• Writing on Games - Wolfenstein: The New Order Is About More Than Defeating the Nazis
    9 replies, posted
[video=youtube;jfEBrCQ8VCI]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfEBrCQ8VCI[/video]
Waelfenshtein [editline]11th July 2017[/editline] W:TNO was one of the craziest games of its time tbh
[QUOTE=J!NX;52457191]Waelfenshtein [editline]11th July 2017[/editline] W:TNO was one of the craziest games of its time tbh[/QUOTE] Still is, in my opinion. How many games do you know where the hero goes into a concentration camp, on a serious tone?
I'll just copy-paste my comment that I posted on his video. I'm not in agreement with several of his points, though they're pretty interesting. Hadn't really thought of some of the ones he makes at the end of the video. [quote]So, how does sudden jump cuts in narrative prove that the world is "dreamlike" and that nothing is actually happening? Would you say the same thing about the modern (CoD4 and further) CoD games in which this is pretty much the bread and butter, where the narrative and perspective is thrown around very quickly and very jarringly? The narrative of Wolfenstein TNO is greater than BJ himself, it is consistent throughout, and the game really doesn't give you any evidence that what is occurring on screen isn't actually happening, which all don't mesh very well with the idea that the events onscreen are part of a dream. "It is all a dream" is a narrative trope that could be applied to any piece of media with enough effort, and in Wolfenstein's case, doesn't actually affect anything. It's as meaningful to the overall tone and plot of the game as "BJ was wearing white undies with hearts on them the whole time". It very much feels like the developers had a lot of cool setpieces and battle environments in mind, and then wrote the story in a way to link them together after. Small aside by the train scene, but that scene is literally supposed to make you tense because you don't know if Frau Engels knows who you are or not. That's what makes that scene so uncomfortable. Additionally, I don't think you have a point on what you said about the gameplay of Wolfenstein: TNO. From the perspective of someone who's beaten the game several times on its hardest setting, I have a few problems with some of the assertions you make. Firstly, dual-wielding is noticeably and considerably more effective than using a single weapon, the obvious trade-off is increased firepower at close range vs accuracy at long range. You are supposed to use dual-shotguns against enemies like the Übersoldaten because they are big targets with a lot of health, and in that scenario, there is very little reason not to dual-wield. The gameplay design of the straight shooting sections means that BJ cannot take too much direct fire, true, but that is true for a huge amount of FPSes, including the original Wolfensteins, Doom, Half-life, CoD, you name it. In TNO's case, the standard gameplay strategy is to take down enemies close to you so you can run over them to pick up armour that has fallen off them because that boosts your effective HP. There is only one compelling reason to try to play the game stealthily, and that is to take down commanders before they can call for reinforcements, and for the majority of the game, being stealthy isn't an option, and many enemies cannot even be killed in a lethal take-down. There's a particular section in the early game that even demonstrates this. The mission in the video at 3:55 is the one I'm talking about, you can stealth the majority of the mission except for the very end, when two massive robots ambush you and you fight them very much openly and directly, and if you so choose, one of these ways can literally be by ripping off emplaced MGs and full autoing them in the face until they die, which is probably what most people did (doesn't work so well on the higher difficulties because you take too much damage, but still). Perhaps BJ is being portrayed as a little bit more human and vulnerable than usual (a little bit, there's a part in the campaign during the concentration camp mission where he pretty much gets dissected and thrown in an incinerator, then just gets up like nothing happened) but he is very much still a tank. Lastly, the idea that the Nazis are a form of apocalypse in a post-apocalyptic scenario is interesting (this is the first time I've heard someone say something like this) but I don't think you're right when you say that the apocalypse isn't supposed to be beaten when BJ and Co literally spend the entire game doing just that. Throughout the course of the game, BJ singlehandedly frees his mates from a maximum security prison, frees everyone from a concentration camp, steals a nuclear U-Boat (and goes to the Moon to steal the launch codes), destroys the London Monitor that was keeping London's population in check, destroys Gibraltar bridge that was a big supply line for the Nazis, and then assaults Deathshead's compound with the nukes he stole, kills Deathshead, and destroys the entire compound in the end cutscene. I know that one of the themes of the game is that the Nazis are so pervasive that BJ alone will never get rid of all of them, but it's a bit disingenuous to say that he isn't doing anything when he spends the entire game dismantling Nazi operations on a large scale. I am fairly certain that the developers intended to tell the tale of someone (well, everyone in the Resistance is like this) who is becoming very fatigued and damaged from constantly fighting an uphill battle, but believes that it will all be worth it in the end. It's a more realistic portrayal than this kind of thing usually gets, but not as hopeless as you're making it out to be.•[/quote]
But hey, it's only a theory.
I'm pretty sure you can't get more straight forward than Wolfenstein. The game is explicitly about killing nazis from the get go.
What Wolfenstein did right is make you remember what the Nazis were really like and how much you're meant to hate them. Call of Duty, the previous Wolfensteins, Medal of Honor and Brothers in Arms never dwelled on that and just focused on the action. It never felt emotional and you never get the sense you're fighting a evil regime, outside of COD:WAW's Stalingrad mission I guess. In Wolfenstein's intro after the castle assault, we open to Nazi officers brutally murdering the mentally vulnerable, we see articles talking about exterminating the lesser races, we get told about a huge genocide in Africa, you go to a fucking concentration camp and the main Nazi bad guy talks about the superiority of the Aryan race. Not to mention that the resistance in both TNO and evidently TNC is made up of socialists, non whites, the disabled and mentally ill. It felt like the first game with the balls to portray the Nazis how they really were and it works so well and makes the victory all the more sweeter.
oh hey, this analysis again, [I]again.[/I] The developer quite literally covered most of this before the game ever even launched in very easy to find and read interviews, that apparently the author conveniently forgot to watch. The game doesn't waste any time and game space with unnecessary crap, the game is about one thing and everything centers around that, including what you're meant to take in. Also as someone who did stealth up until Berlin, the reason you use stealth is it's actually [I]faster[/I] than going guns blazing. While there are in fact, finite amounts of enemies in every level, you will run out ammo incredibly fast at the beginning of the game on the hardest difficulty, and then you have to hunt down more weapons laying around to continue your murder hobo spree until they run out of nazis to send at you for that particular spawn volume if you simply pour ammunition into everything you see, ooor you can silently/CQC kill the shit out everything and not waste time and health/armor until such time as you have enough acheevs and progression perks to literally run and gun from one end of a map to the other, which is then totally a thing you can do, much like you instantly can on the easier levels.
[QUOTE=GrizzlyBear;52457766]What Wolfenstein did right is make you remember what the Nazis were really like and how much you're meant to hate them. Call of Duty, the previous Wolfensteins, Medal of Honor and Brothers in Arms never dwelled on that and just focused on the action. It never felt emotional and you never get the sense you're fighting a evil regime, outside of COD:WAW's Stalingrad mission I guess. In Wolfenstein's intro after the castle assault, we open to Nazi officers brutally murdering the mentally vulnerable, we see articles talking about exterminating the lesser races, we get told about a huge genocide in Africa, you go to a fucking concentration camp and the main Nazi bad guy talks about the superiority of the Aryan race. Not to mention that the resistance in both TNO and evidently TNC is made up of socialists, non whites, the disabled and mentally ill. It felt like the first game with the balls to portray the Nazis how they really were and it works so well and makes the victory all the more sweeter.[/QUOTE] it helps that BJ himself actually gets his ass kicked or subdued by the Nazis multiple times. like there's the intro that traumatizes him and puts him in a coma, the sequence with Frau Engel on the train, the concentration camp level, the part where he gets drugged and stabbed until he nearly dies. there's no room for sympathy with any of these dudes, every villain and enemy is a real threat to BJ regardless of whether they're a Nazi or just doing their job
My favorite bit about TNO is just how well it straddles the line between gratuitous and crazy Nazi killing while also having an engaging and entertaining story. It's not as simplistic as something like DOOM's "just kill all the demons because they're demons", but it also isn't so tryhard in trying to make a serious story that it plays every single aspect completely straight while trying to force some shitty message across. Machine Games must've had a hell of a time maintaining that balance, and I hope TNC excels in expanding upon that even further.
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