Before I started playing Wolfenstein 2, I was told I would get to pilot a giant, mechanical, fire-breathing dog. As you might expect, that’s pretty much the main part I was looking forward to as I shot Nazis and charged through crumbling walls. But what I didn’t expect is that the sequel’s cutscenes would blow me away more than melting my enemies.
Picking up the top-notch storytelling and character development of the first game, the cutscenes I saw from Wolfenstein 2 were even more impressive. The way each scene was filmed and cut together made them feel more like clips from some new Netflix show than mere exposition in a videogame.
The writing was fun and engaging, but more important than anything else, it felt natural. The voice acting isn’t stunted and the script doesn’t drag as so many other games do. Instead, conversations are fast and brief, moving the story along and telling me about each character without making me want to slam every button on my keyboard in search of how to skip.
One cutscene in particular toward the end of the demo, just before I mounted the mechanical beast (and, don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten about that part) was genuinely one of the best scenes I’ve experienced in a videogame. Protagonist BJ Blazkowicz meets an eccentric new ally named Horton and his band of followers, then proceeds to have a dizzying and heated conversation about standing up to their nazi oppressors.
You can watch the full cutscene right here:
The sounds of a jazzy clarinet and drums play in the background, punctuated by bullets being fired at nazi soldiers below, all while BJ and Horton drink moonshine and scream at each other. Through all this, the camera doesn’t stop circling the two of them, escalating the chaos of this situation even further and lending it the air of an arthouse film. It all builds to a ridiculous climax, and left me wishing more games took risks like this with their storytelling.
Then I got on a mechanical dog with an infinite supply of fire breath, and wished I was still spinning in that cutscene. I feel a bit like that kid at the amusement park crying on the merry-go-round, and maybe all that spinning lulled me into some sort of strange headspace were up was down and fun things were boring, but I was hoping for a lot more than what Wolfenstein 2 had to offer here. Nothing felt chunky or satisfying about this ride, instead the machine sort of plodded along with an almost floating motion to it.
Your fire can be sprayed out indefinitely and melts through every enemy without trouble, making the only strategy here “don’t die,” which wasn’t hard. Even as an intentionally OP set piece, there’s not really enough feedback to the flames or any interesting ways to move around to make the sequence stand out. I actually had to tilt my camera down to see the machine below me, making it easy to forget I was riding something at all. I genuinely didn’t think you could mess up fire-breathing mechanical dog riding, but the whole segment was an extremely toothless affair.
That being said, this was just one part of the demo I played, and facing off against those metal hounds on foot was a lot more fun than riding one. Wolfenstein 2’s dual-wielding gunplay is extremely fun, and there’s a lot of freedom in how you can tackle every situation. You can watch Dan’s preview from earlier this year for more on its excellent gunplay, or just watch Gav have some fun killing Nazis.
Tom Marks is an Associate Editor focusing on PC gaming at IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.
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