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."

Shroud mode sounds a lot like Spirit mode

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Is it just me, or...

[TheRaven64]

Actually, the original was a purely 2D game for 8-bit machines. Wolf3D was based (loosely) on this. Possibly the grandparent thinks Return to Castle Wolfenstein was the original. It had great gameplay - lots of running and shooting monsters that died in large numbers. Lots of variation between levels (from running and spraying the area with fire to sitting in a hole sniping at large numbers of people, and just enough of a story to be interesting, without being a major element. Very much like Half Life in that respect (I don't want a lot of plot in FPS games - for good plots I can read a book - just enough so the shooting doesn't get boring).

Re:Shroud mode sounds a lot like Spirit mode

[Swampash]

Twilight Princess, Clive Barker's Undying, etc etc...

Not exactly a new concept.

Re:Wow, a new Wolfenstein title.

[xanadu-xtroot.com]

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.

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 [slashdot.org], 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. :\