"This ain’t war, but the breaking of seals. The undoing of life itself.” BJ Blazkowicz mutters these words – or thinks them, it’s never quite clear – while clearing out a column of Nazi footsoldiers in the trenches outside General Deathshead’s Baltic compound.
The first level of Wolfenstein: The New Order is the only part of thegame that takes place during the Second World War. It’s both a sendoff to the old Wolfenstein and the introduction of the new, stranding the player on a beachhead and forcing them to fight past Nazi robodogs, electrocharged kommando squads, and a building-sized walking Tesla coil called ‘The Stomper’.
Beyond the beach is the compound itself, a gothic edifice that riffs on the mossy Teutonic fortresses beloved of the previous games. It’s a return to Castle Wolfenstein in all but name, a swansong for the series’ familiar milieu: a big man in a tan jacket gunning down fascists with a Thompson in hallways full of suits of armour and fading portraits of Nazi field marshals. After this there’s a run-in with an old villain, an explosion, and a 14-year coma. After this the game concerns an insurgency operating out of alt-’60s Berlin, becoming a game where a big man in a brown jacket sprays down Nazis with an upgradable lasergun in brutalist concrete megastructures and also on the moon.
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