Wolfenstein Biology: Opening Cinematic Dissection

After viewing the opening cinematic for the highly-anticipated FPS Wolfenstein (a simple, but effective title), many questions began to come to mind concerning the gameplay elements of the title.

The video leaves plenty of dead Nazi scum in its wake but let’s take a deeper look and see what the meat and bones of this cinematic reveals.

Wolfenstein’s opening video is definitely entertaining to watch at skin deep and instills a sense of urgency to get our grubby hands on a playable version.

This cutscene takes place on a German Warship Tirpitz (an actual German Warship that operated in the Arctic during WWII) 5 miles of the English coast. Our crafty hero BJ Blazkowicz assumably snuck on the ship and found himself a snazzy German General’s coat complete with hat accessory in order to disguise himself while aboard.

A loudspeaker announces a countdown for a missile launch as an officer runs to meet his General (BJ in disguise) concerning a spy that is believed to be aboard the ship. Upon noticing BJ’s combat boots, the officer’s intuition is confirmed, and it is time for BJ to start beating some Nazi ass.

In the 30 seconds of action that ensues, BJ can be seen performing a multitude of hand-to-hand combat actions in addition to pretty much assuming the role of Indiana Jones. But will any of this be included in the gameplay? Let’s take a look.

In the first scuffle after BJ’s discovery, Blazkowicz performs the following: elbows and headbutts the officer in the face, uses a soldier’s pistol while in said soldier’s hand, knees a Nazi in the balls and punches him in the face, and uses the same Nazi as a body shield.

Likelihood of any of this being in the game? Not very likely since none of the previous games even allowed using BJ’s fists as weapons. Using a Nazi as a body shield would be very cool but also not very likely. These elements of the cinematic are most likely used in order to pose BJ as an All-American action hero rather than take part in the gameplay.

Expect smashing Nazi’s with the butt of your weapons or knifing them from behind at the most.

The next part of the video has BJ jumping down a level of the warship, running down a corridor and slamming a Nazi into the door that the scum had opened. BJ takes cover behind the door as he is engaged by a machine gun, turret-operating German. BJ takes some shots from the cover before shooting the ropes of a lifeboat that crashes on the Nazi’s.

Hopefully this part of the cinematic shows us that there will be a cover system in Wolfenstein but then again, most gameplay footage displays otherwise. In addition, BJ shooting the lifeboat to incapacitate the Nazi scum hopefully suggests the inclusion of environmental elements to kill Nazi’s in entertaining ways.

After running up the downed lifeboat and swinging to another deck with the rope that held it up, BJ is trapped by the rest of the ships crew. BJ is ordered to pull a glowing object out of his coat. A Nazi Officer, thinking the object is a bomb, opens fire on BJ and the rest of the Nazi’s follow suit.

BJ shields himself with his arm, holding up the amulet which creates some sort of force field that blocks the bullets and then disintegrates all the Nazis.

This is obviously one of the amulets BJ finds that can activate the power of the Veil. Only two powers has been revealed, Vision and Mire. Vision lets you see into the alternate dimension in the game and Mire that is basically a bullet time. It has been said that these powers can be upgraded as well.

Does this part of the cinematic point to the other Veil powers? Perhaps a shield power that can be upgraded to designate Nazi’s in a given area. Seeing as there are four powers, leaving two remaining to be discovered, I hope that these unidentified powers are a bit more inventive than a force field and Nazi disintegration bomb.

After all, players will have plenty of fun turning Nazis to dust via the Particle Cannon. Sadly, this does not include Hitler, whose exclusion has been confirmed by Raven.

The cinematic ends in a cliche but welcome explosion of the Warship and BJ flying a plain of into the distance.

Hopefully a demo is on the way, since the game’s target date is June 2009, although Raven has said the game will be released when it is done. Until then the world must anxiously await ending hundreds upon thousands of Nazi lives (now in two dimensions!).