Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus opens with B.J. Blazkowicz, a war veteran in a wheelchair, cutting down Nazi soldiers. MachineGames made this 2017 first-person shooter, and Bethesda Softworks published it. Its world is an alternate 1961, in which the Nazis won the Second World War and now rule the United States. Blazkowicz is the series hero, yet here he begins the story badly hurt. That poses a puzzle for a shooter. How do you build an exhilarating power fantasy around a man in that condition? What does an occupied America look like from the inside, and who in it chooses to resist? And why did the advertising for a game about fighting Nazis turn into a public argument?

  57223319

• 2. Occupied Ground

  ›

  America was missing from Wolfenstein: The New Order, and the omission was deliberate. MachineGames felt that only a full sequel could explore the country in a meaningful way. For the second game, the team chose it as the setting because it was Blazkowicz's homeland, which made the story personal. They were struck by the irony of a nation "founded on the idea of freedom" living under totalitarian control. They also wanted to show how Germany might have tried to subvert American culture and slip its values into everyday life. They picked locations they called "iconic" but rarely explored in other media, and Americana imagery and retrofuturism shaped the look of the world.

  Roswell and New Orleans mark opposite ends of the American response that the designers wanted to show. Roswell has a population that has adapted to Nazi rule, which the developers called "a reflection of ordinary society under Nazi oppression". New Orleans has been turned into a ghetto for imprisoning rebel fighters and dissidents. Samuel Roberts of PC Gamer called Roswell the "most interesting snapshot of everyday life in Wolfenstein 2". He was disappointed that no other level explored that idea.

  Venus is the level furthest from home. The planet had been teased in The New Order, and the team chose it because few films or video games use it as a setting. As in the earlier game, a trip into space added variety and a sense of adventure. The inspiration came from the making of Wolfenstein 3D, whose creators enjoyed what the team called "totally unrestricted creative freedom". MachineGames kept moments that were "obnoxiously grandiose and crazy" while making sure they stayed respectful. Director Jens Matthies said the team saw the game as "much more like a The Last of Us or an Uncharted within a first person context" than a "straight up shooter". For that reason the team never considered adding multiplayer, which they feared might "dilute" the storytelling.

  3537384034

• 3. A Tired Hero

  ›

  Jens Matthies called the game's very first scene a "testament to B.J.'s willpower". The team was working to turn Blazkowicz from a "1980s action hero" into a distinct person with his own personality and struggles. Early segments present him as crippled and broken. Writer Tommy Tordsson Björk compared him to John McClane of the Die Hard films, a man who must endure treacherous situations to get back to his family and friends. In this game Blazkowicz is skilled at killing Nazis, but the war has exhausted him.

  Brian Bloom, who voices Blazkowicz, describes the character's inner thoughts as softer, more contemplative and less secure than his spoken lines. As in The New Order, those thoughts feature prominently. Bloom said they create a "nice balance" against the hero's tough exterior.

  The midpoint of the game is the moment Blazkowicz loses his head, at the hands of Frau Engel. Matthies had carried that idea since his time with Arkane Studios on Dishonored, released in 2012. The team intended the scene to cap the first half of the game and to prove that Blazkowicz can "survive his own beheading".

  RoboCop, District 9 and Guardians of the Galaxy guided the tone of the storytelling. The game as a whole was meant to be over the top. Its story and characters, however, were meant to feel "more intimate" and "normal".

  Rip Blazkowicz, the hero's racist and abusive father, proved hard to cast. Cinematic performance director Tom Keegan approached Glenn Morshower, whom he had worked with on Battlefield 3. Morshower built his performance on his own experience of dealing with his grandfather. For the Texas level where Rip appears, the team also brought in Kevin Cloud from id Software to help modify the script.

  1933364244

• 4. The Kreisau Circle

  ›

  Five months of coma open the story. The Kreisau Circle pulls a critically injured Blazkowicz out of Deathshead's fortress and destroys it with a nuclear cannon. The blow cripples the Nazi research division and stalls its technological advance. Blazkowicz drifts in and out of consciousness aboard the captured U-boat Eva's Hammer, where it emerges that Anya, the woman he loves, is pregnant with twins.

  Caroline's death sets the mission. SS-Obergruppenführer Irene Engel, a sadistic commander, attacks the U-boat and captures her. After Caroline's funeral, the group commits to the next step of her plan to end the Nazi regime. They will liberate the United States and use it as a base to free the rest of the world.

  Manhattan lies in ruins after a Nazi atomic bomb, yet a resistance cell hides in the Empire State Building. There Blazkowicz recruits Grace Walker, a scarred Black Power activist played by Debra Wilson. He also recruits Norman "Super Spesh" Caldwell, a lawyer turned conspiracy theorist played by Don McManus. Grace wants to cripple Nazi leadership by destroying the Oberkommando in Roswell, New Mexico. Blazkowicz carries a portable nuclear warhead there, plants it in the base's reactor, and detonates it after escaping.

  Mesquite, Texas, is Blazkowicz's hometown, and he detours there to recover an heirloom ring. His father Rip, now a Nazi collaborator, admits he let the Nazis take Blazkowicz's Jewish mother Zofia. He plans to hand his son over as well. Blazkowicz kills Rip, but Engel captures him and takes the ring. Super Spesh visits, posing as his lawyer, and they plan an escape. Engel had seen through the ruse, and she kills Spesh. A kangaroo court then sentences Blazkowicz to death, and he is beheaded on international television at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.

  A drone brings the severed head back to the Circle, and surgeons graft it onto a bioengineered Nazi super-soldier body. The revived Blazkowicz breaks into a Nazi bunker under New York to steal a file on New Orleans. There he rallies fighters under the communist commander Horton Boone, played by Christopher Heyerdahl. After an ideological clash, Horton joins him, and the resistance fights its way out aboard Eva's Hammer.

  Engel's airship, the Ausmerzer, is the next target. To capture it, the group must switch off its automated defenses, and the deactivation codes sit in a Nazi facility on Venus. Blazkowicz assumes an actor's identity to get himself invited there, steals the codes, and returns to Earth to decipher them.

  The assault on the Ausmerzer disables its defenses and hijacks its command systems. Learning that Engel is on national television in Hollywood, Los Angeles, the resistance storms the studio complex, and Blazkowicz kills her. Grace then orders him to kill every Ubercommander who served as Engel's lieutenant, so that the Nazi chain of command in the United States collapses. The credits depict the revolution spreading across the country, and it succeeds. In a scene after the credits, Blazkowicz takes the ring back from Engel's body and proposes to Anya.

  2639471591

• 5. Villains and Censors

  ›

  Matthies said the team "never wanted to undermine or make light of what Nazi ideology is actually about". They chose not to avoid controversy by sidestepping that ideology or by making the villains "cartoony". The result was a game that was "political" in nature, though not designed as a "commentary on current topics".

  Frau Engel is the main antagonist, voiced by Nina Franoszek, who also played her in The New Order. Franoszek says the character is desperate to cling to power and despises her daughter Sigrun as weak-minded. Critics responded strongly. Andy Hartup of GamesRadar called Engel "unpredictable, vaguely deranged, and utterly insidious". Dan Stapleton of IGN wrote that she "steals the show with her absolutely gleeful sadism".

  Sigrun refuses to decapitate Caroline during the attack on the U-boat, so Engel kills Caroline instead. Disgusted by her mother's abuse, Sigrun tackles her, and that gives Blazkowicz the chance to put on Caroline's armor and break free. Matthies described Sigrun as a "complicated character" because of her troubled past. She grew up as a loyal Nazi follower and now resents that history.

  Mick Gordon and Martin Stig Andersen divided the music between the two sides of the war. Gordon, who returned from the first game, mostly scored the Resistance. Andersen contributed the music for the Nazi side.

  Adolf Hitler appears only in the Venus level. MachineGames wanted to use the sequel as a platform to introduce him, but never meant him to be the main antagonist. Matthies described him as so "powerful" that he has lost all social boundaries. At one point Matthies suggested that Hitler's penis be visible in the scene. Todd Vaughn, Bethesda's VP of Production, advised against it, and the idea never reached the game.

  Germany received a heavily censored version of that same scene. Hitler's mustache was removed, and characters no longer addressed him as their Führer. All swastika symbols were replaced. Hitler also accused the characters of being spies, instead of Jews.

  4647493276

• 6. Built Heavy

  ›

  Starbreeze Studios, the maker of The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay and The Darkness, was the earlier workplace of several MachineGames developers. Id Software assisted with the sequel, and Matthies co-wrote the story with Björk. The game ran on id Tech 6, while The New Order had used id Tech 5. That change forced a complete overhaul of the technology and animations.

  The team wanted gunplay that was "very heavy, very physical, and anchored in the physical world". To avoid making it "cumbersome", they did not slow the player down. Instead they created many weapon animations to show the weight of each gun. Dual-wielding any combination of weapons multiplied that work, because every pairing needed its own animation. Players who mix weapons deal twice as much damage.

  A full-body model of Blazkowicz, visible from the first-person view, helped make the world feel more tangible. A nearby explosion, for example, pushes him to the ground. The game does not offer full environmental destruction, but cover can be destroyed. To make that system matter, enemy artificial intelligence was programmed to hide behind destructible cover.

  A hatchet replaced the throwing knife that served as the melee weapon in The New Order. The team first wanted tomahawks, but the 1960s setting made an axe more period-accurate. Because an axe is heavier than a knife, they tried forcing players to aim higher at distant targets. They scrapped that idea after deciding it was not fun. In play, the hatchet allows silent takedowns and close executions, and it can be thrown at distant enemies.

  A choice between two characters, Fergus and Wyatt, at the start of the game sends the story down one of two timelines. Some characters and small plot points are replaced in each. Choosing Fergus unlocks the LaserKraftWerk, an energy weapon that disintegrates enemies and obstacles. Choosing Wyatt grants the DieselKraftWerk, which works like a grenade launcher. Both run on fuel or electricity, refilled at dispensers around each level. Heavy weapons, usually looted from fallen soldiers, are immensely powerful. They also slow the player and attract hostile attention.

  Three "contraptions" are on offer midway through the campaign. The Constrictor Harness compresses Blazkowicz's torso to fit narrow gaps. The Ram Shackles break down doors and tackle enemies as he sprints. The Battle Walkers are stilts that reach high places. Health is split into sections that regenerate, and a lost section needs a health pack. Perks fall into three categories called Stealth, Mayhem and Tactical.

  Eva's Hammer doubles as the hub area, where players talk to non-playable characters and take on side missions. A fully playable copy of Wolfenstein 3D sits inside the submarine. Defeated enemy commanders drop enigma codes, which an enigma machine on board decodes. Each decoded message reveals an Uberkommandant, whom players must hunt down by revisiting earlier levels. There are 16 such assassination missions in total.

  Six difficulty levels are available, and finishing the campaign unlocks an extra hard setting. Although marketing called it a "cathartic shooting game", it was built to be hard, so that players would look for creative approaches. Stealth received far less development time than gunplay, and not enough of the team felt confident building it for a Wolfenstein game. The Laserhund became one of the more poorly received enemies, partly because it arrived late in development. After the poor reception of the London Monitor boss battle in The New Order, the team avoided boss fights against gigantic enemies.

  17162431

• 7. Slogans and Controversy

  ›

  Charlottesville, Virginia, changed how the game was read. After the reveal, commentators drew parallels between its premise and accounts of the alt-right's rise. The comparisons grew louder after the Unite the Right rally of August 2017 and the murder of counter-protester Heather Heyer. Pete Hines, Bethesda's marketing head, said nobody at MachineGames or Bethesda could have predicted those events. He added that the company had made no changes to the game, or to its planned downloadable content, because of them.

  Bethesda chose to lean into the moment in its marketing. Hines said: "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."

  "Make America Nazi-Free Again" became the game's main advertising tagline, adapted from Donald Trump's slogan "Make America Great Again". Other ads used "Not My America", a slogan from groups protesting Trump's policies. Hines answered the negative feedback by saying: "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." He added that people against freeing the world from a Nazi regime "probably aren't interested in playing Wolfenstein".

  Blitzmensch, a superhero in a propaganda-filled cartoon, defeated various American villains in one promotion. Another was a game show in which American contestants were quizzed on the German language.

  E3 2016 was where Bethesda first teased the game, and the official announcement came at E3 2017 in June 2017. It was released on the 27th of October 2017 for PlayStation 4, Windows and Xbox One. A Nintendo Switch version was announced during the September 2017 Nintendo Direct. Panic Button developed that port, and it arrived on the 29th of June 2018. The collector's edition includes a Blazkowicz action figure, a SteelBook and a poster. A demo reached Steam in November 2023. The game was not available for purchase in Israel, and Bethesda did not say why.

  5354515260

• 8. Verdicts and Aftermath

  ›

  Metacritic summed up the reviews as "generally favorable". The game debuted in 4th place on the UK and Australian sales charts and 5th in New Zealand. In the United States it landed in 14th place. Assassin's Creed Origins and Super Mario Odyssey, released on the same day, outsold it.

  Edwin Evans-Thirlwell of Eurogamer called the combat "terrific", while Javy Gwaltney of Game Informer found it "satisfying". Gwaltney felt the upgrades and contraptions suited a wide range of players. Critics liked the perks system, because Blazkowicz grew steadily stronger and more efficient. Hartup said the game captured "the spirit of old-school shooters perfectly" and welcomed the added stealth and exploration.

  Hartup also disliked the difficulty spikes, saying the game "punished players a little too severely" in its effort to raise the stakes. Other critics noted irritations with leaning and vaulting over cover. Some had trouble locating attackers or judging how much damage they were taking. Several found stealth rarely viable, since enemies kept spotting them. Liam Croft of Push Square called the gameplay "bland, monotonous, and incredibly frustrating". Matt Gerardi of The A.V. Club said its "unforgiving" nature clashed with a story that cast Blazkowicz as "an unstoppable killing machine".

  Sam Machkovech of Ars Technica strongly praised the first level for defying expectations. Early sections funneled players through claustrophobic tunnels and sewers, he noted, but the levels later opened up. He named New Orleans and Venus as the best of them. Gwaltney said the game grew zanier and "more ambitious" as it went. Horti, another critic, enjoyed the variety but found the levels less impressive than those of The New Order. Caty McCarthy of USgamer felt the campaign went stale near the end because new enemy types stopped appearing. She still saw plenty of replay value in the timeline differences and the assassination missions.

  The story earned critical acclaim. Kallie Plagge of GameSpot praised the beautifully directed cutscenes and said most major characters had "their own story of oppression and marginalization". Gwaltney liked how heavy themes met humor, and how violent scenes sat beside "heartfelt moments of romance and friendship". Croft, despite disliking the gameplay, concluded it was a "better game to watch than play". Horti felt the themes were not explored long enough to say anything, and Hartup called the central story incohesive. He compared it to "a series of mood-pieces tied together by the central hero". The portrayals of Anya and Grace drew acclaim. Sara Elsam of Eurogamer admired the treatment of trauma and abuse and said the game "delivers a hero that's struggling". Bill Lavoy of Shacknews called it "one of the best written games this year".

  The Game Awards 2017 named it Best Action Game. It was also nominated for many other year-end awards, among them the Golden Joystick Awards, the Game Developers Choice Awards, the British Academy Games Awards and the D.I.C.E. Awards. Brian Bloom's performance drew nominations at several ceremonies. The Game Audio Network Guild Awards nominated the instrumental piece "Lontano". Entertainment Weekly, Eurogamer, GamesRadar+, Polygon and Electronic Gaming Monthly all listed it among the best games of 2017.

  Freedom Chronicles, a set of three downloadable packs from MachineGames and Escalation Studios, followed the release. Each introduces a new protagonist. The Adventures of Gunslinger Joe, released on the 14th of December 2017, follows Joseph Stallion, an African American athlete enslaved by the Nazis. The Diaries of Agent Silent Death, released on the 30th of January 2018, follows the British agent Jessica Valiant. The Deeds of Captain Wilkins, released on the 12th of March 2018, follows the soldier Jerry Wilkins. Bethesda said the packs, plus a prologue called Episode 0, offer 9 hours of new content. Critics gave them mixed reviews and faulted the stories, the recycled environments and the map design.

  On the 10th of June 2018, Bethesda Softworks announced Wolfenstein: Youngblood, a co-op spin-off set twenty years after The New Colossus. It was released on the 26th of July 2019. In a 2025 interview with Noclip, Gustafsson said the modern Wolfenstein games were envisioned as a trilogy. Gustafsson also expressed interest in developing a third game.

  7076799967