Giant Bomb Presents: A Conversation With Wolfenstein: The New Order's Jens Matthies

If you were having trouble with the audio, it should now be fixed!

No audio of the interview bro.

@patrickklepek: Yep. The audio works now.

@patrickklepek: this version of the intro song reminds me of Earthbound music. I want to play Earthbound now. Good interview though! Been meaning to look up these guys since the story for this Wolfenstein was insanely good.

Am I the only one who initially read this as "A Conversation with Wolfenstein:

other stuff"?

I found the last Wolfenstein to be pretty relevant, in my opinion. The last one was good it just wasn't exceptional. I also found Return to Castle Wolfenstein to pretty amazing back in its day and its not a terrible game now. I actually found the game to be tonally off kilter. The first person dialogue and thoughts of BJ weird me out and the sex scenes were downright appalling. I found most of the side characters and events to be rather...eye rolling? In terms of the actual gameplay I found it to be fun...fun enough that I got my platinum trophy in about three days.

Overall I think its a decent game but the thoughts about Wolfenstein's relevancy were odd to me as we basically get a new Wolfenstein every "generation", or at least that's what its felt like since Return to Castle Wolfenstein.

Also, as a side note, I didn't find the prison camp to be all that ballsy...it was simply a prison. Outside of the small bits of mad scientist stuff (that we've gotten in the last Wolfenstein games as well) it was fairly standard. There was no real commentary in those areas about the treatment of the religious, other ethnicities, and more. You get some of that with the two German resistance fighters, but its very...generic. I mean the guy who "used to be a Nazi" still, for all intents and purposes, doesn't disapprove of the Nazi doctrine but just that they effected him and not the people he seemingly hated up until that point. He even said, "getting this tattoo was a moment of pride for me." Again, poor writing and characters.

I know the argument some will give is that, "its a shooter", but this whole interview and the discussion about the game has been how good the writing, story, and characters are. Good interview, thanks for posting @patrickklepek

Have to say, a really good interview.

Great interview @patrickklepek

Their were a lot of parts I liked about this game, but ultimately It just didn't wow me. I really wanted to love it it. Part of my problem was some of the audio issues on the ps4 tampered my enjoyment of the game. Also I never felt like I had a lot of ammo... For a game about going balls out with dual wielding assault rifles I never had the ammo supply to justify ever using it. However I am excited for machine games they put forth a solid effort and maybe il like the next game.

I picked this game up during the Steam sale and I'm probably about half way through it--would it be prudent for me to wait to listen to this interview until after I've finished the game? Do I have to play--gasp--both timelines before I can listen?

Please let me know, Mr. Klepek!

At one point in the interview Patrick literally says what happens at the end of the game, so if that sort of thing bothers you then I'd wait until you finished the game.

I never understood why people complain about "tonal shifts" in this game. What, they're supposed to make excuses for why the game isn't a shooting gallery the entire time? I mean, what the hell are we talking about here?

What if Game of Thrones was just war scenes? Wait, Saving Private Ryan depicted the D-Day Invasion AND had a funny scene where soldiers were shooting the breeze on the stoop of a crumbling house? What a tonal mess!

How lobotomized is the gaming community that we believe balanced storytelling is something developers have to apologize for? Christ, grow up already.

Thanks for the heads-up. I figured this was the same interview the article was based on that had spoilers listed, but wasn't 100% sure.

Absolutely loved this game and was completely surprised by it. Looking forward to listening to this interview. Thanks, Giant Bomb!

While tonal shift implies variety, they aren't one and the same. There's a gap between realistic depictions of the ways people overcome hardship with humor and having your hero drop a one-liner half a minute after seeing someone they love die. I think that's what the discussion centers around: what does and doesn't feel earned, emotionally. And it cuts for both drama and comedy.

I really appreciate interviews like this. Great insight and this game has been an interesting one with how good it turned out and how under the radar it felt.

Loved the interview, this guy is super genuine and charming. Wolfenstein is my favorite game so far this year and its gonna be hard to beat. Wolfenstein is Half Life 2 style good. Amazing story and a real amazing sense of likable characters.

Time to enter the Vapor Chamber.