Wolfenstein

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Wolfenstein is a series of alternate history World War II video games, and its most influential entry was expected to earn only about $60,000. That was the modest hope at id Software for its Nazi-fighting game. The series began as a game about sneaking past guards. It later gave a whole genre its template for fast, aggressive play. Over four decades its hero fought occult experiments, then a regime that had already won the war. How did a quiet game of escape turn into a shooter, and why did its creators keep tearing up the formula that worked before?

  101315118

• 2. Escape Without Killing

  ›

  The idea for Castle Wolfenstein came to programmer Silas Warner after he watched The Guns of Navarone. That 1961 British-American war film follows Allied commandos trying to destroy a seemingly impregnable German fortress.

  That same day, Warner played Berzerk, an arcade game in which the player moves through a maze of laser-shooting robots. He began to wonder what would happen if the robots were replaced with Nazis.

  Warner kept the dodging and shooting of the arcade genre but changed the goal. Players now had to escape the guards and their castle rather than destroy them. Shooting became a means to an end instead of the point of the game.

  Castle Wolfenstein reached players in 1981, published by Warner's company M.U.S.E. Inc., which later became known as Muse Software. Dale Gray and George Varndell worked alongside him. The player takes the role of an unnamed American prisoner of war who steals German files containing secret war plans.

  Avoiding or disarming guards counted for more than killing them, which is why the game is often credited as one of the first in the stealth genre. It was also the first computer game to feature digitized speech. Metal Gear and Thief are among the franchises it helped inspire.

  Muse Software would soon take the same formula out of the castle and into a bunker in Berlin.

  37925

• 3. The Berlin Bunker

  ›

  In Beyond Castle Wolfenstein, the player works through every level of a secret bunker in Berlin where Adolf Hitler is meeting his senior staff. Operatives have already placed a bomb inside. The player must retrieve it and leave it outside the door of the room where the meeting is taking place. The scenario bears a passing resemblance to the July 20 Plot.

  The sequel arrived in 1984. It was the second and final game that Muse Software both developed and published.

  Muse Software was legally disestablished on the 7th of October 1987, which closed the series' first era.

  In 2004, the widow of Silas Warner released a ported version of Beyond Castle Wolfenstein, together with its reconstructed source code, in his honor. That tribute came long after another group of designers had decided the castle deserved a very different treatment.

  2451258

• 4. Speed Over Stealth

  ›

  In November 1991, id Software was between projects. The young company, founded by programmers John Carmack and John Romero, designer Tom Hall and artist Adrian Carmack, had just finished its contract with its former employer Softdisk.

  Hall's first suggestion was a science fiction game with the title It's Green and Pissed, about fighting mutants in a research lab. Romero instead proposed a 3D remake of Castle Wolfenstein. Hall, Romero and John Carmack had all enjoyed the 1981 original, so the team gravitated to the idea.

  They feared they could not use the name. They then found that the trademark had already lapsed by 1986.

  Production began on the 15th of December 1991. The plan was to carry over the original's habits, such as dragging and looting dead bodies and opening crates. The team added more stealth ideas of its own, including swapping uniforms with guards and attacking enemies quietly. They even got guards to hunt for the player if they spotted a dead body.

  Romero cut it all. In his words: "the problem is that the game came to a dead stop when you did these things... we didn't want to slow it down so we actually removed the features and left it fast."

  In another interview he put it more bluntly: "The game was most fun when it was a breakneck run through maps with tons of blasting down Nazis. Anything that slowed down that gameplay had to go."

  The finished game kept none of the sneaking, and it arrived with a new hero.

  1314151016

• 5. A Breakout Hit

  ›

  On the 5th of May 1992, Apogee Software published id's Wolfenstein 3D. The game is credited with helping establish the first-person shooter genre. It swapped the reserved stealth and resource management of the Muse originals for a run-and-gun style that became the genre's template.

  Its hero was William "B.J." Blazkowicz, an American spy of Polish Jewish descent. In the story, the Nazis capture him and lock him beneath Castle Wolfenstein. He overpowers a guard, takes a pistol and fights up through the underground floors. His aim is to uncover and destroy 'Operation Eisenfaust'. Blazkowicz would go on to anchor most of the series.

  Sales left the modest $60,000 hope far behind. By the end of 1993, Wolfenstein 3D had sold over 100,000 copies. Its prequel, Wolfenstein 3D: Spear of Destiny, had sold a further 100,000 units.

  Spear of Destiny was a stand-alone expansion developed by id and published by FormGen Corporation. It sends Blazkowicz to reclaim the Spear of Destiny, which the Nazis had stolen from Versailles. FormGen later added two expansion packs, Return to Danger and Ultimate Challenge.

  The series then left id's hands and drifted toward the supernatural.

  1315171819

• 6. Soldiers of the Occult

  ›

  In Return to Castle Wolfenstein, released in 2001 for Microsoft Windows, Blazkowicz and a fellow operative called Agent One are sent to investigate rumours about the SS Paranormal Division, one of Heinrich Himmler's personal projects. The Nazis capture them and imprison them in Castle Wolfenstein. Agent One dies under interrogation. Blazkowicz escapes and learns of 'Operation Resurrection', a plan to raise the dead and harness supernatural forces to win the war. Gray Matter Studios developed the game and Activision published it. A console version followed two years later.

  Enemy Territory came in 2003. It began as a planned expansion pack, but it was released instead as a stand-alone, free-to-play multiplayer game from Splash Damage. It had no single-player campaign or story. Activision published it, and a commercial follow-up, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, appeared in 2007.

  In 2008, EA Mobile published Wolfenstein RPG for mobile phones, developed by Fountainhead Entertainment. John Carmack, a key figure behind Wolfenstein 3D, returned as its sole programmer. Blazkowicz is captured while investigating the Axis paranormal division and held in a place called The Tower.

  The 2009 Wolfenstein, made by Raven Software with id producing and Activision publishing, loosely continued Return to Castle Wolfenstein. Blazkowicz finds a medallion with supernatural power while on a mission aboard a German battleship. The OSA sends him to the fictional town of Isenstadt, which the Nazis have seized in order to mine rare Nachtsonne crystals. The crystals open a path to the 'Black Sun' dimension.

  The rights to the series would soon change hands, and the developer would change with them.

  242728198

• 7. The Nazis Won

  ›

  When ZeniMax Media acquired id Software, the publishing rights moved from Activision to Bethesda Softworks. In 2010, MachineGames began work on Wolfenstein: The New Order, which would make it the series' primary developer.

  The New Order drops the occult castle for a world in which the Axis powers won World War II. In 1946, OSA agent Blazkowicz joins a last all-out assault by Allied airborne and commando forces. His target is General Deathshead. The raid fails, the unit is slaughtered, and a critical head injury leaves Blazkowicz in a coma.

  He wakes fourteen years later, in 1960, inside an asylum that the Nazis have ordered liquidated. He is about to be executed. He fights his way out with a wounded nurse named Anya, finds the Resistance and helps cripple Nazi dominance around the world.

  The Old Blood, released in 2015 as a stand-alone expansion, is a prequel to that game. It returns to the old territory: Blazkowicz and Richard Wesley, also known as Agent One, try to infiltrate Castle Wolfenstein for a folder revealing Deathshead's whereabouts. They are caught, and Agent One dies under interrogation, just as in Return to Castle Wolfenstein. Blazkowicz escapes and, with a resistance leader named Kessler, traces the folder to Helga von Schabbs, a Nazi neurologist in the village of Wulfburg. She is digging for a hidden vault of occult knowledge once held by the German king Otto I.

  In The New Colossus, released in 2017, Blazkowicz wakes five months after the events of The New Order. He is aboard a stolen Nazi U-boat held by the Wiesenau Kreis, also known as the Kreisau Circle. Frau Engel attacks the base and the group's leader is killed. Blazkowicz takes command of the Resistance and plans to liberate America. The first step is to seize Engel's airship, the Ausmerzer.

  The story would eventually pass to his children.

  3134371911

• 8. The Next Generation

  ›

  On the 26th of July 2019, Bethesda published Wolfenstein: Youngblood, which MachineGames developed in collaboration with Arkane Studios. It is set two decades after the Second American Revolution of 1961 freed the United States from Nazi occupation. The heroes are twin sisters Jessie and Zofia Blazkowicz, new members of the Global Resistance. They travel to Paris to look for their father, B.J., who has gone missing in action.

  The campaign can be played alone or with a partner. Buyers of the Deluxe edition can invite other players into their sessions even if those players do not own the game.

  Wolfenstein: Cyberpilot came out the same day, to mixed reviews. MachineGames and Arkane Lyon made it as a virtual reality experience, the first in the series. Its protagonist is a computer hacker working for the French Resistance. The story takes place one week before Youngblood.

  In 2012, producer Samuel Hadida and Panorama Media announced plans for a Wolfenstein film, with Roger Avary attached to write and direct.

  In July 2025, Amazon MGM Studios announced a television series in development. Patrick Somerville is its creator and showrunner. Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy are among its executive producers, which means a series that began with a lone prisoner in a castle is now heading to the screen.

  4147505253