v i d e o g a m e

Me: Wolfenstein II is exceptionally well written

Also me: Wolfenstein II is an ultraviolent Verhoeven-lite action movie about a guy in power armor exploding nazis with two triple-barreled shotguns; it being exceptional is an indictment of AAA games writing as a whole

lmao I just ran past the final fight

So I think I can see why nobody really talked about New Colossus much after launch. It's a highly-polished well-executed themepark shooter with a really heavy emphasis on character writing

dialogue's great but the gameplay's unremarkable and the plot never really hits a stride

Voice acting is incredibly good and there are a ton of really neat character moments. It rapidly ends up in "why is this a game and not a movie" territory though. Lots of heartfelt scenes of friends/families dealing with trauma, but no real overarching plot beyond "win at fights"

it keeps poking all these interesting themes around civil rights and nationalism and antifascism and empathy but then switches back to nazi-murder goresplosion gameplay before it can really decide what to say?

Like the drinking-contest argument about hippies-slash-communists opposing the draft was *super interesting* and FAR more nuanced than anything I'd expect from AAA games writing, but it still concludes with "cool now ride this flamethrower robot tiger" instead of, like, a POINT

To be clear it's WAY better than the usual Far-Cry-Bioshock-ass "please praise us for acknowledging the existence of Big Issues despite having nothing further to say"

It's trying to talk about empathy/acceptance as counter to fascism, but all the axe-murdering gets in the way

William "B.J." Blazkowicz, shoulder-checking a man so hard his torso explodes in a shower of viscera: "due to flashbacks of my racist, abusive father I have vowed to raise my children in a world free from bigotry"

*20/20 torsos exploded, Perk unlocked*

A lot of the character moments and particularly the voice acting are like, genuinely exceptionally good

it just kinda... doesn't quite know what it wants to accomplish, and with that + fairly unremarkable FPS gameplay, I can see why it didn't leave much of an impression