Wolfenstein

“At the beginning, there was a certain love affair with lapping up pools of blood and eating dog food…”

Eric Biessman, creative director at Raven Software, is gloriously out-of-context. Sadly, he’s not talking about team-building exercises for the 60-person development team that he leads just outside Madison, Wisconsin. Instead, he’s explaining one of the dozens of important decisions the group made about how to update id Software’s Wolfenstein franchise for the modern day. In 1992, Wolfenstein 3D categorically defined the first-person shooter; its 2001 follow-up, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, expanded the mythology and fleshed out its occult-tinged backstory. Now, eight years later, Raven must once again find Wolfenstein’s place in the gaming landscape — and while our hands-on time didn’t include kibbles and bits, there were definitely pools of blood.

The Way We Were

The original game was a wonder for its day, offering an intense three-dimensional maze of rooms and corridors, ominous MIDI music, Hitler in a suit of robotic armor, and a simple goal throughout: kill any Nazis you see, then run to the exit. “At the time, it really stood out for setting a tone of what first-person shooters should be like: intense action, kick-ass weapons, and just fun to run and gun,” explains Kevin Cloud, id Software’s creative director and the executive producer of Wolfenstein. “And that was a popular formula. That caught on.” (And yet, few, if any, games that followed in its goosesteps let you slurp up enemy blood or dine out of dog bowls to restore your health.)

When id partnered with Splash Damage to create Return nine years later, Cloud says both companies did “a lot of research into the history of World War II, and did a ‘What if the Nazis’ bizarre plans were possible?’ and spun that off into this new universe.” Those realized plans included zombies, mechanical super-soldiers, and a resurrected Heinrich I, all courtesy of the SS Paranormal Division.

But whereas Return to Castle Wolfenstein dabbled in the legends of the Third Reich’s obsession with the occult, the modern game — simply titled Wolfenstein — doesn’t dabble. A mysterious medallion with supernatural powers melts an entire squadron of soldiers in the opening scenes of the game; green flames lick the tattered uniforms of demonically transformed guards; and an entire gameplay mechanic revolves around entering and exploiting a parallel dimension. “Wolfenstein has this cool history of dark science and occult,” says Biessman, “and we really wanted to push that.”

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