Wolfenstein Q&A Feature

The sequel to id's 2001 hit Return to Castle Wolfenstein has been in gestation for a considerable time, which probably isn't too surprising given the studio's pedigree.  TVG first heard word on a new Wolfenstein title back in 2005 at E3 and X05, but we've had a long time to wait until the title finally materialised. 

But finally the Raven developed title is on the horizon.  TVG recently got the chance to speak with id's Steve Nix Director of Business Development and Peter Sokal Community Manager at a roundtable interview.

WWII is a popular scenario for first-person-shooters; can you tell us how Wolfenstein differs?

Steve Nix: Wolfenstein is very much its own unique universe, we don't even consider it a WWII game, it's more a Sci-Fi game that happens to be set during WWII.  What's really liberating about that is we can do lots of wacky stuff if it's fun for the player, and we're not bound by specific realistic situations or the weapons in the game.

Wolfenstein, first and foremost, is fast-paced first-person-shooting action.  Wolfenstein 3D invented the FPS genre, so it's extremely important that we stay true to that, but we also have a great deal of freedom to come up with any crazy stuff that's really fun.  The weapons need to feel great and it needs to feel really good to kill the enemies, the enemies have to seem intelligent and work together.

A lot of games are remakes of older games, why do you think that is?

SN: I think it's been long enough for those titles and it was a lot of fun back then and younger gamers have forgotten about it, but there's still fun game mechanics and fun universes.  It's almost like remaking a song or a movie, why not if there's been long enough of a gap?  I guess it means we're maturing as an industry when you do see legitimate remakes that are well done and lots of fun.

Wolfenstein's not a remake.  Return to Castle Wolfenstein, the beginning was a bit of a retelling of the story of Wolfenstein 3D, the very beginning of the game, but Wolfenstein follows directly after the events of Return to Castle Wolfenstein.  At the beginning of the game in one of the cinematics they apologise for sending BJ back into the field so quickly after the events of Return to Castle Wolfenstein.  So it's completely contiguous with what happened in that game.

Looking at the time powers; specifically what can you tell us and how did they come about because they weren't in Return to Castle Wolfenstein?

Peter Sokal: We can actually talk about pretty much all of them at this point and what they're capable of doing.  You have four in the game, total.  The first power is 'Veil Sight' which allows BJ to perceive things differently, so some walls might disappear, enemies will stand out in darkened areas, and also grenade trails, for example, you'll see those before you throw them, while you're cooking it you can pick where you toss it.  When it's fully upgraded you'll be able to see enemies through walls and certain structures.

Then you have 'Mire' which allows you to slow down time, which works towards puzzle elements in some cases where you're avoiding getting crushed for example, but it also works in real world combat situations so you can dodge enemy fire, you can wind up the perfect shot or you can watch a guy explode slowly if that's your type of thing.  All of the powers are upgradeable and they're significant upgrades.  Initially with 'Mire' when you activate it you're slowed down along with the enemies, but as you upgrade it the enemies are still slow but you can move in real-time, and eventually they freeze in place and they're crystallized and you can bash them and they kinda crumble.

Then we have 'Shield' which we showed today, which basically puts a barrier up in front of BJ and absorbs enemy fire.  But upgraded it also deflects bullets back and so you'll see a guy take a shot and he'll kill himself.  Fully upgraded it also serves as a battering ram, so on top of all the absorption and deflection you can charge into a group of guys and you'll just see them get disintegrated.

The final power is 'Kinetic Empowerment', which the more it's upgraded the more structures you can shoot through.  In the beginning you'll see AI taking cover behind wooden boxes and things like that, so you can shoot right through it, but later you might be able to shoot through stone pillars.

The great thing about the powers is you can use them in combination and experiment.  So with Veil Sight fully upgraded you can see through structures, turn on Kinetic and just shoot a guy through the wall and he doesn't even know you're there.  So there's a lot of experimentation and creativity in terms of combat.

Thinking about the series in general, with a lot of FPS you do tend to see them coming out every other year or in certain cases every year.  With Wolfenstein there appears to be quite a gap, is this a conscious effort to protect it?

SN: Well it's not entirely that well thought out or a conscious effort, unfortunately.  We should make up a good answer to that.  The truth is that Wolfenstein is one of our key franchises at id and it's one of our most beloved franchises so we want to be very careful with it.  We're a very small team at id, until very recently we were only given one game at a time; we also develop our own technology at the same time so it takes us quite a long time to make games typically.

With Wolfenstein we wanted to see another game in development but it's not just something we're going to hand out to any development team that's available out there, because we really need to make sure it's a great title.  We've been working with Raven since... they used Wolfenstein 3D technology for Shadowcaster back in the early 90s, and the majority of their games over the years have used id technology.  So we really trust those guys and not only were a team available to do Wolfenstein at Raven, but it was a particular team that was extremely excited and enthusiastic about the title and they really liked our ideas.  Eric Biessman is the creative director on the project at Raven and Eric is a long-time industry veteran, he's been at Raven a long time, the guy really knows his first-person-shooters, the guy's amazing.  He's really driven and the joy of the development at Raven, the guy knows his stuff and he's done a great job, so it's just finding a developer that we trust with one of our babies is the major issue.

How big do you think the brand is; everybody recognises Doom or Quake, but do you think younger gamers appreciate what a big breakthrough it was?

SN: Ummm, we recently launched Wolfenstein 3D on the iPhone and it's been very successful.  Branded games don't tend to do too well on the iPhone, but it's immediately jumped into the Top 10.  It's probably a younger demographic on the iPhone.  It's one of the highest rated apps on the App Store, but it's a mix of people who've never played it before and really enjoyed it versus people who are 'oh man this is exactly like I remembered it', but even better because of the enhancements we added.

It's helped that most people... journalists and retailers have heard of the brand, but we can't assume that players are familiar with it.  Honestly we expect... the bulk of gamers are still mostly younger males, and a lot of those probably never played either of the older titles.  So we need the game to be approachable to those guys and we can't assume they know anything about the Wolfenstein universe.  At the same time, it's Wolfenstein and for the people that have played the game and are huge fans it needs to feel very much like Wolfenstein, so that makes it challenging in development because you have to balance those two concerns, and after years of extremely hard work and long hours I think the teams have pulled it off fantastically.

So what is the defining quality of Wolfenstein?

SN: It's got to be an extremely good feeling first-person-shooter experience, but it's in this unique occult, Nazi universe that really we have to ourselves, no other big games have played in that sandbox.

What did you make of the Nazi Zombies in Call of Duty: World at War?

SN: Oh the... well I guess there was that mode, but that seemed more like Left 4 Dead then it was crossing over into the Wolfenstein universe.  But that was more like a bonus add-on so I'm not too concerned by that.

The unique alternate reality WWII universe I think the Wolfenstein brand still owns it.

Do you think 2007's Bioshock was a watershed moment for the genre?

SN: Bioshock was a fantastic game and I think it affected the way people are thinking about shooters.  But we were already pretty far into development by the time most people knew what was going on with that title.  So I think our thing is how do we make Wolfenstein feel fresh and modern and not feel like we're making the same game over and over again.

But yeah, Bioshock was a fantastic title.

There's obviously going to be a lot of similar games competing in Q3/4 2009; are you confident that Wolfenstein will have the strength to poke its head above Max Payne 3 and Singularity?

SN: We've certainly noticed it.  We're really excited about the game it feels like Wolfenstein, it feels good, the amazing variety of the weapons and the powers and the combinations you can do with those; the environments there's an amazing number of environments in this game. 

So I think that all stands up and then with the addition of the Wolfenstein branding which is well recognised, the amount of publicity that we're getting has been very, very good.  And also for Activision, this is a pillar title for Activision this year and we're getting the level of support you'd expect with that expectation.  Marketing is extremely important for games and Activision is supporting this title like a game you'd expect to do extremely well.  So we think the game quality is there, the marketing is there, and the awareness of the title, so we're extremely hopeful that gamers love it and it does really well.

Are you doing anything different with multiplayer?

SN: We haven't talked a lot about multiplayer yet, we'll have more news on it really soon.  Return to Castle Wolfenstein multiplayer really invented the class-based multiplayer and it still does really well today, there are lots of people that still play it and then Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory as well.  But what we say is that if you enjoyed Return to Castle Wolfenstein multiplayer then this will feel very familiar and enjoyable, we've actually added the Veil powers to the multiplayer this time.

Can you talk about 3D Realms, particularly the troubles that the big Texan family of FPS studios has faced; 2K are presumably looking at another studio for Duke Nukem Forever, is that something that would interest you?

SN: One of our primary issues at id is that we have these great brands with Quake, Doom, Wolfenstein, Enemy Territory and now RAGE, we're still a small development team, we're barely above 100 people with multiple projects in development.  There's been no discussion about trying to go out and get other titles; it's a real challenge just trying to get great games made with the properties we've got now.

Otherwise it'll be another 12 years perhaps.

SN: Apogee was id's original publisher and id moved to Dallas because Apogee was located there, so that was one of the reasons why id decided to move there.  Of course we were all a bit shocked and saddened when we found out that 3D Realms was closing the doors.

Any word on RAGE, do you have a launch window for that?

SN: It's an id title so we don't even know. 

PS: The answer is when it's done.

SN: Yeah when it's done, we honestly have no idea when the game is going to be ready to go.

TVG would like to thank Steve Nix and Peter Sokal for taking the time to answer our questions.