I started playing Wolfenstein (The New Order, I'll play the other one soon I think) because I want the catharsis of shooting a bunch of Nazis. Uhhh... no particular reason. Just, y'know, in general.
I knew this game had actual concrete things to say about Nazis, but it still ended up really affecting me in ways I didn't expect at all. It really shook me up with some background dialogue environmental storytelling, and I cried later too.
And it's weird that I was able to be so affected by it, considering how not into the story I am. Early on, you're in a coma, wake up, and escape with the nurse who was taking care of you. Then, immediately, people start pairing you two together, and then you have sex on the train. And like, I'm hardly cutting out any conversation between the two of you. Later, BJ is super wistful about her, is daydreaming about living in a white picket fence with her and their two kids, and internally monologing about how we have to keep fighting for the things we love. They have like two conversations, one of which is her asking him for sex. I know that I'm ace, and not everyone needs as much development between characters to buy it but like really? One of the pillars of the story and it's not at all justified? This game is (as far as I can tell) functionally not canon to other games, though there are some callbacks and characters. With that being the case you might think that they actually have met previously, but it certainly looks like not!
Other than that, you just kinda pop around from location to location. I didn't really care about much of it that much. Like it was fine, but I'm not on the edge of my seat. So when those moments grabbed me, it was kind of a surprise that they did. The first, makes sense for me, specifically. You are stealthing around inside the sewers, and you brush pretty close up to the ceiling, and can hear a conversation between a civilian woman and Nazi officer. She reports her neighbor's [daughter]: "Officer, I saw my neighbor's son acting suspiciously. I saw him trying on his mother's lipstick and clothes" and this makes sense that it would mess me up. If I had a recording of it I could show you, but as soon as I hear it I start looking around everywhere I can to see if I can get up there, if there's a spot I can sneak a shot at the officer to take him out so the report doesn't go through, anything. You gotta do whatever it takes to protect the eggs. But the game doesn't let you. You have to go through the tunnel, and then you're at the next objective. I had to take a break after that.
The moment that made me cry was J's death. I apparently missed some content with him, I guess that you can get high with him and play guitar together, and it seems like a cool story beat. I didn't get it, so I actually had very little contact with him. He told BJ that "back home, you were the Nazis", that dudes like BJ where who got called around lynching time. It's such a great scene, it's incredible. But late in the game, the home base is under attack. Everyone is running every which way, getting out however they can. J gets cornered in his room though, and he gets a quick final conversation with BJ. He plugs in the guitar, turns every amp on, connects every speaker, and blasts The Star Spangled Banner. The walls and ceiling shake, the camera cuts to above ground where it rings out through the city center. He makes it just a few lines before the Nazis, convinced he's priming a weapon or something, kick down the door and gun him down. On the first three notes, I burst into tears. There are some connections I can make, J is WcDonalds'ed Jimi Hendrix, and he performed a version of The Star Spangled Banner that was basically "hey what on earth on we doing in Vietnam", and this one in the game is "fascists, you can never kill all your opposition". But I know that J has a complicated relationship to the US, he said so. But he plays the national anthem anyway. And I have a complicated relationship to my church, but I love those hymns anyway. Music is just really sticky in the head, and you can't undo a relationship you had with a song. And when you consider that I make little youtube videos about maintaining hope in spite of it all, it makes sense that I'd find the emotional beat of fighting Nazis with art meaningful.
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The gameplay I kinda struggled with tbh. I feel like you move too slow? Or something. There where a lot of levels where I would kill every enemy I saw, hear more, and try to look for them. But that never worked so often I'd just stand out in the open and tank the damage till I found them. That doesn't work in many, many situations, but it was somehow the best option I found. Enemies are annoying almost always the same color as the environment. Maybe it's the eye I'm missing that's causing all my trouble but combat situations are really hard to parse. It's tolerable, and not... like, bad? But I would constantly find myself repeating, "it's no Half-Life".
You do go to the moon at one point and that rules it's awesome. You jump all moon-y, unless you're inside then you jump normal which is. Not How It Works. But whatever. Not my favorite game in story or gameplay, but somehow it's still a solid play.