Wolfenstein: The New Order. Madness, Mayhem, and Nazis.

After the events of the first and original Wolfenstein, Nazis are still wreaking havoc throughout the world using unknown technologies. With it, they have created Mech robots and all sorts of laser-based weapons. So in an attempt to halt their progress, Captain B.J. Blazkowicz along with his teammates are deployed to destroy General Deathshead’s lab. But they get ambushed and caught halfway in there mission resulting in most of his platoon being wiped out. After experiencing horrific events throughout his incarceration in the fortress, Blazkowicz escapes.

Found this here

Fourteen years has slipped by since he escaped General Deathsheds fortress. But while escaping, a metal shrapnel from an explosion hits his head, rendering him a human vegetable and sends him in a coma. After a brief and unconscious drifting over the oceans, he ends up in a psychiatric asylum in Poland. The institution is controlled exclusively by the Nazis and the patients are used as test subjects for Deathsheds inhumane experiments.

The asylum is maintained by a nurse, Anya Oliwa, and her family. They put maximum effort and care into making it comfortable for the patients. As she treats everyone with kindness, despite being in a PVS, like everyone else, B.J. too starts caring for Anya and the doctors. But one day everything starts to break apart.

The institution is ordered to be shut down and the patients being killed. But a stubborn Anya and her family resist and the Nazis kill everyone except Anya right in front of Balzkowicz. It results in a vicious outrage of his anger like an erupting Mount Vesuvius and he finally wakes up from his 14-year-long slumber. And oh boy, it’s so sweet and satisfying killing Nazis while you root for the protagonist to save his girl. The vicious killing and shootings begin once again. In a fit of rage, he kills almost every single nazi in the facility.

Being in a coma caused Blazkowicz to miss more than a decade worth of history. Within this period, The Nazis invented Atom bombs and dropped it in the USA and thus won the World War II. When he learns about this, the soldierly instinct motivates him to fight back against the Nazis.

So, he interrogates a Nazi officer they captured while escaping, to find out the locations where they keep the resistant fighters imprisoned. And successfully frees the resistant fighters, including an old compatriot, Wyatt/Fergus (One of them the player has to choose to save over another in Deathshead’s castle).

From this point forward, new blood is a complete and standalone game. You don’t need to play the other seven or nine prequels in the franchise to understand its story. After MachineGames acquired ID software and their trademark games like Doom franchise, Wolfenstein was in there too. So they just gave the franchise a soft reboot with Releasing the New Order.

---

Gameplay, Characters and VFX.

Bethesda along with Machinegames kind of created a new subgenre of Action-adventure FPS with releasing the New Order. It’s not like your usual FPS games as its ID tech 5 engine was refreshingly new and this was only the second game based on this engine. The subtle changes in the recoil, combat system, like you, can choose to go all out or somewhat stealth, etc. made it very unique.

The gun recoils are intentionally increased to make the player feel like they’re doing something heavy. And you can dual wield almost any gun in the game and can keep any of them in your inventory. Almost like a full-blown FPS with no care for realism. But they balanced it with increasing details in plot elements, subtle explanations behind why and how this universe worked and building a nice origin story for Blazkowicz throughout the next few games like Oldblood, Old Order, and Young Bloods.

Furthermore, the health system too is different. It’s divided into a few blocks or ranges whatever you may call it and when one block depletes entirely from combat or fire, you have to use resources to bring it up. If it’s within the range, health levels will slowly recover automatically. It will not fill all the way up just that fixed range. This is done so the character doesn’t feel too overpowered.

---

My experience with the game.

Trailer

There is quit a few things about this that I liked very much.

firstly, MachineGames revamping the story elements were the most attractive thing to me. Like what if anarchy and evil reigned over the world? Fascinating, don’t you think? If any of you have seen “The Man in the High Castle” a show produced by amazon prime based on similar settings where the Nazis won the war you’ll know what I’m talking about.

Secondly, the new order is more cinematic than past installments. The previous games heavily relied on unexplainable supernatural phenomena used by enemy NPCs and characters and Cinematics were pretty much nonexistent. The setting too was pretty gloomier, eerie, and disturbing in places where it felt like the Nazis were not human but disturbing creatures from the nether realm. But in this one, they tweaked and played around the physics of this universe a little. It felt more like a creepy disturbingly advanced dystopian cyberpunk reality where this could’ve happened if science was that much advanced during World War II.

And lastly, mindless shooter games with no existing plot was ever my forte. But this time they focused on character building more. Without those plot materials, the game would’ve been quite repetitive and more like FPS dungeon shooters. So kudos to MachineGames. Though the gameplay is very short, like $65 then for a seven-hour game was too much. But now with all the chronological storyline in the next releases, it’s worth the time and money.

---

All the photos are either credited or belongs to Bethesda Softworks.