Fun in fighting fascism - Wolfenstein: The New Colossus
Wolfenstein 2 is a bit of an overlooked action masterpiece.
Wolfenstein 2 (TNC) is a game in constant counter-balance.
Its violence is extreme and sometimes off-putting.
But the violence is justified thematically, and makes for excellent action gameplay.
The gameplay is interrupted by drawn-out "exploration" scenes around a submarine.
But excellent pulp writing keeps momentum.
The end is a double-edged sword: pricked by corporate blunder but excellent as catharsis and sequel bridge.
Violence and catharsis
Wolf 2 begins with two unsettling pulp scenes.
The first involves killing one of BJ's - the protagonist - friends in a shocking manner. The other is a piece of domestic violence and animal cruelty meant to establish BJ's relationship with his caricature father.
The scenes are poignant, powerful in their pulp intent, but extreme and unnecessary - the story and the hero's motivation function perfectly without them. Detached from the protagonist's purpose, they are shocking for the sake of being shocking, even trite.
But Wolfenstein pulls heartstrings with calculated manipulation. It would commit a sin of style and storytelling to be so obvious with its violence if not for the excellent writing, the self-awareness, the self-referential absurd plot.
Still, Wolf 2 profits from a weak narrative cliche - killing a character dear to the protagonist just as he's about to recover. A dramatic diversion meant to spur BJ on his revenge quest, dare I say pointless and settling for shock value.
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Unpleasant the scenes may be, they establish the pulp tone of the narrative, the emotional impetus for revenge and justice when dealing with oppression.
It may seem paradoxical, but the solution to enjoying something like Wolfenstein may be reveling in its violence. Revenge placed in the right context may be engaging and cathartic.
In Wolfenstein, visual violence remains shocking and potentially demoralizing. By contrast, when justified, the same violence is the catalyst for moving forward, for seeking justice.
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It helps that violence against humans can be emotionally-charged and unsettling. BJ speaks violence well while staying rational, and delivers bullet-shaped tirades and revolution-sized counter-arguments.
Games which deal with less personal enemies may lack a strong emotional reason for revenge. Doom has less emotional strength, because its enemies are impersonal demons, more numerous than humanoid soldiers.
Violence against demons is a given and explicit in its evil nature - easily understood, dispassionate, easy to dispatch. Wolfenstein - the one made by Machine Games - carries emotional power because violence is done by humans against humans. The script is pulpy, done with care and panache, spiffy enough to support both violence and emotion.
Narrative quirks
A pity that Wolf's intro sequence feels like a narrative obstacle, blocking agile movement for too long. Like peaceful exploratory scenes, it would work better by being shorter. BJ is confined to a wheelchair, but the mechanical impact of limited mobility is not novel, as it may have been in the previous game.
Afterward, Wolfenstein picks up to become a most precise action game, slowed by drawn-out exploration sequences around the submarine base of operation. The downtime makes sense, but the exploratory escapades reveal rewards which don't always make up for being kept away from action. The exploration works to help connect BJ - and the player - to his friends, but some bog down the brutal-paced action romp. Cutscenes may be skipped and the same feature should be extended to intermission scenes to let the player return to what matters - action.
Thankfully, most can be skipped, unlike the scene toward the end, where BJ must make three correct choices in order to stay alive. Suddenly, Wolf 2 has found its RPG proclivities, and made them tedious. Even though close to the end, the scene is a major flow-breaker, and should have been shorter and linear.
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Thankfully, The New Colossus scores colossally on action design to make up for its narrative bumps.
Fighting is fast, precise, with punchy feedback and various abilities to keep momentum.
Enemy animations react to impact and use stagger states to reflect firepower.
Guns feel hefty, though the shotgun lacks the impact of a Doom double-barrel.
After Doom Eternal moved action games forward, the only essential feature lacking from Wolf 2 is a similar dash. The game uses its own dash, not inferior, useful in other ways, but missing the impact and the utility of the Doom version. Like Eternal, Wolf 2 balances parameters of speed, impact and reaction to an almost perfect degree, a brutal carousel which remains engaging start to finish.
BJ and his political friends
BJ was always likeable implicitly, thanks to his anti-fascist day job. Wolf 2 ups the humanity by making him caring, obsessive in his freedom-loving ways, a dedicated friend and father, just a bit controversial.
From an impersonal head grimacing when hurt, BJ is now a person. Gentle to his friends, brutal to his enemies, eager to fight Nazis and criticize potential socialist allies with fervor.
The game pulls a simple and effective trick in characterization: BJ is both a specimen Nazis would appreciate, and a dedicated anti-fascist.
His childhood, plagued by the man who abuses his family, gets a pass on pulp principles - extreme, unpleasant, effective. BJ's father is a fascist poster-dad. He could be the final boss in a social and violent encounter in the present game.
Thankfully, BJ has a chance to make amends for his father's fanaticism. The reckoning is half-gameplay half-cutscene and may diminish its emotional impact by passively watching BJ pull the trigger.
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Ideologically, BJ does not have to like everyone, but sharing the burden of revolution is welcome. His victory doesn't stand alone, but on the shoulders of his friends.
These friends have vivid personalities thanks to glowing pulp prose, making downtime sections easier to bear. TNC tries to be balanced in its approach to human resources.
BJ's friends are a motley band of nationalities, more or less able in body and mind. Not all have time for better character development, but they lend credence that anti-fascist attitudes are widespread regardless of color and nationality.
For extra impact, a soon-to-be ex-Nazi joins the fray from the beginning, and a loud Southern socialist preacher will meet BJ with fighting words. The game's efforts to cover ground for ethnicity and factions are successful, if on the nose - or the buttocks in this case, with a particular sex scene.
BJ's comrades are experts in different fields, but the devs wouldn't translate their knowledge in gameplay. This leads to a quirky mechanic where BJ - and the player - manually decode Enigma messages to locate enemy commanders. The minigame is tedious, doesn't make sense character-wise, and should be an enigma itself.
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One scene works to give Blazkowicz more contrast, complexity.
BJ meets a gang of socialist freedom fighters, and doesn't waste time to accuse them of inaction, though they're doing plenty when the verbal sparing ensues. His freedom-loving patriotism is more flavor, though, a bit of bravado. At the end of the tirade, both are fighting for freedom.
The script has a lot to discuss: about how Americans might have given up on the ideal of freedom, how some welcomed the oppressors. About how Nazis prefer certain skin colors to others, and how BJ himself is a fine specimen, social differences aside.
While BJ and the preacher are arguing about civil rights and revolution, someone is playing nostalgic Jazz, the backdrop for steamy banter between a socialist - preacher nonetheless - and BJ's more traditionalist view.
The scene works, if a bit obvious. Jazz in crescendo, bullets flying back and forth, and the noise of ideology. In this corner, socialism, claiming the original revolution but a bit tired, in danger of giving up. In the opposite, BJ's relentless will to fight, arguing for the draft, calling the preacher and his group degenerate moonshiners to top it off.
The scene tries to symbolize the luxury of debate while other people never had it, but the point is faint: BJ and the socialists are both fighting with fervor. They've not given up, so their sparing is surface-level, tension release, oozing pulp flavor and excellent fighting words.
For now, they'll ignore ideology, argue in good faith, and fight side by side. Hopefully, when the war is over, those differences won't drive them against each other.
Violence and style
Wolfenstein was never apologetic or controversial in how it integrates politics and violence. The Germans had given up or became complacent, and TNC plays with a timeline where Americans enjoy the same conundrum. Part of the critique is America renouncing its ideal of freedom, though it can be difficult not to when the enemy has used nukes. There's the obvious stench of collaboration, with the Klan being prime Nazi allies, scolded for not speaking German.
Tarantino fans will feel at home in TNC. Like his writing, the dialogue is a masterful combo of pulp and naturalist but piercing words, spitfire quotable liners sharpened with brevity. Characters deliver quips and battle cries that make cutscenes and dialogue enjoyable, un-skipable.
To be fair, some humor in modern Wolfenstein is heavy-handed. But it's calculated, interplayed with emotional scenes. Wolfenstein knows what it's made of: pulp violence, tempered crude humor, idealism laced with romance. The script is absurd and naturalist at the same time, knowing where to tap the thematic break.
Alongside the precise action, I appreciate the heavy use of poetic license. BJ will take liberties with his monologues, delivering nostalgic and saddened lines in praise of Caroline. More poetry, sometimes punctured by lack of hope, than Hollywood prose.
Wolf 2 is a modern game in terms of writing: it uses modern language, but without sacrificing vernacular. Meaning, most characters are easy to distinguish via their language. The dialogue is functional, it delivers plot, but remains interesting, intriguing thanks to its playfulness.
The corporate revolution will be streamed
Ironically, the game's ending is pricked by corporate greed. After dealing with one major antagonist, the anti-fascist dream team delivers their speech in one of the most intriguing moments of the story. The speech is good, the timing is perfect, the pay-off is worth it. In the worst moment possible, Bethesda decided to interject their name during the speech, presumably to prove their support for the anti-fascist cause.
But this diminishes the importance and impact of the moment, which should be free of corporate branding. In Nazi America, the revolution is televised - or at least it starts that way - and the suits are there to prove how righteous the corporation is.
Instead of letting the moment, the payoff and the speech run their course and breathe on their own, we have to put up with corporate logos and be reminded how everything is for sale. The revolution is supposed to be a liberation movement of the people. If the corporation would have self-awareness, it would stay away from branding its name on something that should be free of greed.
Game design lessons
The joy of movement
BJ might start the story in a wheelchair, but he'll soon gain the gift of movement, alongside the gift of gab. BJ's movement is only good enough. There are no revelatory movements, as Doom Eternal's combination of speed and dash, but enough for what BJ needs. BJ uses dash to blast through enemies and weak walls, but it should be augmented with a proper straight movement in every direction.
Action is better with akimbo
You can dual-wield any weapon in Wolf 2. The mechanic is seamless and natural, as if action games have done it thousands of times before.
Games tend to avoid akimbo because of the difficulty imbalance and making each weapon function properly as a pair.
Wolfenstein 2 wears two weapons on its sleeves to deliver dual-mounted justice like the best retro... 80s and 90s action movies.
Wolfenstein looks pretty in pulp
The story and writing in Wolf 2 are serious and peppered with playful language and poignant events. Action games may be the last to need fine-tuned pulp writing and emotion, but Machine Games is a studio which cares about prose. Some peaceful intermission sections may be drawn out, but excellent writing keeps them afloat.
How to improve Wolfenstein 2
For its pulp action bent, Wolf 2 is an almost perfect game. If not for the following quirks, it would be a finely-tuned classic, relative to its genre and scope.
Skip the enigma minigame
The match-two minigame needed to play extra missions is tedious. BJ has friends aplenty to decode the locations for new mission - no wonder none wants to play this bore fest.
Less talking, more stomping
I appreciate the effort put into Wolfenstein's script and care for dialogue. A few story and downtime exploration scenes overstay their welcome, though hey fit thematically. Wolf 2 excels as an action romp, and I cared less for BJ's wandering around the submarine. For Wolfenstein 3, please make downtime exploration scenes shorter or skippable.
Shorten the court scene
No, dream or hallucinatory sequences which trick the player but don't matter otherwise are not good narrative design. Make a point of crushing the player's hope by integrating the theme into the proper narrative. Don't waste time with a prolonged and disingenuous action scene only to laugh in the player's face and pad the game - it makes for lazy game design.