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I really liked the little touch before BJ "wakes up" that color only returns to the world every time the gun fires. Man's only himself when there's murderin' going on.
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Dec 9, 2014 20:12
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gregory posted:he is first-generation American, if I remember, and although the early 1900s were an era of "WE ARE AMERICAN NOW WE ONLY SPEAK ENGLISH", his parents probably still spoke enough Polish at home that he picked it up. Reminds me of a story of my grandpa who fought in WWII. Apparently his parents spoke German at home, but then at his first day of school, when they asked him what he learned, he told them nothing because he couldn't understand anything anyone was saying. So they switched to speaking English-only. Unrelated, I'm reading an article listing a bunch of games that should have been great but weren't, stuff like Haze and Lair. Number 3 on the list is Duke Nukem Forever, and the article suggests picking up TNO instead.
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Dec 9, 2014 21:42
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Kadorhal posted:Reminds me of a story of my grandpa who fought in WWII. My grandmother is 2nd-generation Polish-American (like, all of her grandparents are from Poland), and she could barely speak to them because she knew no Polish and they didn't have amazing English. Her parents only learned that basic conversational Polish from hearing it every now and then, but never spoke Polish in their own homes. I assume that's kinda Blasko's situation--he can understand it okay, and he can say some really basic stuff, but that's about it--the effect of the "melting pot" mentality of that era.
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Dec 9, 2014 22:03
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Blazkowicz is fairly linguistic, and this is pretty relevant throughout many points of the game. I appreciate that they got actual Polish actors and actresses for this game. It makes Anya's family that much more authentic. When I get back to the states I'll start posting parts of the soundtrack as we progress through levels. The music was an unexpected good surprise.
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Dec 10, 2014 00:02
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Everything about this game was an unexpected good surprise. And such a good surprise it was.
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Dec 10, 2014 00:32
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In the next installment, BJ should travel back in time to fight the steam legions of the Ottoman Empire, led by a resurrected Vlad Tepes.
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Dec 10, 2014 00:38
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I'm really sad that my PC is still too poo poo to run this properly 
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Dec 10, 2014 00:47
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I loved the music that really kicks in when you go downstairs in the asylum level. It reminded me of the excellent T1000 theme from Terminator 2, only you - as BJ "back from the (brain)dead" Blazkowicz - were the Terminator-equivalent, stomping through the asylum with an assault rifle in each hand, laying waste to Nazis.  anilEhilated posted:Not sure if I'd agree on that one. A big part of Wolfenstein's charm is the cheesiness and constantly hearing "Zat man iz a zpy!" and "Zurrender, Amerikan!" plays a huge role there. Then again, the decision to make them actually use German fits with the more serious story this game tries to tell so it's not that bad, I guess. I'm still rather conflicted about the direction this game's story took, though. Germans spoke German in the original Wolf3D.  I don't know if anyone could accuse Wolf3D of not being cheesy, what with mecha-hitler, etc.I like the tone in The New Order. It's pretty drat schlocky and tongue-in-cheek if you think about it, but it still manages some pathos throughout. Edit: Well I say original, but Wolf3D is apparently not the first Wolfenstein game. Antistar01 fucked around with this message at 01:20 on Dec 10, 2014 |
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Dec 10, 2014 00:58
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I want to watch this LP, but the... well. The abuse and murder of innocent people just sort of makes me feel sick  Guess its just not a game for me.
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Dec 10, 2014 02:02
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FTR, shotguns are great against drones. Well, I don't know how well the double-barrel that you get in the asylum works cause I also did the "frantic machine-gun and run for cover" maneuvre, but the combat shotgun you get later is a definite one-shot/one-kill (or deactivation, or whatever you do to robots) for drones.
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Dec 10, 2014 02:13
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Why does the break action shotgun have a bolt. This should not confuse me but it very much does.
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Dec 10, 2014 02:19
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Who was that guy in the trunk and how did he get in there?
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Dec 10, 2014 03:10
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Mr. History posted:Who was that guy in the trunk and how did he get in there? Keller is the guy shutting down the asylum. You kill his goons throughout the level. A previous poster says he jumps into the trunk when BJ gets outside.
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Dec 10, 2014 04:01
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I like the look of the guns in this game. That first gun you pick up in this level kinda looks like a Luger would if it had 14 more years of design evolution.
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Dec 10, 2014 04:44
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I'm surprised to see you using the pistol 1960 in burst mode. I never found that useful.
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Dec 10, 2014 05:02
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ZeusCannon posted:Why does the break action shotgun have a bolt. This should not confuse me but it very much does. I'm pretty sure that's for selecting which barrel to fire from first. 
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Dec 10, 2014 05:31
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Gorilla Salad posted:I'm pretty sure that's for selecting which barrel to fire from first. Some double-barreled shotguns have one trigger per barrel, which is probably easier to manage than a selector bolt and allows you to fire both barrels at once.
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Dec 10, 2014 05:38
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Llab posted:Keller is the guy shutting down the asylum. You kill his goons throughout the level. A previous poster says he jumps into the trunk when BJ gets outside. He's shoved in there by one of his guards to protect him, i think.
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Dec 10, 2014 05:57
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I think the thing that impresses me the most is how straight they play the tone. The subject matter contains cackling mad scientists, giant mechs, and Nazi dogs. But the game gives the characters and world all the weight it would have under the miserable rule of the Nazis and it... works?!
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Dec 10, 2014 06:11
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So, is mecha-Hitler canon? If so, is the current Hitler a clone or something? I do like the idea that BJ systematically eradicated any and all Nazi supernatural capabilities in the previous "modern" titles.
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Dec 10, 2014 06:21
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German was the 2nd most widely spoken language in America until the World Wars. It wouldn't be strange at all for him to be fluent in it or even have some conversational German. My grandparents spoke German only when they were home during the wars and didn't teach their kids a word of it.
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Dec 10, 2014 06:36
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Games like these always make me wonder about what people thought about their city names in those places say in American with Berlin as the name or the other Hitlers out there. Like 3 steps removed cousins or something.
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Dec 10, 2014 07:47
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BogMod posted:Games like these always make me wonder about what people thought about their city names in those places say in American with Berlin as the name or the other Hitlers out there. Like 3 steps removed cousins or something. Well, speaking from a purely historical context, the city of Berlin, Ontario was renamed Hamilton in 1914. I could easily see similar cities being 'returned' to their original names under the Nazi regime of TNO.
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Dec 10, 2014 08:16
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Gorilla Salad posted:I'm pretty sure that's for selecting which barrel to fire from first. OK, here's a query for the gun-nuts out there - why are there breach-loaded hunting shotguns with an over-under barrel arrangement? I mean, if you're going out hunting, surely the risk of missing is due to lack of horizontal shot spread, not vertical shot spread.
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Dec 10, 2014 11:12
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The man in the trunk is a blink and you missed it sort of thing. I tried to make a GIF of the exact moment, but unless you are looking right at it, it's incredibly easy to miss Keller even being there as he's surrounded by his men, who all wear the same color clothes: 
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Dec 10, 2014 12:29
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Samovar posted:OK, here's a query for the gun-nuts out there - why are there breach-loaded hunting shotguns with an over-under barrel arrangement? I mean, if you're going out hunting, surely the risk of missing is due to lack of horizontal shot spread, not vertical shot spread. When firing on birds or clays like you would with a typical over-under shotgun, you're likely to be firing one shot at a time. An over-under generally has superior accuracy because the barrels are in line with where you're sighting, whereas side-by-sides obviously have the barrels to the side of where you're aiming. Both types of guns slightly angle the barrels so the shots will converge at a center point in line with the point of aim a certain distance out, but this doesn't matter much when both barrels are offset rather than just one. That said, the exact point of convergence varies depending on every single potential variable in the ammo used so it can never be more than an approximation. If you want accuracy, use a single-barreled gun. Either way, birdshot tends to produce a thick cloud of pellets and at the long ranges of typical fowling, you can afford to be very slightly off.
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Dec 10, 2014 15:47
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Sel Nar posted:Well, speaking from a purely historical context, the city of Berlin, Ontario was renamed Hamilton in 1914. I could easily see similar cities being 'returned' to their original names under the Nazi regime of TNO. Sel Nar posted:Well, speaking from a purely historical context, the city of Berlin, Ontario was renamed Hamilton in 1914. I could easily see similar cities being 'returned' to their original names under the Nazi regime of TNO. Incorrect. The city of Berlin, Ontario was renamed Kitchener, Ontario. After Lord Horatio Kitchener. Also is home to Oktoberfest.
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Dec 10, 2014 18:28
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Pvt.Scott posted:So, is mecha-Hitler canon? If so, is the current Hitler a clone or something? I do like the idea that BJ systematically eradicated any and all Nazi supernatural capabilities in the previous "modern" titles. Wolf3D (and Spear of Destiny) is not canon to RTCW/Wolf09/TNO.
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Dec 10, 2014 23:14
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Could've sworn '09 references them in its intro.
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Dec 10, 2014 23:22
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RTCW/09/TNO are canon while Wolfenstein 3D and Spear of Destiny are up in the air. Promotional material before Wolfenstein 09's release tried to place them all in the same continuity, but the game itself contradicts a few details like Grosse being alive in 09 despite being killed in 3D and Hitler supposedly being around as well if the propaganda posters are anything to go by. Not even TNO's developers decided if W3D/SOD are canon or not since Hitler is namedropped in a handful of sentences in the game that neither confirm or deny that he's dead. There's also this entire Fourth Reich thing from the same promotional videos of Wolfenstein 09 that's never mentioned in the game and was practically scrapped in TNO. I'd assume it was going to be a sequel hook in case 09 had performed well and Raven had gotten to do a sequel instead.
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Dec 11, 2014 00:39
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GUI posted:RTCW/09/TNO are canon while Wolfenstein 3D and Spear of Destiny are up in the air. Promotional material before Wolfenstein 09's release tried to place them all in the same continuity, but the game itself contradicts a few details like Grosse being alive in 09 despite being killed in 3D and Hitler supposedly being around as well if the propaganda posters are anything to go by. Not even TNO's developers decided if W3D/SOD are canon or not since Hitler is namedropped in a handful of sentences in the game that neither confirm or deny that he's dead. Yeah, I didn't want to wade into the whole discussion on continuity myself because Wolf '09 complicated the hell out of it with that motion comic thing and some of their callbacks. Of course, it's totally possible that Activision decided to do the Motion Comic completely independent of Raven, which led to the continuity issues. In TNO I only remember hearing anyone say Hitler once, and that's a guard saying Heil Hitler. All the newspaper clippings in the game reference a Fuhrer but not Hitler by name. I kind of wonder if that was done on purpose for future games or if it's possibly because the developers wanted to keep the game's world from getting too far off course. Most everything you find from letters to recordings are more personal experiences rather than like, Nazi cabinet meeting minutes.
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Dec 11, 2014 00:51
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biosterous posted:I like the look of the guns in this game. That first gun you pick up in this level kinda looks like a Luger would if it had 14 more years of design evolution. I actually hate the 1960 pistol and most of the 1946 weapons, they trigger my gun  hard. The Luger was already an inferior weapon (especially in terms of reliability) by 1939, John Browning's ideas (basically every pistol ever built with a slide and a hammer, from the first decade of the 20th century all the way up to today) had long since made it obsolete (and that's why the Germans used many of said ideas in designing the Walther P38, which was a much better weapon than the Luger). so trying to make this big clunky spacegun SMG out of it is just dumb, and the 1946 weapons are WWII weapons with greebles tacked on for no real reason, again including a weapon that was obsolete (the Thompson SMG, less reliable and more expensive than the M3 Grease Gun that replaced it). Using actual WWII weapons (P38, Grease Gun, StG 44, MG42) for the 1946 sequence might have made the contrast between 1946 and 1960 that much more dramatic.Actually come to think of it giving the 1946 Ubersoldat the RTCW Venom Gun would have been a great callback for people who played RTCW. BogMod posted:Games like these always make me wonder about what people thought about their city names in those places say in American with Berlin as the name or the other Hitlers out there. Like 3 steps removed cousins or something.  This is a real place in Ohio. Re: German language in America, before WWI, nearly every major American city had German-language newspapers (often printed entirely in Fraktur, like many German books, which makes me question early 20th century Germans' sanity). Part of the US government's effort to force a mostly apathetic population into WWI was a Teutophobic hate campaign that included harassment of German-Americans, suppression of German language publications, and abrogation of the First Amendment, and even gatherings where Dachshunds were tortured and killed because they were "German dogs"--the US government in general and the Wilson administration in particular did some rather disgusting things to drag the United States into a war it really had no stake in. A lot of the German diaspora culture that existed in the US died during World War I or shortly afterwards. Woolie Wool fucked around with this message at 02:02 on Dec 11, 2014 |
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Dec 11, 2014 01:52
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Woolie Wool posted:
The 1946 machinegun turrets scattered around the tutorial level looks like a MG42 with four barrels and brief second to spool up before it starts spewing bullets like the Venom Gun. Unfortunately, it is phased out by 1960 which is a shame because a MG42/Venom Gun hybrid is a hard act to top and its replacement has less wow factor when you shoot it and a funky alternative way to reload it aside from placing it back on a turret.
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Dec 11, 2014 05:45
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Lazyfire posted:In TNO I only remember hearing anyone say Hitler once, and that's a guard saying Heil Hitler. All the newspaper clippings in the game reference a Fuhrer but not Hitler by name. I kind of wonder if that was done on purpose for future games or if it's possibly because the developers wanted to keep the game's world from getting too far off course. Most everything you find from letters to recordings are more personal experiences rather than like, Nazi cabinet meeting minutes. I remember reading in an interview on giantbomb that they avoid bringing up Hitler for the latter reason. I believe the dev said something like, once you bring up Hitler the story has to become about Hitler, he's too important a character because of the historical importance, and TNO is, as you say, more concerned with the personal stories of those under Nazi rule. He said they left the question of who the Fuhrer is intentionally vague because it's not about them. Dog Fat Man Chaser fucked around with this message at 06:14 on Dec 11, 2014 |
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Dec 11, 2014 06:10
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What gives me the least amount of headaches is what goes on in the game is "canon." Ignoring the motion comic is basically the best way to go; it's promo material. Anyway, I mentioned I would talk about music, so here's the tracks up to this point. The TNO soundtrack was composed by Australian composer Mick Gordon, who most here might know as doing work on Need for Speed. I'm not gonna get too deep into it; I'll post a few comments and let the music speak for itself. Track 01: Deathshead https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teJ8NeUORDo Heard during the torture and Ubersoldat scenes in 1946 (and elsewhere), this mechanical track is Deathshead's "theme," inasmuch as it plays when he shows up and does something. It's a very dreadful theme in the literal sense. It's foreboding and uncomfortable electronica, which works perfectly to make you feel terrible while Deathshead taunts you. It's almost like the sounds you'd hear in his laboratory. Track 02: Adrift https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fzl8VE83VFw The gentle acoustic theme of BJ floating in the Baltic sea. I find it captures the melancholy theme of the game very well. Is this the end of BJ Blazkowicz? Were the Nazis really meant to rule the world? Yet, as sad as it is, the brightness of the mandolin gives us some hope. Track 03: The New Order https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtwvEBxrB54 The main menu music, loosely inspired by the main theme of RTCW and Wolfenstein '09. The big, grungy guitar wails of the opening fade into a gentler variation for extended trips in the menu for reading journals or codes. While I wish the reference to the earlier Wolfenstein theme was a bit more overt, it's still worked in there very well. Track 04: 14 Years https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SH0nfdkYIrw This is where the music really starts coming together with the game. It starts with a dreamy acoustic guitar that picks up where Adrift left off. When it focuses on BJ and his allies, the guitars are more upbeat, the play with the snaps puts that smile on your face, and then bam, in come the Nazis and everything goes bleak. The game wears a lot on its sleeve, and the music plays a part in that. Part of the latest chapter in the Asylum when Anya takes BJ to her grandparents' house is heartbreaking for everybody. Besides Anya's grandmother's grief over the murder of her son and daughter-in-law, the biggest is BJ himself. First he thinks they're joking, then he thinks they're crazy. The idea that the USA would surrender is unthinkable to him. And yet, sure as poo poo, atom bombs.
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Dec 11, 2014 06:34
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The soundtrack is pretty sweet so far.
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Dec 11, 2014 06:45
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Dog Fat Man Chaser posted:I remember reading in an interview on giantbomb that they avoid bringing up Hitler for the latter reason. I believe the dev said something like, once you bring up Hitler the story has to become about Hitler, he's too important a character because of the historical importance, and TNO is, as you say, more concerned with the personal stories of those under Nazi rule. He said they left the question of who the Fuhrer is intentionally vague because it's not about them. For me that doesn't work because Nazism is basically about Hitler. Nazism is a secular religion and Hitler its messiah--the "cult of personality" was as literal a cult as the cult of the Kim dynasty in North Korea. Twenty years after the death of "Eternal President" Kim Il-Sung his image and references to him are everywhere in North Korea (the closest thing to a true fascist state that exists in modern times), he is completely inescapable and his cult completely dominates public life. The game attempting to steer around the Hitler-shaped elephant in the room just feels awkward. Even if he is dead there should still be pictures of him, references to him, "Heil Hitler", and public veneration of him. For a game that otherwise pulled very few punches showing Nazis being Nazis, it's a jarring omission. If you don't want him in the plot, just say he's dead (the guy was half dead already by 1945) and someone else has taken his place and plaster tokens of his cult all over the place--pictures, statues, slogans, quotations, etc. E: I would not be surprised at all if a more important reason why they avoided talking about Hitler was to sell the game in Germany, since they censored Heinrich Himmler's appearance in RTCW for the German release of that game. Woolie Wool fucked around with this message at 07:15 on Dec 11, 2014 |
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Dec 11, 2014 07:09
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The biggest reason for Hitler not appearing is that it renders releasing the game in Germany (and certain neighbouring countries I believe) impossible unless they heavily censor it. Before release the developers talked in an interview about how they had to do a ton of graphic edits and avoid using certain numbers associated with Nazism. Edit: Beaten. Himmler at the end of RTCW was indeed replaced with another character for the German release of the game.
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Dec 11, 2014 07:21
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GUI posted:The biggest reason for Hitler not appearing is that it renders releasing the game in Germany (and certain neighbouring countries I believe) impossible unless they heavily censor it. Before release the developers talked in an interview about how they had to do a ton of graphic edits and avoid using certain numbers associated with Nazism. I'm familiar with certain numbers associated with modern day neo-Nazis, but don't recall anything significant re: the original. Woolie Wool posted:even gatherings where Dachshunds were tortured and killed because they were "German dogs"-
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Dec 11, 2014 09:29
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It's probably the 18 and 88 stuff neo-Nazis cling to they were bothered with. Germany (understandably) is very sensitive about these things.
anilEhilated fucked around with this message at 12:37 on Dec 11, 2014 |
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Dec 11, 2014 12:34
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