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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."
3DRealms has had duke nukem doing this for ages now.
Good people go to bed earlier.
I can't get over the fact that the main character is called BJ.
The Long Now Foundation
Does anyone else hope that Id will throw in the original Wolfenstein gameplay, but with updated graphics?
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
I'd really rather have another installment in the Hexen/Heretic series.
I understand that the Wolfenstein series et al. has never been about realism in the strict sense. C'mon, you can take ten bullets to the face and still shoot perfectly until you drop dead...
All the same, this does sound a little ridiculous. I realize that the Wolfenstein series has never been all that grounded in reality save the connection to the Nazis (see -- mecha Hitler, zombie things?), but really? Then again, it might give a nice shot in the arm to the vanilla WWII realism shooters... but I don't hold much hope out in that regard since Call of Duty II / IV have apparently wrapped up those two eras of warfare...
In any event, I don't care much so long as they make it fun -- I'm not expecting a seminal work of art here. It doesn't sound much like a breath of fresh air -- Prey did something similar three to five years ago? With id's idTech4 Engine (i.e Doom 3 engine), no less...
Sometimes I wonder if I think too much.
Also, shroud sounds a lot like twilight (or gloom in other translations) from Night Watch
Well, blame the dumbshit gamers who keep making it profitable for ID/Raven to pump out the same derivative shit over and over and over and over again.
About Wolfenstein, it's best to just consider it a alternate reality WWII shooter, I don't think the game ever really took itself seriously so why should we, and that is where half the fun is.
Also it seems like FPS's in general have been trying more and more to make us use an extra-dimensional elements, PREY's spirit form and 'shroud'. What else could developers do to expand on the game play without overwhelming players? Any ideas?
I don't know what it is with ID and their terrible 'revive our old games' thing.
Seriously, good as the engine was, doom 3 was a bad game, it lacked much of the gameplay associated with the original games. Obviously things had moved on in many ways, but it played more like an AvP knockoff to me, and not a well designed one at that.
Quake 4 was also pretty poor. There wasn't much to wolfenstein, so they can pretty much start from scratch and go any way they like. Looking at their recent track record in games sat atop their (undeniably excellent) engines, I won't be shelling out the pounds for this until its been around long enough to be cheap.
A learning experience is one of those things that say, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.' - D. Adams
Enough B.J. Blazkowicz, let's talk about his grandson: Billy Blaze, best known as Commander Keen. How about a modern reimagining of the old games?
Circumcision is child abuse.
Twilight Princess, Clive Barker's Undying, etc etc...
Not exactly a new concept.
This also sounds like the "Scrye" spell from Clive Barker's Undying.
Have you played Wolfenstein before? It was always about Nazis and the occult. Wolfenstein is the original WW2 and it's always had the same theme.
That and Nazis were actually tied to Occultism. This theme has been done before in other areas and it the whole basis behind the Indiana Jones movies.
So while it may not be the most realistic game it's not trying to invent something new to be different it's taking it's same twist on real facts about Nazis.
Anyone else think that the shroud mode sounds a lot like the spirit mode in Prey? Especially the part about symbols on the wall changing into things when you go into shroud mode.
Its way older than that. Prey only came out fairly recently. There was a vampire game, one of the legacy of Kain series from 1999 http://www.dark-chronicle.co.uk/sr1/index.php?id=2 I think. Perhaps even earlier implementations of shroud/spirit/reality shift etc. And I'm sure there are movies with this plot device too that pre-date even that.
Even Zelda on the Wii has this switching realms thing as a plot device. Pretty cheap to do too. change the lighting, put different texture maps on the models and characters, and you have double the gameplay with less effort. Put a switch to remove collision detection on the enemies in one ream, and you can even do things like walking through people when travelling in the ghost mode.
There is no reason to not use such a plot device. After all, a FPS is a FPS. The details and setting may change, but when it comes down to it, shoot the monsters, pull the switches, collect the tokens, and move on to bigger better monsters and weapons... and repeat on new map. Is there really any FPS that deviates much from this? Its a well tested successful format for a game, People like it, the engines, once created can be used to make more similar games, and making third party maps and mods is a well established shelf life extender.
It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.
Well, I for one, have been faithful to Castle Wolfenstein, since it's Apple ][ debut. Yes, you guys think Castle Wolfenstein on the PC, I used to play it when it was really and I mean REALLY, 2d, maze like. It's gone a long way.
I don't want wolfenstein to be based on realism, in fact, the more Hitler/Nazis/Occult/Weird Science/Monsters we get, the better it is.
And of course, that BJ finds new types of weapons and defences based on what the enemy has been unearthing, researching, etc..., I love it!
Bottom line, I want to have fun, and I love the Wolfenstein series for that. It's fun! :)
I still have the PC version and I run it through DOS Box on XP.
As for Return to Castle Wolfenstein, I have loads of fun with that, loved it!
So, a new Wolfenstein! YES!!
Remember our motto: There's a hole in the sky, through which things can fly.
Now you're thinking with Portals!
You appear to have some anger issues... care to talk?
Oddly, Prey was developed by the other game company in Madison, WI: Human Head.
Raven must be stealing stuff from across the city now!
Would you kindly mod me +1 insightful?
Dude, it's an ID game. It's HIGHLY unlikely that it's windows only. Or you were trolling, of course.
Fighting for peace is like fucking for virginity
Other than the "style" in which this was written, why is this marked "Troll"?!? The person is right. It's the same thing over and over coming out of the gaming industry.
:\
That said, would I buy another Wolf3d? Yea, probably. I bought the original and the "addon" 5 missions (I never did get Spear of Destiny, though), then Doom, then Doom2, RTCW, Doom3, etc. I've rather liked id's work from the very start. Doom3 was a rocky start, but it's OK these days. I guess it's not "ground breaking", but it's a departure from the norm.
I guess that's the best we can hope for these days; a departure from the norm.
I'm not a prophet or a stone-age man,
I'm just a mortal with potential of a super man.
Well, at least they don't have monsters with Big Hair
Not since Romero left at least...
Heck... Super Mario 2 had something like this. Or if you jump to literature... there's the ring from the Lord of the Ring trilogy.
Program Intellivision!
I don't understand why everybody says Doom 3 was a 'demo'. It was not. It was an awesome game. Highly entertaining, as it kept the player on the edge with different events, an awesome atmosphere, amazing environments, high adrenaline etc.
Wolfenstein used to have a simple and timeless premise: a Polish-Jewish supersoldier invades a Nazi stronghold and singlehandedly defeats everyone whose path he crossed, including a cyborg Hitler with rail guns for arms.
I don't see why they had to go and complicate the story with "shrouding" and "occult portals" and whatnot.