In this alternate take on the Wolfenstein storyline, B. Blazkowicz, at the height of the Second World War. In the game, players reprise the role of the franchise’s protagonist, Allied OSA (Office of Secret Actions) soldier B.
But with wholesale Nazi slaughter back on the menu in a new console generation, is Wolfenstein: The New Order truly “new”, or just more of the last-gen “same-old”? So when a new Wolfenstein game shows up, it’s kind of a big deal. And those old enough to remember the original Wolfenstein 3D know that Wolfenstein was the first-person shooter that that started it all before Quake, before Doom, before Duke Nukem, there was Wolfenstein 3-D. Sure, games like Sniper Elite, Velvet Assassin and The Saboteur have all flirted with killing Nazis since then, stealthily taking their sweet time to eliminate a couple or more of them at a time, but no game has pursued the notion with the same reckless abandon of a Wolfenstein title, making this latest entry a sight for sore eyes. Obviously it backfired, and while the popularity of zombies (and their distant cousins, “not-zombies”) continued to grow ever stronger, videogame Nazis were gradually ushered into obscurity. What caused Nazi-killing to fall out of favor? One theory is that the Nazis wore out their welcome as most popular videogame villain when they tried to jump aboard the zombie bandwagon in Call of Duty: World at War’s “Nazi Zombies” mode. The past five years have been dark times for this videogame practice, and seemingly not by coincidence, it’s also been five years since the last Wolfenstein game. With the arrival of Wolfenstein: The New Order on store shelves, it’s now official: It’s finally okay to love killing Nazis again.