The rights and wrongs of Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus
Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus was a rip-roaring science-fiction romp through an alternate history. It was, as Edwin more eloquently said in his Wolfenstein 2 review, "vicious, affecting, witty, spaced-out, crude, inventive, morbid and for the most part, a success."
But while we all merrily mashed Nazis in 1960s America, developers at MachineGames cringed at a parade of things we didn't see - the "I"s which weren't dotted, the "T"s uncrossed. Andreas Öjerfors was one such developer, the senior game designer for Wolfenstein 2, and in a talk at Digital Dragons 2018 in Poland last week he outlined what he thought went well, and what he thought didn't.
Take stealth, for instance. The idea was for Wolfenstein 2 to cater to three playstyles: mayhem, tactical and stealth. The first two were fine but stealth was weak. "Sometimes it felt inconsistent," Öjerfors said in his talk. Enemies discovered you too easily and too often, and you'd be left with no choice but to fight. "We didn't spend enough resources and attention on stealth." He thinks it's because not enough people believed in stealth across the company so it didn't have the creative buy-in it needed to really work.
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