Popular nazi-killer B.J. Blazkowicz will be back to his old shooty-shooty ways this Friday with Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus. Today publisher Bethesda have taken a break from their piggy-backing marketing long enough to post the PC system requirements along with details of uncapped framerates and aspect ratios. Here they are. (more…)
Just a few days in advance of the release of Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus, Bethesda Softworks has revealed the system requirements for the PC version of the game, as well as the advanced settings we'll be able to play with, which will include an FOV slider, colorblind modes, and no fewer than five anti-aliasing modes.
The "Can I Play, Daddy?" (720p and 60 fps at low settings)
The "I Am Death Incarnate" (1080p and 60 fps at high settings)
Regardless of where you are on the hardware scale, Steam and a broadband internet account are also required, and AMD GPU drivers apparently no longer support Windows 8.1—but seriously, why are you still running Windows 8.1?
"Many on the team here are dedicated PC players and there’s been a lot of engagement in making sure we accounted for and went above and beyond to add lots of additional settings for PC players," executive producer Jerk Gustafsson said. "Everything from unlocked framerates, field of view slider, to lots of advanced visual settings like lights, shadows, reflections, the list goes on!"
It does go on, in fact, right below.
Advanced visual settings:
Anti-aliasing options include, but are "not limited to," TAA, FXAA, SMAA, and TSSAA. And for gamers dealing with color vision deficiency, Wolfenstein 2 will offers modes for protanopia, deuteranopia, and tritanopia.
"We’re also taking full advantage of Vulkan, allowing us to push improved performance across the board in ways that simply weren’t possible before," Gustafsson said. "The minimum hardware requirements are set to ensure a high-quality experience, and with Vulkan players should see solid performance on a variety of system configurations. However, if you’re aiming for 1080p with high framerate and settings, you would need to bump towards our recommended specs."
There are no plans for mod support in Wolfenstein 2, although Gustafsson said MachineGames would love to support them, and "hopefully we will find an opportunity to do so in the future." He also said that the technical issues that caused texture pop-in and crawling framerates in Wolfenstein: The New Order at launch have been addressed as well.
"The New Colossus version of the id Tech engine is no longer mega-texture based, which means we have a lot more control over when and what textures are being streamed in," he explained. "With that said, there will always be texture streaming, but in a way that will cause a lot less risk of noticeable issues."
As for BJ's rumored head transplant, Gustafsson scoffed but didn't actually deny it: "A head transplant sounds extreme. Where do you guys get these crazy ideas from?"
Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus comes out on October 27. Many, many digital Nazis will die as a result.
Though Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus [official site] will not launch until next Friday, October 27th, the launch trailer has arrived today to stake a claim on the next fortnight. As you’d expect, the trailer is full of Nazis being murdered and oh, I guess Hitler is back now too – in non-mecha form. Presumably he gets his face shot off later. Watch: (more…)
Last week, we learned that more than 3,000 Nazis die in Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus. If you'd like to count them yourself, you can do so as of October 27 (next Friday) which is when MachineGames and Bethesda's latest venture lands.
That's next week, which is why the alternate timeline post-WW2 shooter now has a launch trailer. Have a gander:
As expected, there's a fair amount of Nazi bashing in there—by way of guns, throwing knives, grenade lobs, flamethrowers, and melee takedowns. Watch on to see swastika-branded human soldiers, cannon-wielding automatons, and/or white-hooded KKK members taking a pounding.
"I can probably give you a figure but I have to think about that," creative director Jens Matthies told Shaun last week when asked directly about the number of Nazis that meet their maker. "I would say, close to a thousand. That’s what I think. That’s a little bit speculative, but in the neighbourhood of one thousand. Let me revise that: I mean about a thousand personal kills, but then there are a few thousand impersonal kills as well."
Could one of those kills be the Fuhrer himself? Very possibly, as he pops up at the end of the above short looking quite under the weather.
Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus is due Friday, November 27.
When Wolfenstein: The New Order released in 2014, it was just another shooting game. A bloody excellent shooting game, yes, but in terms of its reception in the greater, non-gaming world: a non-event.
Fast forward to 2017, and Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus is attracting a fair bit more attention than its predecessor did pre-release—especially off the back of last week's "Make America Nazi-Free Again" trailer. It's doing so because, at a time when racist intolerance and bigotry is alarmingly foregrounded in American life, "embracing an anti-Nazi stance" can, in some quarters—unaccountably, scarily—appear quite brave.
Bethesda's Pete Hines made his company's vehemently anti-Nazi stance explicit last week, while also adding that Wolfenstein 2's depiction of a United States ruled by a fascist regime is a "pure coincidence". But it's still a timely game, disturbingly enough, and I sat down with its creative director Jens Matthies to talk about this stuff, as well as a bunch more.
PC Gamer: You might not have the figures on hand, but a lot of Nazis die in this game. How many roughly? Can you give us a figure?
Jens Matthies: I can probably give you a figure but I have to think about that.[Jens picks up his phone and, after a minute of complete silence, continues.]
I would say, close to a thousand. That’s what I think. That’s a little bit speculative, but in the neighbourhood of one thousand. Let me revise that: I mean about a thousand personal kills, but then there are a few thousand impersonal kills as well.
I’m happy with that figure. When The New Order came out it wasn’t such a big deal that you were mowing down Nazis in a video game en masse. But in 2017 it is. Pete Hines even addressed it directly last week. What’s your personal response to Wolfenstein suddenly being a cathartic and timely game, given the current political environment?
JM: Well, it is quite a coincidence because that’s actually the theme of the game: catharsis, in terms of the narrative. While I don’t think it’s ever a good thing to have Nazis marching anywhere in the real world, if a feeling of catharsis is what you’re after, then this game is for you.
Nazis have come to be a kind of generic comic evil in games, in the same vein as zombies. Until recently we’ve felt so remote from that history that we can just mindlessly kill them. But I was wondering, speculatively, if you were to make a third instalment, would you address the depiction of Nazis or go about the narrative any differently?
JM: No. We feel very strongly about the stories that we’re telling. This game is painted on a very grand canvas: it’s over the top and it’s bombastic and it’s pulpy. But it’s also... we never wanted to undermine or make light of what Nazi ideology is actually about. So even though we’re sort of representing it in this larger-than-life canvas, it’s not a cartoon in that sense.
We feel like that’s something we established with the first game and continue in this game. If we get the privilege of making the third entry in the trilogy, that’s what we’d continue to do. If you’re all the time worrying about the world and what other people are thinking and saying, then you stop being a good creative.
The tone is pulpy, but one of the things that elevated The New Order, and made it easier to engage with, is the fact that the characters had humanity about them—particularly, surprisingly, BJ. Are there any film makers that inspire MachineGames?
JM: Oh yeah. That’s always what we’re going for, that juxtaposition of things that are very over the top with things that are incredibly intimate and domestic and normal. And we love those authentic feeling relationships—that’s what we want the game to be about. Examples of that are the original RoboCop, which has that vibe. More than anything else, I think that’s an inspiration to me personally because seeing that as a kid was a formative experience. There are other examples: District 9 straddles that line as well, maybe Guardians of the Galaxy, though that’s extremely humorous in a way that we’re not really. Our humor is a lot darker, but it’s still on that spectrum. And of course some Tarantino movies are like that too.
One of the interesting things about Wolfenstein is that it’s marketed as this heavy duty cathartic shooting game, but it’s actually quite tough. It’s a really challenging game.
JM: Of course it is, depending on your difficulty settings. I mean, if you just want to experience the story you can just dial down the difficulty and more or less walk through it. But it’s always more fun, we feel, especially in a game with real old school merits, if it’s a real challenge. It also leads to players needing to think creatively, in ways that many games don’t allow you to do nowadays. If you run into a challenge that’s tricky to overcome, that means you need to re-examine the situation. Maybe if I try it in this order, and use these weapons, and maybe even sneak for a bit and then do this… this is the kind of game where you have a lot of those tools and options, and the combat areas are open to a lot of exploration and approaches. You can observe and figure them out, and most have a certain logic to them. So in order to encourage that kind of gameplay it has to be a little hard, and you have to die a few times just to probe the problem and figure it out.
I’m put in mind of Hotline Miami—you have to figure out a wise sequence, it has a puzzle dynamic.
JM: Yeah, and if that’s not for you you can turn down the difficulty and be more straightforward in your approach. But for the standard experience, you want that cerebral dimension of it, where it’s not just about going through the paces but actually figuring the problem out.
You’re using a new engine, and it seems to me it’d take a lot of effort to basically create the game afresh.
JM: Oh yeah. Oooh yeah.
But you’ve still retained the feel of the weaponry. There’s a certain quality that has carried over.
JM: We were extremely happy with what we accomplished in The New Order. We felt that was a good, really strong feeling of Wolfenstein. So for sure we wanted to preserve that, but also kick it up to the next level. We really wanted to get back to having a full body model, because in New Order you were basically a disembodied arm / gun / first-person model. So if you look down you have no legs. But in this game it’s a full body model, which in itself is incredibly much more work, but we have a dedicated team who is super passionate about the first-person experience.
Were there any overarching philosophies regarding the shooting approach? Obviously it feels different to anything else, but in subtle ways. What were the guiding values?
JM: It’s interesting because I don’t think I’ve ever put words to it before, but we always wanted to be just, I guess, meatier, and just fucking… more heavy metal than anything else. So our stated goal was that we wanted to reach the level where this was the best first-person experience you can have in terms of combat and movement. I’m very happy with how it came out because it’s very noticeable that if you play The New Colossus for a few hours and then you start playing something else, everything feels a lot different. So yeah, I think we’re evolving with what we did with The New Order to a new level.
Do you think it helps your gunplay that multiplayer isn’t a factor? Could it work in multiplayer?
JM: I’m sure it could, but I’m sure there would be problems as well. But for sure, having everyone focused on the same problem is what historically has always resulted in our best work. So that’s always what we’ve tried to do and that’s why we don’t do multiplayer. But I think if we did do multiplayer, I’m sure we could get to something of that same level.
I like that The New Colossus feels like a filmic sequel—it’s not about just adding stuff, like so many game sequels are, it’s a new story. Has there been any desire to do stuff like that, add an open world, add more stuff?
JM: I don’t know, we constantly think about stuff that we want to do and I wouldn’t at all be opposed to doing different formats. But of course, we have this… I wouldn’t say that we have this story that we want to tell—we do of course—but it’s more than that. We have an experience that we want to create. We always envisioned it as a trilogy, and so if we get to do one more, if the game does well enough to motivate that, then I can guarantee that it will be a worthy sequel. How that shapes out and what its form is, we’d have to see.
What’s your relationship with the first Wolfenstein 3D? Do you resort to it as a primary, kind of bibilcal text? Or have things moved on so much that it barely factors in?
JM: No way, to us that’s the foundation with our approach to Wolfenstein. It’s not biblical in the sense that we’re being literalist about it, but the ethos that propelled and created Wolfenstein 3D is what we’re literal about. Analysing what went on there, this was id Software coming into their own, having broken away from wherever they were before and barely in their teens, sitting in some apartment somewhere making these things that no one else is making. That people don’t even think is possible. That’s what they’re doing and they’re just forcing their totally unrestricted creativity into that project, and that’s what we wanted to go for: if we think it’s a cool idea and it belongs in the game, it goes into the game. We don’t try to censor ourselves and say “would that really fit with blah blah”. That doesn’t mean we don’t want to make it credible in the game world, we care about that stuff, but we don’t put any boundaries on ourselves. So that’s what we’re trying to carry on.
You might think that "Make America Nazi-Free Again," backed by the "NoMoreNazis" hashtag, would be a fairly uncontroversial position to take, especially for a game like Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus. Nazis, after all, are the Universal Bad Guys, and whether it's at home, or far, far away, kicking their asses is always a good idea. Yet somehow, not everyone saw it that way.
To its credit, Bethesda isn't trying to soften or backpedal on the message. In fact, Pete Hines, the studio's vice president of marketing and PR, is doubling down on it. "Wolfenstein has been a decidedly anti-Nazi series since the first release more than 20 years ago. We aren't going to shy away from what the game is about," he told GamesIndustry. "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."
"[In the game] freeing America is the first step to freeing the world. So the idea of #NoMoreNazis in America is, in fact, what the entire game (and franchise) is about. Our campaign leans into that sentiment, and it unfortunately happens to highlight current events in the real world."
He clarified that Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus wasn't developed as a commentary on the current political climate in the US, echoing comments made in August by developer Machinegames. He called it a "pure coincidence" that it's coming out at a time when Nazis are marching in American streets, but added that it's "disturbing" that some people find its out-loud anti-Nazi stance to be controversial.
"This is what our game is about. It's what this franchise has always been about. We aren't afraid to embrace what BJ stands for and what Wolfenstein represents," Hines said. "When it comes to Nazis, you can put us down in the 'against' column."
The Wolfenstein series actually debuted way back in 1981 with the top-down stealth game Castle Wolfenstein, and its 1984 follow-up Beyond Castle Wolfenstein. But it became more widely known as an FPS series in 1992 with id Software's Wolfenstein 3D, a game about killing Nazis, and the prequel Spear of Destiny, which was also about killing Nazis. The series was rebooted in 2001 by Activision with Return to Castle Wolfenstein, a game about killing Nazis, but went dormant again until the release of Wolfenstein, a game about killing Nazis, in 2009. Bethesda acquired the series along with id Software and gave it a powerful character-driven twist in 2014 with Wolfenstein: The New Order, a game about killing Nazis, and then followed up a year later with Wolfenstein: The Old Blood, a "standalone expansion" prequel about killing Nazis.
Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus comes out on October 27. Here's Machinegames explaining some of the different ways it will enable you to kill Nazis.