The occult stuff is the weakest part of this new series so far so I can’t say that I mind that it’s currently relegated to tie-in stuff. That said the second half of The Old Blood is still rock solid from a gameplay perspective as well as tonally so I can’t complain too much, even though the first part is the highlight for me.
I just started playing the first game. I just started the mission about finding the special tech helicopters. Stealth is kinda fun to play here in what is clearly and action shooter though I’ve had a few moments where I do a kill with the silenced pistol it will still trigger an alarm. The set pieces are pretty good so far. Kinda hate how my loadouts keep getting metroided away between missions. The perk for getting 5 knife throw kills seems like it would be easy enough but by the time I find an extra knife in a mission it’s at a point when stealth is a difficult option. I really dig the little things it has you do to feel like you’re part of the story but I haven’t tried to Hinge Problem it yet because it’s felt compelling enough to not do so.
like they probably didn’t have to change much of their advertising campaign, and yet it somehow still feels more gutsy than like…almost every other major media news outlet reporting on politics??
“Wolfenstein has been a decidedly anti-Nazi series since the first release more than 20 years ago. We aren’t going to shy away from what the game is about. 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.”
that’s just bethesda, though. does machinegames produce their own promotional content? what would they have to say about all this? way more interested in how the actual developers feel, and everything i’ve seen so far tells me their hearts are in it.
of course, either way, even if machinegames copped out, too, i don’t think it would change much concerning how we feel about it…
still, i never thought the PR guys from the company who released Skyrim, despite language that is trying to cover their own asses, would be more articulate about hating Nazis and being ashamed that they’re marching in public, than every major news channel and mainstream publication in America combined
Eh, the whole controversy is overblown. I think people read too much into it, just like your average leftist is delirious about Nazi takeover in US (just like any bert thinks that one step just a bit left is a guaranteed road to communism).
What’s curious about Wolfenstein is that it started controversial, got innocuous, and now came back full circle. Wolfenstein (well, moreso Doom, but with Wolfenstein as a slightly obscure precursor) was a part of the 90s debate about violence in videogames that was spoken out against by Hillary Clinton and arbitrarily connected to Columbine by the media.
The choice of Nazis was always more as a morally acceptable target for ultraviolence for its own sake rather than any real anti-Nazi animus. It raised the question then, as it does now, as to whether it’s truly OK to indulge in fantasies of violence even against the most deserving targets.