BJ Blazkowicz is back! You can now watch this week’s episode of GTTV on the return of Wolfenstein, which we filmed out at Raven Software in Madison, WI. You’ll see the first gameplay, in addition to a brand new trailer, boss reveal, and a look at how Raven is approaching this long-in-development sequel. If you listen carefully you’ll also hear why the game has been in development so long. It first started as an open-world first-person shooter, an idea which has been significantly scaled back in the final product.
I’ve always been a big fan of Raven and co-founders Brian and Steve Raffell. (Little known fact: I launched GameSlice back in 1996 with a first look at Hexen, the sequel to Heretic that was produced at Raven). After the shoot I played Wolf for a couple of hours at their office, and was impressed with how much is layer on top of the raw action. The veil powers add a unique element of strategy, and the third person story/cutscenes add significant production value — something I wasn’t expecting from id and Raven. Even the opening of the game, with BJ arriving on a train, reminds me of the opening of Half-Life.
The singleplayer game on Xbox 360 feels very polished, which makes me think the rumored summer release won’t be a problem. Although we haven’t seen anything yet on multiplayer, which is being developed externally by some ex-Splash Damage folks. One tidbit: Brian Raffell did disclose that veil powers will be featured in multiplayer, so I’ll be curious to see how slow motion works online.
Make sure to check out the show — Raven provided us with a ton of new gameplay footage and assets, so you get a really good overview of the game, storyline and details.
