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Meet Frau Engel in Wolfenstein: The New Order's 'Train to Berlin' scene
We saw this scene right at the end of our preview playthrough of the first two hours of Wolfenstein: The New Order, and it introduces Frau Engel to players for the first time. Engel looks to be sadistic bordering on psychopathic, toying with hero B.J. Blaskowicz as he tries to keep his cool and maintain his cover. For what it's worth (spoilers), when we played this sequence we didn't go for the gun despite how crazy the crazy lady was. Instead, we simply picked the cards. That caused Engel to angrily declare we were impure and point the gun to our head, only for her sultry toy-boy to calm her down and remind her it was all a game. Bethesda released a separate video interview today (below the break) with MachineGames' Narrative Designer Tommy Tordsson Bjork. In it he describes conceiving the Frau Engel character as his proudest moment because she's "such a cool, female villain, which is not that common in video games." Engel is just one of the antagonists Blaskowicz faces in MachineGames' alternate vision of a post WW2-world where the Nazis won, and players will get to see the whole lot - possibly including a mech-suited Fuhrer? - when the game hits Xbox One, PS4, PS3, Xbox 360 and PC on May 20 in North America, and May 23 in Europe. Bethesda recently revealed pre-orders net players an invite to an upcoming beta for the next Doom game. [Image: Bethesda]
Wolfenstein art book launches in May, more from Bethesda to follow
Bethesda has partnered with print publisher Dark Horse Comics to produce a series of hardcover art books detailing the creation of Wolfenstein: The New Order, Dishonored, and The Evil Within. "The Art of Wolfenstein: The New Order," due in May, showcases concept art, characters designs, and developer commentary across 200 pages. "The Art of The Evil Within" will launch in August, while "Dishonored: The Dunwall Archives" will hit shelves in November. Series books retail for $39.99 each. "The Art of Wolfenstein: The New Order" is currently up for pre-order at Amazon for $25.88. [Image: Bethesda / Dark Horse Comics]
Wolfenstein: The New Order tries hard with a vengeance
MachineGames talks about Wolfenstein: The New Order being a story-driven, single-player adventure, and it's true there's some finesse and direction to the cutscenes, a suggestion of secondary characters with personality and backstory. Much the same can be said of Die Hard, though, and it's no War and Peace. That's not to dismiss the storytelling in The New Order, but based on what I see in its first two hours, it mostly sticks to the action movie spirit of tearing up Nazis, saving the day, getting the girl, and blowing shit up. The return of William "BJ" Blazkowicz provides a gruff-voiced American hero with McClane-like hardened features and self-whispered one-liners, while Gruber is all but resurrected in the campy glares and maniacal laughs of the game's arch-villains. More important than that, I've got waves and waves of "Nazi scum" to kill, to use the blunt words of Blazkowicz, and machine guns in each hand. A story-driven romp The New Order may be, but a romp is still a romp. That said, the game shows a hand for ripping up preconceptions.
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Joystiq Weekly: Irrational Games, co-op Pokemon and a Doom beta
Welcome to Joystiq Weekly, a "too long; didn't read" of each week's biggest stories, reviews and original content. Each category's top story is introduced with a reactionary gif, because moving pictures aren't just for The Daily Prophet. Between the new Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze, Tony Hawk's involvement in a new game and talk of a Doom beta, this week feels like a list of lost events from the '90s. Not that we're complaining, of course - the days of platforming in mine carts, feeding arcade machines quarters and hogging family computers from siblings were pretty wonderful times. They were simpler, too - just 151 Pokemon to keep track of, with full games and expansions instead of publishers scattering in-game content to retailers and adding season passes to everything or-- Well, it didn't take us long to trip into the "back in my day" style of reminiscing. We'll excuse ourselves for a stint of warning kids passing by to stay off our lawns, but we've left you a recap of the biggest events from this week after the break. Er ... this week being in 2014, not the '90s.
Joystiq Discussion: What do you want from a new Doom?
Joystiq wants to know: what do you want to play when you fire up a game bearing the name Doom? We are now as distant from the release of Doom as we were from the release of Led Zeppelin's Houses of the Holy when Doom first came out. These works have much in common. id Software's game opens with a blistering dose of action the likes of which had never been seen, just as Houses opens on the gleefully furious "The Song Remains the Same." Face it, players: Doom is our classic rock. When classic rock acts come back, it's always a gamble. Would we really want a new Led Zeppelin album today? Not to disparage Jimmy Page and Robert Plant's solo records, but it's not like No Quarter held up to albums like Houses. By the same token, would we even want a new Doom in 2014? Do the design machinations of John Romero and John Carmack still merit exploration? Is their little universe something that can hold up to new stories? No matter what, new Doom is coming. We don't know what it will be called, but when Wolfenstein: The New Order arrives, it will be playable. What do you want that to be, though? [Images: Bethesda Softworks]
Wolfenstein: The New Order bundled with Doom beta access this May
Order up! The next installment in the Wolfenstein series, The New Order, launches on May 20 in North America and on May 23 in Europe, publisher Bethesda Softworks has announced. Wolfenstein: The New Order is the first game from developer MachineGames, founded in 2009 by exiting members of Riddick-dev Starbreeze. Bethesda also revealed that pre-ordering The New Order will net players an invite to a beta for Doom, which a Bethesda representative tells Joystiq is "the next Doom game from id Software." Developer id Software first announced a new installment in the franchise, at the time titled Doom 4, in May 2008. Since then, id has muttered nary a word about the next game – save for today's news that, yes, it's still in development. Bethesda promises more information on the beta, which has not been dated, on its official site. Wolfenstein: The New Order focuses on narrative, eschewing a multiplayer mode in favor of a story that revolves around an alt-history 1960s where the Nazi regime had been victorious in their monstrous World War 2 campaign. The New Order will launch on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC alongside Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions.
Square Enix's TGS 2013 line-up includes Lightning Returns, Thief
Square Enix has posted the selection of wares and sundries it'll showcase during this month's Tokyo Game Show festivities, and while the list is primarily what you'd expect, there are a couple of interesting omissions. High-profile highlights include Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy, Drag-On Dragoon 3/Drakengard 3, Thief and Final Fantasy 14: A Realm Reborn. The publisher will also be showing off a small handful of Square Enix Partners titles, such as Wolfenstein: The New Order and Psycho Break, the Japanese title for Shinji Mikami's The Evil Within. Missing from the list, however, are Final Fantasy 15 and Kingdom Hearts 3, neither of which have been heard from since back at E3. But hey, Gardening Mama is totally on there, and that's all that matters.
Bethesda's publishing model based on quality, not quantity, says Hines
Bethesda has no ambitions to become a volume-driven publisher, VP of PR and Marketing Pete Hines told us during last weekend's QuakeCon festivities in Dallas, TX. "It's not a situation where we set out to say 'Well, we need to be acquiring studios at this level,' or 'We need to be a 10,"' Hines said with regards to Bethesda's growth philosophies as a publisher. "We know for sure that we don't want to be a publisher that is publishing 20 to 30 games a year, that's not who we are." "We're more about fewer premium titles and putting our full attention behind those," Hines continued, "and if it's one a year, or two a year, or three a year or four a year, what's most important is backing the best bets, putting our full support behind those and making them great. And then, do it again." That whole "making them great" thing seems to be an integral part of Bethesda's operating procedure, as Wolfenstein: The New Order was recently delayed into 2014 for polishing. Likewise, Hines has said previously that Prey 2 has yet to meet Bethesda's quality standards, despite years in development and millions of dollars spent.
Wii U not on Bethesda's short-term radar
Wii U owners hoping for a little Bethesda-brand steampunk/open world/pseudo-historical/massively multiplayer whatever may want to start grazing other pastures, as Nintendo's console is nowhere to be seen on the publisher's horizon. "None of the game's we've announced are being developed for the Wii U, so it's guaranteed that none of those games are coming to Wii U," Bethesda VP of PR and marketing Pete Hines told us at QuakeCon, with regards to The Elder Scrolls Online, Wolfenstein: The New Order and The Evil Within. "Will any future ones come out? I can't say for sure, in our near-term focus it's not on our radar." "It's largely a hardware thing," Hines said, explaining that Bethesda's mantra is to "make the games that we want to make, on whatever platforms will support them as developed." Giving an example, he said that The Elder Scrolls Online "likely would have" been released on Xbox 360, but that it "just wasn't possible" due to hardware limitations. Specifically referencing future announcements for the Wii U, Hines said that "it remains to be seen what the future holds." This differs from the Wii U publishing reservations we've heard of from other companies, in that Bethesda's decision is based on hardware limitations, rather than the Wii U's lackluster performance at retail. EA, for instance, isn't bringing this year's installments of FIFA or Madden to Nintendo's platform due to the limited size of the console's installed user base. Similarly, Ubisoft was so confident that the Wii U would be unable to support the kind of sales it needed for Rayman Legends, that it delayed the game's release and extended its availability to other platforms.
Wolfenstein: The New Order pushed to 2014
Wolfenstein: The New Order needs a little more time to get it reich. "We have confirmed today at QuakeCon that Wolfenstein will ship next year, all platforms. Felt it deserved some additional time for polish," Bethesda VP of marketing and PR Pete Hines said today on Twitter. Hines also told Polygon that developer MachineGames' reboot has been hampered by developing on current- and next-gen platforms simultaneously, along with the layers of genres the studio is trying to put into the shooter. "MachineGames has been working on this game for a while," Hines told Polygon. "You don't want to waste all that time and effort for the sake of a couple of months, if a couple of months could make all of the difference in the world."
The Evil Within, Wolfenstein confirmed for PS4, Xbox One
It's a mere formality at this point, but Bethesda Softworks has officially confirmed Wolfenstein: The New Order and The Evil Within for Xbox One and PlayStation 4. The games were previously announced for Xbox 360, PS3 and PC as well. Bethesda also released some more screenshots for both games, which we've placed in the galleries below. %Gallery-189556% %Gallery-191139%
Wolfenstein, Elder Scrolls Online images tell their own tales
Sometimes ideas can't be fully expressed in words alone, such as "a vast, open world of monsters and villages," or "an alternate universe where the Nazis won the war and made giant, evil robots."
Wolfenstein: The New Order serves up new screenshots
Wolfenstein: The New Order, MachineGames' series reboot announced last week, has deployed a platoon of screenshots featuring mechs, robo-dogs and pistol-packin' Nazi grandmas.
Wolfenstein: The New Order won't have a multiplayer mode
Wolfenstein: The New Order will not include multiplayer, Bethesda and developer MachineGames told Gamespot. The New Order stuck its neck out (and its right arm) yesterday with an announcement trailer featuring series protagonist B.J. Blazkowicz in an alternate 1960s universe where the Nazis won World War II. Previous Wolfenstein games to include multiplayer include Return to Castle Wolfenstein, released in 2001, Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, out in 2003, and the 2009 Wolfenstein for PC, Xbox 360 and PS3. With a legacy as storied as Wolfenstein's, a few series fans may be dismayed to hear New Order won't include multiplayer. Wolfenstein: The New Order is due out on Xbox 360, PS3, PC and next-gen consoles in Q4 2013.
Wolfenstein: The New Order announced
Bethesda Softworks has announced Wolfenstein: The New Order for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PC, and next-gen consoles. The reimagined take on the classic first-person shooter is under development at MachineGames and set in an alternate universe during the 1960s. The game will goose-step into retail during the final quarter of 2013. "As fans of the series, working on this game is an honor, and our team is driven to create an unforgettable action-adventure experience that will make FPS fans proud," said Jens Matthies, creative director at developer MachineGames. The studio was founded in 2009 by a group of Starbreeze Studios vets. It was purchased by Bethesda parent company Zenimax Media in 2010.
