I was afraid that Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus would turn out to be more of what The Old Blood was – not bad, but feeling somewhat pointless. But the problem with this game is much more disappointing. Instead of continuing against the grain, it shows the desire to follow the worst trends.
Despite playing The New Order quite late, I remember being positively surprised by it from the very minute I went into the menu until the moment when the game ended. When I decided to replay it again to check the alternative story route. Game felt fresh, with its heavy sludgy theme kicking you in the face when you start the game, with its cool mix of classic and new FPS mechanics and ideas, with its unique blend of stealth, action and story heavy segments, just like what we had in Escape from Butcher Bay or The Darkness. It was going against the grain, against the trends, but it was not above learning from contemporaries to be better. And it wasn’t flawless, far from it, sure, but playing it felt good. Its weird storytelling, its mix of really dark drama and dumb action flick scripts, as if the game itself was using it as a coping mechanism to show the horrors of war and human existence. It all clicked in the end.
The New Colossus is not like that. It plays pretty much the same way, you can stealth a bit, you can explore levels a bit, you get long story sequences and a hub area. It looks certainly better and also no longer suffers from some of the technical issues of the original. But there’s something off. Even the soundtrack this time feels boring – still heavy, but no longer enhancing gameplay and narrative, just being serviceable.
If we were still in 2017, I’d suspect that the game was attempting to be more like popular trends. I mean, levels are designed to be revisited for “optional content”, with more collectibles and mini-games in place to motivate the replayability. The hub area is gigantic for no reason but to fit more pointless side activities, now with pretty much faceless NPCs, instead of something memorable. But Youngblood exists already, so I don’t need to suspect – I know that it was exactly that. Bethesda wanted to see just how much trendy and samey bollocks they could fit in a game before dedicating an entire project for that.
And that’s a real shame. The game, unlike the The New Order or even The Old Blood, feels extremely boring with locations being mostly samey looking and combat feeling rather plain. In addition to that, the mood and the story were changed for the worst as well. Unlike the bipolar New Order, New Colossus is a straight up terrible b-movie. All attempts at humour fail, characters range from unlikable to boring, attempts at satire look like tasteless farce. Where New Order felt like it was telling a story, New Colossus feels like a collection of mildly intriguing situations that never feel worth the amount of time that gets dedicated to them.
While not a bad game by any means, Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus feels like a completely wrong second step after The New Order. And despite its mild improvements, I would simply recommend ignoring this game and replaying The New Order again (or even playing The Old Blood if you haven’t already).