id, Raven Developers Discuss New Wolfenstein

CVG is running an interview with Kevin Cloud, executive producer at id, and Eric Biessman, who leads Raven Software's programmers and artists, about the upcoming installment to the Wolfenstein series. They provide some detail about what kind of weapons will be available, what those crazy Nazis are up to this time, and BJ Blazkowicz's new ability to "shroud" himself. "Press a single button, at any time, and you'll see the other side of reality: a green and violent dimension that's filled with strange creatures and whirling tornadoes of energy. Just being in the shroud gives you options: floating above the ground are 'collectors' - fleshy heavy metal album cover worms that are scavenging electrical energy. Pop them, with a single rifle round, and they'll blast apart, damaging enemies in the real world. They are essentially exploding, hidden, organic barrels. ...In shroud mode, too, occult symbols etched into the masonry are transformed into holes in walls that BJ can simply step, shoot, or lob a grenade through."

Comments

Re:Is it just me, or...

[TheRaven64]

Actually, the original was a purely 2D game for 8-bit machines. Wolf3D was based (loosely) on this. Possibly the grandparent thinks Return to Castle Wolfenstein was the original. It had great gameplay - lots of running and shooting monsters that died in large numbers. Lots of variation between levels (from running and spraying the area with fire to sitting in a hole sniping at large numbers of people, and just enough of a story to be interesting, without being a major element. Very much like Half Life in that respect (I don't want a lot of plot in FPS games - for good plots I can read a book - just enough so the shooting doesn't get boring).

Re:Shroud mode sounds a lot like Spirit mode

[Swampash]

Twilight Princess, Clive Barker's Undying, etc etc...

Not exactly a new concept.