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| Photo courtesy gamezone.com |
There’s a moment in Wolfenstein: The New Order that has stuck with me since I played it this summer. It’s not a playable moment – though the game features so many well-presented interactive sequences; the train ride Nazi inquisition, the labor camp escape, the chainsaw torture – no, this one is different. It’s easy to miss, but when I caught it, I learned not to ignore the story this game was trying to tell me.
At the beginning of the game, the main character, William "BJ" Blazkowicz enters a coma. When he awakens 14 years later, he learns that the Nazis have won World War II. His nurse, Anya has just witnessed her family’s brutal slaying at the hands of the Germans, and BJ accompanies her to her Grandparent’s home where they break the news to them. It’s her grandmother’s reaction that astonished me.
The camera shows BJ bringing a Nazi hostage up to the couple. The woman breaks down and begins to slap the captive soldier over and over. We can’t discern her cries, but the heartbreak comes through. It’s a small moment that a lesser game – and most games – would simply ignore, or conversely, try to exploit to engender sympathy. Not so in Wolfenstein. The game keeps the camera panned back far enough that your eye isn’t meant to catch on anything. It’s simply one of the things going on in the frame - just as these types of atrocities have become commonplace in this world.
Despite the temptations of such a rich historical backdrop, developer Machine Games never forces the tragedy of that real war on the player. It never capitalizes on it or exploits it. It simply shows it as it was and as it may have become. Sure, robot dogs and giant mechs might not adhere to reality, but the respect for the real tragedies of that war permeates every bit of Wolfenstein.
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