The Tone of Wolfenstein: The New Order Works
Some of the earliest video game memories I have are of watching my brother play the SNES port of Wolfenstein 3D. Though this is the watered down version of the game that eliminates all of the blood and Nazi symbolism, and though I was still too young and uncoordinated to figure out which buttons did what, watching my brother play it was still enough to fire all of my synapses and lust for blood. Then my brother moved onto something else, and for whatever reasons throughout the years, I barely thought about the Wolfenstein franchise again.
Then Wolfenstein: The New Order came out in the summer of 2014. I was in the waning years of my video game snob phase (we all have one), thus my attitude at the time was, “A new Wolfenstein? Oooooh these first person military shooters. How exceedingly vulgar!” But then the reviews came out, and the scores were high. I didn’t actually read any of those reviews because, as we all know, reading is stupid and if it’s not on Youtube then who fucking cares. Yet, one fateful Wednesday, I made my way over to the Zero Punctuation page and watched this:
“Huh.” I thought. “Not only did Yahtzee (a famously "harsh" critic) of all people like it, but the story’s well done? Well, I barely have anything on my PS4 what with this shitty launch lineup. Let’s give it a whirl!”
Wolfenstein: The New Order begins in 1946. WWII is still raging on due to a mysterious influx of advanced weapons and technology in the Nazi war machine. Our protagonist, William “BJ” Blazkowicz, is storming Nazi general/antagonist Willhelm “Deathshead” Strasse’s compound with a team of American soldiers. Things don’t go well, and as you’re leaping out of an exploding room in the castle towards the water below, some shrapnel lodges into the back of Blazkowicz’s head, putting him a vegetative state. Luckily, his body’s found and he’s put in a mental hospital. One day, as the Nazi’s are doing their Nazi thing in the hospital, you wake up, shoot your way out with the help of nurse Anya, and you learn that it’s 1960. The Nazis won the war, and the world is under their control. Blazkowicz then joins up with the resistance and helps them take down Deathshead.
(There’s a ton of nuances to the story I’m leaving out, but this is the general gist.)
I did, indeed, enjoy the game quite a bit. The characters display a lot of nuance in very little time. The story itself has some flaws, but for the most part, it's effective in telling the tale it wants to tell. It makes creative decisions, some of which we’ll get into, that most games wouldn’t dare try and successfully pulls them off. I could spend a whole other article talking about the directing, gameplay, and visual elements of this game that I think are equally fascinating. But instead, I’ll simply say that Wolfenstein: The New Order was probably my favorite game of that year, unless downloadable content counts. (I’m referring to The Last of Us: Left Behind. It’s not important.)
So I decided to go back and read some of those reviews I had so lazily skipped past, and I discovered that many of them had an issue with the game’s tone.
You see, dear reader who hasn’t played this game, Wolfenstein: The New Order has a wide tonal range. Some parts draw from some extreme tongue-in-cheek self awareness and ‘80s action movie bravado. There is, for example, a chapter where you infiltrate a Nazi base on the moon (hinted at earlier by this incredibly dumb and amazing line) and a scene where we sneak up behind a Nazi using the toilet and drown him in his own urine because… fuck him.
However, this is also a game of brutal inhumanity and suffering. There’s a chapter that takes place in a concentration camp, and the fate of the soldiers you charged Deathshead’s compound with meet a rather grisly fate, to put it as mildly as possible. Add a dash of weirdness and menace into the writing and an overall feeling of exhaustion amongst your fellow resistance members and you’ve got yourself a rather unique vehicle.
Still, many reviewers were put off by how the tone wanders all over the emotional spectrum, and while I understand their points, I think the tone works for three reasons.
1. It’s consistent with Blazkowicz as a character and the larger themes of bringing him to the modern era.
Wolfenstein 3D is a very silly game. Granted, I’m sure that certain aspects of it probably seemed less goofy and more “extreme” at the time it was released. But this is still a game where you shoot fake Hitler wizards and eventually the man himself fights you in a giant mech suit.
This is the world BJ Blazkowicz comes from. Not only is this a world where you fight “Mecha-Hitler” and undead Nazi zombies, but it’s also the old world of video games. My fellow millennials who got into games later in their lives may not be able to remember this as vividly as I do, but there was a time where the role of narrative in video games was significantly reduced. Or to skirt past a lot of nuance, there was a time when you could release the sequel to a popular game and the internet wouldn’t get itself in an uproar over the ending because people didn’t care as much.
This isn’t to say that great storytelling didn’t exist. Indeed, when graphics aren’t at a place where characters can show emotion and you don’t have enough room in the cartridge to support more audio for dialogue, the correct move is to emphasize gameplay. As such, a lot of the narrative elements in older games were defined by dropping you into a world with a single goal in mind, and the “story” would consist of defeating everything/everyone in your way until you achieve that goal. (Or the story was provided to you in the instruction manual.) Mario wants to save the princess, so you stomp on a lot of creatures until you do so. The Contra unit wants to stop the Red Falcon Organization, so you shoot a whole bunch of dudes on the way. Duke Nukem wants to stop those alien bastards, so you shoot them as well.
The same is true for Blazkowicz, although Wolfenstein 3D had a lot more story than most. It even had something that almost resembles an arc and act breaks: Escape Castle Wolfenstein, end Operation: Eisenfaust, kill Hitler, and shoot every Nazi in sight along the way. But this is pure plotting and almost no character development. What little we can learn about Blazkowicz is communicated via the facial animation in the bottom of the screen and what little we can see of him in the menus and the box art. In other words, he’s a big American slab of beef, he’s angry, and he’s not particularly fond of Nazis.
Nowadays, things are different. Technology has caught up and decent storytelling is expected, and in some cases, demanded. Now imagine that you are tasked with making a new Wolfenstein game. What do you do? Do you ignore that the previous games and their over-the-top tone, or do you go for something completely new?
Wolfenstein: The New Order’s answer was to do a little bit of both. Specifically, it does this through its conception of Blazkowicz. In this particular iteration of the character, Blazkowicz is still very much a good ol’ fashioned American meat head. He often has visions of an ideal life in a small house in the suburbs with a grill and a white picket fence. He talks with a thick southern accent. (It sounds a bit on the Texan side of “southern accent” to me, but I’m not entirely sure.) He occasionally shows signs of not entirely understanding his connection to the darker aspects of American governmental power and history, and at one point, provided you made a certain choice, he sings a song which I doubt he knows originated as a minstrel song. (For a game developed by a Swedish studio, it understands Americans frighteningly well.)
More importantly, Blazkowicz is a perfect vehicle for action movie shit, and the one thing we learn about him quickly and frequently is that he rather vehemently doesn’t like Nazis. He may look different than his Wolfenstein 3D debut, and a lot about him had to change for the modern era. But he’s still a man built to kill Nazis, and he does so with great aplomb.
However, Wolfenstein: The New Order only makes that aspect of Blazkowicz a part of who he is as a whole rather than the whole person. Consider this scene toward the story’s conclusion, which happens right before Blazkowicz confronts the main villain. (Specifically, consider 1:32:30 - 1:33:08 and nothing else if you care about spoilers.)
Throughout the story, Blazkowicz is rarely the person who thinks of the plan. Rather, others in the resistance do the thinking, and they send Blazkowicz off to do the shooting and the doing. While most modern military first person shooter protagonists aren’t aware that they’re cogs in the wheel, Blazkowicz understands his place. He is an instrument of death who practices his craft on every Nazi he finds. However, he also understands that because he bears this responsibility and has the skills to do what needs to be done, he’ll also never find happiness or satisfaction. His job is to confront the darkness, and when you’re dealing with a darkness like the Nazi regime and all that comes with it, you may never come back. He’s fighting for a future for others, but not himself.
And so this aspect of Blazkowicz, I feel, is reflected in the game. Blazkowicz is a character who revels in his task but understands the inhumanity in which he must constantly face and the effect it has on his actions. Wolfenstein: The New Order displays the same kind of understanding in its goals and the world in which it dwells. It knows the thrill of taking down a power as evil as the Nazis in the most brutal ways imaginable, but it also understands the humanity that fuels the resistance, and the effect of the inhumanity subjected upon them. Blazkowicz hasn’t lived in this new Nazi world long, but his friends have, and they’re tired, frustrated, and need help.
That’s when someone like Blazkowicz, a fearless American soldier who’s so old fashioned that he still uses a paper map to get around levels (unlike most of his fellow modern day video game protagonists) is needed most of all. It’s an absurd world. Fight fire with fire.
2. Verfremdungseffekt
Ver-frem-doong-seffect.
Verfremdungseffekt is a drama theory invented by Bertold Brecht in an essay he wrote called “Alienation Effects in Chinese Acting.” (You have to scroll down a little to find it.) To put it simply and probably a little too narrowly, Brecht puts forward the idea that in order to draw the audience out of the realm of basic emotional attachment, they need to be alienated so they can connect with a work of art on an intellectual level. If art wants to transcend, it has to do more than simply titillate and provide escapism. It must challenge. But in order to do so, it needs to put the audience at somewhat of a distance, and there are various tools of making that possible.
In the essay, for example, Brecht talks about the constant fourth wall breaking in Chinese theatre, and the unusual ways in which Chinese theatre arranges the sets and how the actors move and pose on stage. If we look at Brecht’s own work, The Threepenny Opera, we can find countless examples of bizarre song structures. A tango about the relationship between an abusive pimp and his prostitute. A jaunty (most of the time) opening number about our murderous protagonist, Macheath. (The famous “Mack the Knife,” for those of you into standards.) Like a lot of Brecht’s work, we can find some unsubtle examples as well (not that the earlier examples were particularly coy), such as The Threepenny Opera’s famous ending where Macheath is randomly pardoned by the queen right after Polly Peachum tells the audience that this is going to happen.
The intent of these methods is to put the audience at arm’s length so that they may consider the broader implications of the work as a whole rather than simply focusing on what it’s trying to make them feel in the moment. While this may be the goal, I personally think that these methods, a lot of the time, do the exact opposite.
Of course art is subjective, and one person’s “alienating” can draw another person in. However, I think there’s a reason we value surprise and we complain about something being done over and over again despite how popular the trope we’re all tired of may be. It’s because a lot of the art we consume is safe. We know going into most movies that the superhero will defeat the villain or that the pop song you listen to will want you to dance and fuck a good looking stranger. Though there’s nothing inherently wrong with “commercial” art and you shouldn’t feel “less than” because you like what you like, a lot of it exists to be disposable. Make X number of sales and move on to the next thing.
But throw in a bit of strange, and people notice.
There isn’t any one reason why certain works stand the test of time and others don’t. But none of them got there by playing it safe. Brecht wanted weirdness to push you back. I think weirdness, used correctly, draws you in.
(Unless your goal is to alienate, so you do something really jarring. But then again, some people will be into that. It's almost like blanket theories that cover all art are inherently flawed or something.)
For me at least, the weirdness Wolfenstein: The New Order injects into the story doesn’t alienate me like it did a lot of reviewers, but instead, imbues the game with an energy most games don’t have. Consider the presence in this game of one Jimi Hendrix.
Yes, Jimi Hendrix is part of the resistance. The game only addresses him as “J,” we never get to see his full face, and he never reveals his last name. But they do state that he’s from Seattle and as we walk by him playing guitar, some of his tunes sound eerily familiar though legally distinct. There’s also the scene where you trip balls with him.
It’s Jimi Hendrix, damnit.
Spoiler alert or whatever, but I’ll tell you right now that Jimi is not vital to this story’s structure. If you eliminated him all together, it would bear no impact on Blazkowicz’s goal of taking down the evil Nazi general. But if that’s the case, then you may be wondering what Jimi’s presence actually accomplishes in this game.
I would argue, like Blazkowicz said in the video, it shows you the kind of artistic expression that gets snuffed out in an oppressive totalitarian regime. Anything that doesn’t contribute to the Nazi stronghold over the world, be it the military or industry, is cast aside, and as a result, the world of Wolfenstein: The New Order feels noticeably bleaker.
But mostly, I would argue that the comedic strangeness of Jimi’s presence injects a certain light into the overwhelming darkness of the world. You shoot a lot of Nazis and see horrible things, but then you return to resistance HQ and Jimi Hendrix is strumming his guitar. It was surreal every time, and as a result, I fell in love with it.
And that brings to the surface a point I’ve made several times on this blog already, but always bears repeating: Emotions are non-binary. Darkness makes the light brighter, and in the real world, we don’t confine our emotions to fit a genre. Real life tragedies can breed moments of levity and good moods can be soured in an instant by something annoying or horrible.
The weird and tongue-in-cheek aspects of Wolfenstein: The New Order, at least to me, make its universe feel like a more tangible place. It’s a world of brutality and fear, but also of absurdity and quite moments of humanity. On paper, these elements shouldn’t work together. But in real life, they fit all too well.
Hendrix is far from the only example of this kind of strangeness. Remember earlier when I mentioned the Nazi base on the moon? Yes, there’s a Nazi base on the moon you get to go to. There’s also plenty of jokes at the expense of Blazkowicz’s intelligence and lots of other moments of bizarreness and silliness. It may seem jarring to add moments of broad comedy in a self-serious first person shooter. But if you’re open to what the game is trying to accomplish, the tone, at the very least, sets it apart from other games and makes it feel like something unique. Or if you’re like me, it makes the game feel more humane, albeit in an extremely odd sense of the word.
3. Ethical Questions
You may have gathered this by now, but Wolfenstein: The New Order is not a game that shies away from the darkness. This is a game where you fight the Nazis, one of the greatest villains humanity has ever had to face, and I feel like it does an incredibly affective job making you feel just how large the regime looms in its futuristic dystopia. Behind all the grand architecture and terrifying machinery, there’s an undercurrent of fear and death, and this feeling is brought forcefully to the surface whenever you fire your gun.
Or to put it more directly, Wolfenstein: The New Order is an almost overwhelmingly violent game, even by today’s standards. Depending on which gun you use and where you shoot, limbs fly off, heads explode into mush, and you might have to scrape for bullets and armor in a pile of smoldering red gunk. As you shoot, stab, and blow your way through the Nazi regime in Europe, the game and Blazkowicz himself revel in the perverse joy of consequence free Nazi slaughter.
There is, however, a question I found myself asking at a certain point. Let’s watch that Jimi acid trip scene again.
“Back home, man, you were the Nazis.”
I do think, underneath it all, that BJ Blazkowicz’s intentions are pure. There’s a great evil controlling the world, and while he may not be the sharpest tool in the shed, he understands that he’s more than capable of taking this evil down.
However, to put it frankly, I do think Blazkowicz actively enjoys the killing. I don’t think he’s a maniac who’ll go on a Grand Theft Auto like rampage, and he does make clear that given the opportunity, he’d elect to kick it in his backyard. But he does find satisfaction in the taking of life, albeit the lives of those who plan to do evil, and I think the satisfaction he gets from the killing puts it a notch or two above the moral realm of “Well, someone has to do it.”
The ethics of when killing is justified is beyond the scope of this article. But there is a question I think the game is hoping to bring to the front of the player’s mind: What differentiates Blazkowicz from the Nazis? He is, after all, a man from a country with a dark past of racism and violence who revels in killing people as much, if not more, than the people he’s fighting. So what distinguishes them and what makes him better?
Ultimately, I think these questions are made the most clear with the game’s tone. When the Nazis commit terrible violent acts, the game treats it with heavy tension and emotional weight. When Blazkowicz commits similar acts, the game treats it like it’s awesome. Case in point:
And just to be clear, I don’t think this was a mistake by the writers or an unintended result. I think it’s a deliberate choice to force the player to think about the implications of playing as a character who potentially shares similar defects as the enemy he vilifies.
I’m not here to give you an answer, other than “Fuck Nazis and everything they stand for.” I’m merely pointing out that without the tone of the game, we may not be asking these questions in the first place. If this was another generic military shooter, the US would be good, the Nazis would be bad, and none of the grey in between would ever be explored. However, in Wolfenstein: The New Order, the grey may not be immediately obvious at all times, but it’s there, and at some point you have to deal with it.
How much does Blazkowicz have in common with the Nazis?
This is a game that wants to make a point about war and the absurdity it brings to the surface. Most wars are the result of a series of disastrously stupid decisions, and Wolfenstein: The New Order understands this better than most military games.
