Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus

Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus is the eleventh installment of the Wolfenstein series and a sequel to the 2014's Wolfenstein: The New Order, developed by MachineGames and published by Bethesda Softworks. The game uses Id Software's newest game engine id Tech 6, which allowed for higher graphical quality when running the game. The New Colossus was released on October 27, 2017 for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Microsoft Windows and was released on June 29, 2018 for the Nintendo Switch. It is set in an alternate 1961, in Nazi-occupied United States of America, and follows the main protagonist, William Joseph "B.J." Blazkowicz, in his efforts to ignite a Second American Revolution five months after the events of The New Order.
==Plot==
After the events of the first game, in which General Wilhelm "Deathshead" Strasse is eliminated, the Kreisau Circle retrieves the critically injured William "B.J." Blazkowicz (Brian Bloom) from Deathshead's fortress before destroying it with a nuclear cannon. Blazkowicz falls into a 5-month long coma and has some of his organs removed to facilitate his survival. As Blazkowicz fades in and out during his coma aboard the Eva's Hammer (a Nazi U-boat commandeered by the Kreisau Circle), it is revealed that Anya, Blazkowicz's love interest, is pregnant with twins. The U-boat is attacked by Frau Engel, a sadistic Nazi commander who despises Blazkowicz for disfiguring her at Camp Belica and killing her lover, Bubi, in the events of the previous game. Blazkowicz, disoriented, and confined to a wheelchair, fights his way to Anya and Set Roth, and the three proceed to the main deck. Soon after, however, Caroline and Wyatt/Fergus (whoever survived the events of The New Order as chosen by the player at the beginning of the game) are captured by Engel and her forces. Desperate to save his friends, Blazkowicz devises a plan to get himself captured and taken to Engel's airship fortress, the Ausmerzer, which is suspending the U-boat above water. There, Frau Engel mocks and beats him, Caroline and Fergus/Wyatt. She then tries to get her abused daughter Sigrun to decapitate Caroline, but the former refuses. Frau Engel hits and belittles Sigrun, particularly on the 'treasonous passages' she read in her diary, before killing Caroline herself. After Engel taunts Blazkowicz with Caroline's severed head, Sigrun has a change of heart and tackles Frau Engel, allowing Fergus/Wyatt to break free and Blazkowicz to use Caroline's Da'at Yichud Power Suit to regain his strength. While Frau Engel escapes, Blazkowicz fights his way through the Ausmerzer, disconnects the U-boat from the Ausmerzer and flees back to the Eva's Hammer with Caroline's body.
The U-boat continues to be pounded by depth charges, however. With Sigrun's information they learn of a hidden compartment in the U-boat called Section F, where some surviving Nazis have locked themselves in and sent coded signals to the Ausmerzer, which enabled Frau Engel to locate them in the first place. Blazkowicz is sent to eliminate the Nazis.
After Caroline's funeral, the group decides to carry out what would have been the next step in Caroline's plan to undermine the Nazis - liberate the United States and use it as a central base from which to free the rest of the world. The group sets out to contact a resistance group hiding in the Empire State Building in the ruins of New York City, which was destroyed by a Nazi atomic bomb during the final years of this timeline's World War II, which resulted in the United States effectively surrendering to the Nazis. As Blazkowicz' armor is radiation-proof, he goes alone and finds Grace Walker, a passionate, scarred African-American, her baby Abby and Super Spesh, a lawyer-turned-conspiracy theorist. The building is attacked by Nazis and Blazkowicz fends them off before escaping with Grace and Spesh. On the helicopter ride back, Blazkowicz tries to convince his new allies that they need to put the fighting spirit back in the American people. Grace is heavily skeptical, claiming that whilst the oppressed minorities are fighting "every motherfucking day", the White America "have done up and packed in". She informs him that after the Nazis conquered America, the Ku Klux Klan effectively governs the southern states. Blazkowicz tells them to forget the turncoats and focus on the grassroots then confesses to them he's "running on empty" and is unsure of how long he has left. But he is firm in his belief that taking freedom away from the American people is "playing with fire" and that he "intends to pour some gasoline". This sparks the fighting spirit in everyone, with Grace claiming she has a plan to "send shockwaves throughout the nation."
After returning to the U-boat, Blazkowicz is sent by Grace to retrieve a nuclear warhead down in Section F. After fighting through the hibernating sarcophagi and returning with the warhead, Anya confronts Blazkowicz about his cold behavior, as he actively seems to be avoiding her. He reveals to her that he is dying as a result of his injuries and may not last another week. He feels he is a burden to her, and not being able to support her or his children is more than he can bear. Whilst Anya dislikes the pessimistic tone Blazkowicz takes about the matter, she urges him not to give in, as she will "never give up on him".
They are interrupted by Grace, who tells the group of her plan to kill the top Nazi leaders, the Oberkommando, in Roswell, New Mexico near the site of an unearthed Da'at Yichud cache, one of the biggest unearthed according to Set. The secret society, according to Set, were willing to give the US government access to it in order to level the playing field with the Nazis' technology, yet it was too late as the Nazis nuked New York. Blazkowicz travels to New Mexico disguised as a fireman with the nuclear warhead hidden in his extinguisher. At Spesh's diner, he is recognised by a Nazi officer but Spesh shoots the officer before he can raise the alarm. Spesh then takes him to his bunker where all his research is, revealing he witnessed the 1947 Roswell Incident, explaining his obsession with, put simply, "space aliens". He leads Blazkowicz to a tunnel that goes to the Oberkommando, where he deposits the bomb in the base's reactor. Once he escapes and steals a motorized Nazi unicycle, he detonates the warhead, obliterating the Oberkommando.
After escaping, he takes a detour to Mesquite, his hometown. Here, the player is introduced to flashbacks of Blazkowicz' childhood, including mutual affection for a neighbouring African-American girl called Billie, saving a rat from drowning in a bucket, and burying his pet dog Bessie after being forced to shoot her by his father, Rip, as punishment for being spotted with Billie. At his home, he picks up an heirloom of his mother's, a ring, which he was told to give to his love. Blazkowicz' abusive father then appears and shames him, telling him he is "broken beyond repair" and justifying his abuse of an adolescent Blazkowicz. He also tells Blazkowicz he let his mother be taken by the Nazis because she was Jewish, and the Nazis rewarded him as such. Blazkowicz' father reveals that he intends to hand him over to the Nazis; however, Blazkowicz kills him first. Engel, having relied on his father's open telephone line to pinpoint the two men's location, captures Blazkowicz a second time and takes the heirloom for herself. Super Spesh visits a detained Blazkowicz under the guise of his lawyer, telling him of their plan to break him out. However, with his famous last words being "It was space aliens, man!", Frau Engel kills Super Spesh and reveals that she had discovered his ruse from the moment he entered the building. The rescue team that was supposed to retrieve Blazkowicz were also attacked. At his trial, Blazkowicz imagines breaking free from his captors and finding his mother, Zofia, who comforts him and tells him he has one more hardship to endure.
For crimes deemed "of the highest treason", Blazkowicz is sentenced to death and beheaded personally by Engel at the Lincoln Memorial in front of millions in a televised event. However, when she drops his head into a furnace below, the Kreisau Circle recovers his head with a hacked drone and oxygenates it in time, preserving it in a glass tank. Set surgically grafts Blazkowicz's head onto a bioengineered Nazi super-soldier body that Caroline obtained some time before, freeing Blazkowicz from his previously crippled body. Back on his feet of his own accord and feeling like, quote, "a fucking freight train", Blazkowicz then breaks into a Nazi bunker hidden under New York, stealing a file on New Orleans, which is revealed to be a large ghetto and that plans for Nazi death squads to purge the entire city of "undesirables" are about to be in motion. Blazkowicz travels there to gather several freedom fighters under the command of communist Horton Boone. Horton introduces Blazkowicz to his group of anarchists, including clarinet-playing Paris Jack and marksman The Professor. As the two figureheads sit opposite each other downing "Old Horton's Special" (Horton's brand of moonshine) - and getting steadily intoxicated - they spit at each other on how back before the war Horton was spouting his Bolshevik propaganda and that he stood up against "the imperialist war machine in these here United States of America and the greedy money men of Wall Street". This culminates in Blazkowicz kicking aside his chair and, in a drunken stupor, announces to the room that [he] has kids on the way and that "[he'll] be damned if [he] were to raise them in a world run by these Nazi assholes." Horton is impressed by Blazkowicz' resilience to his moonshine (possibly due to his biologically enhanced metabolism) and agrees to join the Kreisau Circle.
They break out of the ghetto with Blazkowicz distracting Nazi forces with a tamed Panzerhund and escape on the Eva's Hammer. After diving, the Kreisau Circle are informed by Horton that the Ausmerzer, before it came under Frau Engel's command and used to hunt "terrorists", was used to roam from city to city and crush any attempt at a major revolt. The group considers stealing the Ausmerzer to prevent its use against the group's planned revolution, but realise that it would be nearly impossible due to an Automatic Defense system called ODIN. The Oberkommando are privy to the codes, but since the destruction of Area 52, the Oberkommando relocated to a Nazi facility on Venus. The group plans to steal the codes to deactivate ODIN by travelling to Venus, where the codes are kept in a Nazi facility. Blazkowicz assumes the identity of actor Jules Redfield and is invited to Venus to participate in a propaganda film audition based on the capture and defeat of "Terror-Billy" (Blazkowicz' name from the Nazis) directed by an ailing Adolf Hitler. After being forced by Hitler at gunpoint to play his "role", Blazkowicz braves the extreme temperatures on the planet's surface to retrieve the ODIN codes and returns to Earth to decipher the codes.
The Kreisau Circle then mounts an assault on the Ausmerzer, where the Resistance members disable ODIN and proceed to hijack its command systems. Blazkowicz and his team travel to the ground, where General Engel is on national television. Blazkowicz executes her to avenge Caroline and the resistance proclaims the start of a revolution. Horton, Grace and Blazkowicz walk up to the screen and tell the American population watching that the Nazis lying and propaganda made their very thoughts a crime, and asks them if they forgot to fight, and that it was the Nazis that invaded their shores. The three of them assure the United States that whatever they do to resist the Nazis: be it gathering to speak their mind freely, soaking hands in their oppressors blood, holding their babies in their arms and promising to raise them to be free, or fighting out in the streets with a brick or a knife, then "[they] are one of [them]" In a post-credits scene, Blazkowicz takes back his heirloom ring from Engel's body and proposes to Anya.
After the main game ends, Grace Walker approaches B.J. to ask him to kill all Ubercommanders under Irene to make sure no ones can succeed her to command the occupational force in the US. As B.J. succeeds his mission, the entire command structure of the Nazi in the U.S. crumbles. The images shown in the credits sequence show the American people rioting and rebelling in the streets, killing Nazi soldiers and massive insurrections that the occupation force fail at subduing occurring all over the U.S.
==Characters==
===Main===
* William J. Blazkowicz - Protagonist
* Anya Oliwa - Deuteragonist
* Irene Engel - Main Antagonist
===Supporting===
====Nazi Germany====
* Adolf Hitler
* Roderick Metze (DLC)
* Gerhardt Dunkel (DLC)
* Wolfgang Schwarz (DLC)
* Chuck Lorentz (DLC)
* Hans Stiglitz (DLC)
* Clive Cross (DLC)
====Kreisau Circle====
* Caroline Becker
* Klaus Kreutz (Mentioned by Max's Birthday Card and Memorial Masterpiece Art)
* Fergus Reid (determinant)
* Probst Wyatt III (determinant)
* Set Roth
* Bombate
* Max Hass
* Sigrun Engel
====American Resistance====
* Horton Boone
* Grace Walker
* Norman "Super Spesh" Caldwell
* Mary Sue 'Professor' Ellington
* Jacques "Paris Jack" Leroy
* Joseph Stallion (DLC)
* Jessica Valiant (DLC)
* Gerald Wilkins (DLC)
* Ginny Wilkins (DLC)
====Others====
* Zofia Blazkowicz
* Rip Blazkowicz
* Sabine Vogel
* Jack Valiant
* Crimson Bulldog
* Heinrich Müller
* Klaus Klinger
* Leopold Meissner
* Raimund Hofmann
* Walter Hauser
* Fredrich Baumgarter
* Jürgen Schlusser
* Erich Eberhardt
* Albert Grosse
* Otto Ackermann
* Daniel Eckstein
* Victor Kreuger
* Ludwig Kassmeyer
* Michael Rademaker
* Thomas Wechsler
* Gernot Herrmann
* Kommandant Gruber
* Peter Trumbauer
==== Enemies ====
* Atom Elites
* Kampfhund
* Commander
* Übercommander
* Soldier (The New Colossus)
* Super Soldier
* Ku Klux Klan
* Crocodile
==Technology==
=== Vehicles ===
* Eva's Hammer
* Ausmerzer
* Silberfish
* Monocycle
* Railway Turret
* Supply Zeppelin
* Haunebu-V
* Rover
===Robots===
*Panzerhund
*Laserhund
*Zitadelle
*Zerstörer
*ÜberSoldat (The New Colossus)
===Weapons===
*Sonnengewehr
*Hatchet
*Knife (The New Order)
*Double-Barreled Shotgun
*Handgranate
*Handgun 1960
*Kampfpistole
*Maschinenpistole
*Sturmgewehr
*Schockhammer X
*LaserKraftWerk
*Dieselkraftwerk
*Lasergewehr
*Dieselgewehr
*Hammergewehr
*Ubergewehr
==Reception==
Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus was well received among critics, scoring an 87% from Metacritic, a 9.1 from IGN and an 81% from PC Gamer.
== Sequels and Future ==
Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus was followed up on by Wolfenstein: Cyberpilot and Wolfenstein: Youngblood, both of which released in 2019, and follow a pair of secondary stories set 20 years after the events of the TNC, themselves set a week apart from eachother.
In Cyberpilot, a VR-exclusive title, the player takes control of an experimental android Ubersoldat that is capable of integrating with various pieces of machinery. The French resistance have reclaimed the Cyberpilot and turned it against the Nazis. The game features VR-oriented gameplay, but is still a free-roaming first-person shooter, rather than an on-rails experience. The Cyberpilot is able to integrate with and pilot various Nazi automatons to aid its allies in their fight.
A week later, in Youngblood, Jessie "Jes" Blazkowicz and Zofia "Soph" Blazkowicz II, who venture out into Nazi-occupied France in search of their father, whom had gone missing. The gameplay is largely the same as TNC, however with several noticeable alterations. The game can be played alone, or in two-player co-op as both Jes and Soph. The game features numerous RPG elements, including XP, skill trees, in-game currency, and health bars. Combat is substantially less flexible than before, and instead focuses primarily on resource management. It contains a repeatable missions structure and a rotating "Daily Challenge" system, facilitating the act of grinding for currency and materials.
=== "Wolfenstein III" ===
A third mainline entry in the MachineGames timeline has been confirmed to be in development. Little is known about the game beyond the working title of "Wolfenstein III", the return of B.J. Blazkowicz as the main playable protagonist, and its story being placed in between The New Colossus and Cyberpilot.
There are numerous speculatory details that hold weight, but should be taken with a grain of salt. Hitler's death prior to Youngblood may occur during the events of Wolfenstein III. The highly-anticipated Sonnengewehr was teased via a sneak-peek during the Freedom Chronicles mission, The Adventures of Gunslinger Joe. However it is never mentioned nor alluded to during the events of either Cyberpilot nor Youngblood, making its inclusion in Wolfenstein III highly unlikely.
==Trivia==
* The subtitle "The New Colossus" is most likely a reference to the poem with the same name written in 1883 by Emma Lazarus. This poem was written to raise money for the construction of the pedestal of Statue of Liberty and was also quoted by B.J. Blazkowicz at the end of Wolfenstein: The New Order.
* The Nintendo Switch version of Wolfenstein II marks the first time a Wolfenstein game was released on a Nintendo platform in 16 years, since the Game Boy Advance port of Wolfenstein 3D.
* The song that plays in the reveal trailer is "Danke Schoen" by Wayne Newton (likely an inside joke by Machine Games, given that Danke Schoen is a German phrase). It is also the only song with English lyrics relating to Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus, apart from "Change Over Day", by Die Kafer. The presence of "Danke Schoen", in-game is either an anachronism, since the song itself hadn't been written until one year after the game is set in specifically 1962, or it is possible it was released much earlier due to the result of the Nazis taking over American Popular culture since the song contains German phrases.
* The end music that plays during the ending credits is a heavy metal rendition of "We're Not Gonna Take it" by Twisted Sister.
* The newspaper clipping found in-game titled "Meet the Dapper Young KKK Leader With A Message of Hope" about a local Ku Klux Klan member named Preston Cooper is a direct parody of the American newspaper Mother Jones' controversial headline "Meet the Dapper White Nationalist Who Wins Even If Trump Loses" which was meant to cover alt-right leader Richard Spencer but due to its title garnered backlash.
* In the Season Three finale episode of The Man in the High Castle, there is a callout to Wolfenstein II in the form of the name of the planned replacement for the demolished Statue of Liberty, the 'New Colossus'.
==Gallery==
===Video===
Wolfenstein_II_–_Nintendo_Switch_Launch_Trailer
Launch Trailer – Wolfenstein II The New Colossus
Wolfenstein II The New Colossus –E3 2017 Announce Trailer
Wolfenstein II The New Colossus – E3 2017 Full Reveal Trailer
==External links==
*Title at Moby Games
*Title at Gamefaqs
Category:Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus
Category:Wolfenstein series