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

shrouding?

[nimbius]

3DRealms has had duke nukem doing this for ages now.

Is it just me, or...

[TubeSteak]

Does anyone else hope that Id will throw in the original Wolfenstein gameplay, but with updated graphics?

Re:Is it just me, or...

[MMC Monster]

I'm just waiting for a FOSS, net-aware multiplayer
M.U.L.E.

Re:Pseudorealism

[Samantha Wright]

Think of Wolfenstein once id gets a hold of it less as a forerunner or relative to realistic WWII shooters, and more like a video game equivalent of bad fifties and sixties pulps about those shooters (since the original games were pretty much pure jail-break stuff.) Wolf 3-D was pretty much exactly that, replete with the occult stuff, Mecha-Hitler, etc. (Keep in mind Wolf3D had gun-chested zombies!) Newer sequels can be thought of as evolving in parallel by reproducing more modern, serious, and perhaps sorta conspiracy theory-ish interpretations about what the Nazis did or thought they were planning on doing. I guess the genre could be called Nazi Sci-Fi/Fantasy or something.