The latest Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus trailer, "No More Nazis," is more focused on gameplay than previous teasers, but that doesn't mean that it's entirely without a narrative bent. A few of the characters in the American resistance are revealed more clearly (and come off as a lot more interesting), BJ has a nuclear warhead stuffed inside a fire extinguisher for some reason, and in what appears to be something of a burgeoning Wolfenstein tradition, there is a sex scene.
The Nazis have destroyed Manhattan and turned New Orleans into a walled ghetto. And small-town America hasn't escaped their predations, either: "They brazenly walk the streets," Bethesda said, "going where they want, taking what they want, and behaving however they please."
But BJ Blazkowicz is having none of that. He's got kids on the way, you know.
It's funny, but it's also really not: As we noted in our recent article on the influence of the original Wolfenstein 3D on The New Colossus, elements of the Nazi-conquered US as it's presented in the game "make for dreadful images, especially because it's not pure fiction." That's how you end up with Mecha-Hitler-style silliness blended with "unrestrained comments on fascism" that includes things like a highly-visible KKK presence in the streets and an open embrace of racism and slavery—all of it rooted in real US history. It's a brilliant bit of world-building, if not always the easiest or most comfortable to take on, something we talked about with developer MachineGames at greater length last month.
Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus comes out on October 27.
