Nazis, what are they good for? If you look back at the rich, pulpy history of exploitation movies, the answer is obvious: dying horribly for our entertainment.
MachineGames’s trailer for the newly announced standalone prequel Wolfenstein: The Old Blood is well aware of this part of mid-20th century movie history. It presents the game in full Nazisploitation style, including “Monster Mash” font and dramatic chords played on old strings.
“How many Nazis are there in this world?” asks a shrieking voice at one point. It’s a viable question for one to ask when trapped inside a first-person shooter; a genre that gets its kicks from throwing wave after wave of enemies at us. The exploitation film’s similarly callous reliance on on-screen slaughters filmed in hair-raising close-up is an appropriate comparison for MachineGames to make.
Anyway, if your appetite for historical revenge wasn’t fully sated by the recent (and brilliant) Wolfenstein: The New Order, this should all be welcome news. Even better is the fact that the events of The Old Blood will arrive on PC and current-gen consoles on May 5th in, not one, but two separate interconnected stories that will be released together, according to Bethesda’s blog.
The first, Rudi Jäger and the Den of Wolves, puts us back with BJ Blazkowicz as he sneaks into Castle Wolfenstein to find information about the location of Deathshead’s compound. The second, The Dark Secrets of Helga Von Schabbs, BJ ends up in a town called Wulfburg, where he must deal with a Nazi archaeologist who is “exhuming mysterious artifacts that threaten to unleash a dark and ancient power” (Raiders of the Lost Ark, anyone?).
Bethesda will be streaming some footage of The Old Blood during their two-part Twitch livestream from PAX East on March 6th and 7th at 10:30am EST on both days.