineered Nazi super-soldier body. Blazkowicz breaks into a Nazi bunker hidden under New York, stealing a file on New Orleans, which is revealed to be a large ghetto. Blazkowicz travels there to gather several freedom fighters under the command of communist Horton Boone. They break out of the ghetto and escape on Eva's Hammer. The Kreisau Circle considers capturing the Ausmerzer to prevent its use against the group's planned revolution, but realize that it would be nearly impossible due to an automated defense system called ODIN. The group plans to steal the codes to deactivate ODIN by traveling to Venus, where the codes are kept in a Nazi facility. Blazkowicz assumes the identity of an actor and is invited to Venus to participate in a propaganda film audition produced by Adolf Hitler (Norbert Weisser), who is looking for a suitable actor to play Blazkowicz. Blazkowicz retrieves the ODIN codes and returns to Earth to decipher them. The Kreisau Circle mounts an assault on the Ausmerzer, where the resistance members disable ODIN and hijack its command systems. Blazkowicz and his team travel back to the ground, where Engel is on national television in California. Blazkowicz kills Engel and the Kreisau Circle proclaims the start of a revolution to liberate America.

In a post-credits scene, Blazkowicz takes back his heirloom ring from Engel's body and proposes to Anya. The revolution is depicted pictorially during the credits sequence.

Wolfenstein II mocks recent events in American politics, including an easter egg that satirizes media coverage of alt-right leader Richard B. Spencer.[6]

The narrative theme of The New Colossus is "catharsis".[3] Creative director Jens Matthies was intrigued by the juxtaposition of America, which was "founded on the idea of freedom", to be under totalitarian control. The development team also enjoyed exploring iconic American locations and events of the 1960s, such as diners and parades.[7] The team attempted to make the enemies larger and more intimidating for players.[3] The game features over 100 actors,[8] whose performances were recorded using performance capture technology; about 40 hours of performances were recorded.[4] The development team wanted to delve further into the character of protagonist William "B.J." Blazkowicz, for players to feel as though they are him.[3] In the game's opening, Blazkowicz uses a wheelchair; the team was enthusiastic to include combat during these scenes, as a "testament to B.J.'s willpower".[8] The game was developed using id Tech 6; the technology and animations required a complete overhaul from The New Order, which used id Tech 5. The team also built a full body model of Blazkowicz, which can be seen from the first-person perspective.[8]

The developers stated that they did not intend the game to be a commentary on contemporary politics, other than a few jokes. However, commentators drew parallels between the game's premise and contemporary accounts of the rise of alt-right in the United States, particularly after the events of the August 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia and the murder of counter-protestor Heather Heyer.[9][10] Bethesda's marketing head Pete Hines stated that game was "not written to be a commentary on current events, because no one – at MachineGames or at Bethesda – could predict what would happen".[11] Hines further stated that they otherwise made no changes to the game, nor plan to change downloadable content for the game, based on these events.[11]

Mick Gordon, who previously scored the 2016 reboot of Doom, returned to score Wolfenstein II along with newcomer Martin Stig Andersen, who previously scored the puzzle-platform game Inside,[12] along with special music contributions by Fredrik Thordendal, Pedro Macedo Camacho, who previously worked on Star Citizen and Christoffer Larsson. The official soundtrack was released digitally on 19 June 2018. Like the other game, the music is primarily industrial, with distorted synthesizers and reverbed electric guitars, with some rock influence.

While the game itself was not intended to reference current events, Bethesda, supported by MachineGames, opted to use current attitudes towards Nazis from these events in its marketing of the title. Bethesda's Marketing VP Pete Hines stated: "We weren't going to hide from the fact our game is about killing Nazis and freeing the US from their rule, and if we can reference current events as part of talking about the game, so be it. Nazis are evil. We aren't afraid to remind people of that".[11] The game adopted the phrase "Make America Nazi-Free Again", based on Donald Trump's slogan "Make America Great Again", as its primary advertising tagline.[13] Other ads used the phrase "Not My America", a slogan used by groups protesting Trump's policies.[14] The marketing campaign drew positive attention, but was criticized by members of the alt-right, as well as Trump supporters who said the advertisements unfairly associated them with Nazis. Responding to the negative feedback, Hines said, "we don't feel it's a reach for us to say Nazis are bad and un-American, and we're not worried about being on the right side of history here".[11] He also said "people who are against freeing the world from the hate and murder of a Nazi regime probably aren't interested in playing Wolfenstein."[15] Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus was originally teased at Bethesda's press conference during E3 2016.[16] The game was officially announced at the E3 2017 conference in June 2017. The game was released on 27 October 2017 for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.[17] A 2018 release for Nintendo Switch was announced during the September 2017 Nintendo Direct presentation.[18] The Nintendo Switch version was released on 29 June 2018.[19] The game's collector's edition includes a Blazkowicz action figure, a steelbook, and a poster.[20]

For the German release of The New Colossus, all Nazi symbols and references were removed; it is a criminal offence to display Nazi imagery on toys in Germany.[21] The German software ratings board, Unterhaltungssoftware Selbstkontrolle, later introduced the "social adequacy clause", which allowed the use of such imagery in relevant scenarios, reviewed on a case-by-case basis.[21] Bethesda made the uncensored international version (which lacks German as a language option) available for purchase in Germany on 22 November 2019, while continuing to sell the censored and localised version separately.[21]

On 10 June 2018, Bethesda Softworks announced Wolfenstein: Youngblood, a co-op sequel to Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus that released on 26 July 2019.[72]

• Official website
• Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus at IMDb