Content in Wolfenstein: The Old Blood tips its hat to Return to Castle Wolfenstein
Wolfenstein: The Old Blood, the standalone prequel to last year’s Wolfenstein: The New Order, will contain a few nods to the franchise classic Return to Castle Wolfenstein, according to the developers.
According to developer MachineGames, the setting works "well with the pulp B-movie thing we’re going for," and created a prequel instead of DLC for The New Order - as was the original plan- the team was able to fill in story gaps inherent in the 2014 release.
“We get to explore things that were only hinted at in New Order,” said senior producer John Jennings. “We get to find out what the Nazis were up to, and reveal a little bit about how they actually got some of this advanced technology that let them win World War 2.
"It really is a prequel. The last scene of Old Blood is a couple of hours before the start of New Order in terms of the timeline, so it sets things up perfectly.”
Story blanks filled include more information pertaining to Da’at Yichud technology as well as a look at early versions of foes such as the super soldiers which this time out are "tethered to a power source" in order to create new gameplay options.
All features and content from the environments to weapons and enemies are new, and quite a bit of the content, even the plot, is a nod to Return to Castle Wolfenstein.
When developing The Old Blood, the team decided to add their own voices to the game for one particular instance.
According to the blog post, BJ is tasked with infiltrating a tavern stuffed with drunken Nazis, thee voices which are provided by the development team.
“It was a request from our audio director,” Jennings said. “The voices were all done by us. We got the lyrics a couple of days before and had to learn German. Several cases of beer were purchased a couple of hours before the session, to make sure our vocal chords were sufficiently lubricated.
"We were so bad performing it. Everyone was overlapping each other, getting the timing wrong. You couldn’t actually hear half the words half the time."
The game contains two interconnected stories: Rudi Jäger and the Den of Wolves and The Dark Secrets of Helga Von Schabbs. The content spans eight chapters set in the 1940s.
Wolfenstein: The Old Blood releases May 5 on PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One for $19.99/£14.99/€19.99/AUD$39.95. It will release digitally on PS4 the following day.
Previously. it was announced a physical release would arrive in Europe on May 15, but only on PC and PS4. According to the post, and Xbox One version will also be released at retail in the region.