Why Wolfenstein's pulpy violence never feels like it’s too much

MachineGames’ Wolfenstein: The New Order and its sequel, The New Colossus, have set a precedent for how to utilize violence in video games. Both combine the franchise’s trademark gore with intimate stories about acceptance, perseverance, love, suffering, discrimination and catharsis. There are few games that mix pulpy action — fighting a giant mech with a grenade launcher — with thoughtfulness, like protagonist B.J. Blazkowicz pondering his own mortality as he wonders if he’ll be around to watch his children grow up.

Following February’s fatal shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, we saw President Donald Trump enter a decades-old debate many considered settled: Do video games cause real life violence? The White House-led meeting, where game industry lobbyists and critics were invited to talk with the president, started with a flashy sizzle reel that cherry picked the most violent examples from games. One of these was The New Order, dragging the series into this conversation.

Jens Matthies, creative director of MachineGames, understands that Wolfenstein is unique in its duality. The gunplay combined with the sensitive and quiet narrative creates a sometimes hilarious and emotionally-jarring juxtaposition, but it also emphasizes an important aspect about violence in fiction: It needs to have a point.

I sat down with Matthies at this year’s Game Developers Conference to talk about how Wolfenstein manages its two seemingly contrasting characteristics and how he feels about the games being reduced to their most violent moments.

Editor’s Note: This interview has some minor spoilers for Wolfenstein: The New Colossus.

Polygon: What was it like taking this older franchise and modernizing it?

Jens Matthies: The first thing we did was to analyze, because there’s been a number of iterations of Wolfenstein over the years and they all have different takes. So for us, it was about [figuring out], what are the core principles of Wolfenstein? That meant looking primarily at Wolfenstein 3D, which is the thing we love the most and what we grew up on. We wanted to carry what was in that game forward; the same ethos but with today’s technology and resources. The conclusions we came to was that there is this very deep creative experimentation and, really, fearlessness.

You can kind of tell these kids at the time were watching the action movies of the ‘80s and playing role-playing games, so they made B.J. Blaskowicz this muscle man with a minigun and he was shooting Mecha Hitler. So we thought, “What if we take the same kind of creative liberties but we do it in a way that fits our sensibilities and is a lot more thoughtful?” We don’t shy away from anything that is obnoxiously grandiose and crazy, but we anchor it in something that we feel as emotional value. That’s been our fundamental approach.

Polygon: I enjoy how Wolfenstein balances these pulpy elements with these personal story beats. How do you go make that balance successful?

JM: Well, it’s not like we have one solution to that problem because this balancing act is incredibly difficult. We’re trying to capture this incredibly wide spectrum of crazy, over-the-top stuff and really intimate and personal things. But at the same time, that’s a very attractive problem to try and solve. If you’re a creative person and you’re trying to write a compelling story within this context, it’s the most challenging but in a very intriguing way. Some story beats in the game, like from the point where you get back to your childhood home and confront your father as an adult, all the way through being captured ... there’s a lot of twists and turns there in a compact space and that’s incredibly challenging to put together and it takes a lot of iteration and problem solving.

Polygon: A topic comes up every few years about violence in video games, even though studies show there isn’t a correlation between the two. I think Wolfenstein is a very interesting case study for this because it’s an incredibly violent game but there’s meaning behind it. Why is it when you go into the Wolfenstein games you don’t tone down the violence at all? it’s almost endearing in how over-the-top the violence is. Was that ever a topic of discussion?

JM: What you say there is kind of how we thought about it. It’s endearing. There’s a Swedish term for it that we use, but it doesn’t really translate. In real life, I have an extreme problem with actual real violence. I have a very hard time watching it. If there’s a link to YouTube or whatever, I’ll avoid it. I can’t handle real violence. I think it’s really gross and horrible. At the same time, I’ve always gravitated to really dark fiction. I think it’s extremely worthwhile to explore humanity’s demons in fiction and in a fictional context and I don’t really know why that’s the case. I’m sure it’s not the same for everybody. People have all kinds of different reasons for doing that but for me, that’s always been very interesting and worthwhile.

I also think it’s a good idea to have age restrictions on violent games or violent movies or whatever it is. I don’t think our game is appropriate for kids. It’s a game for mature audiences and given that, I think adults should be able to explore the sort of content if that’s what they enjoy doing.

Polygon: Overall, what was it like dealing with the Wolfenstein IP in 2017? You’re dealing with this story that’s very much against Nazis and Nazis have been all over the news. What has it been like from your team’s perspective dealing with those topics?

JM: On a fundamental level, we’re making an anti-Nazi game. We’re not trying to avoid the Nazi aspect because that is an approach you can have, like Hydra is in the Marvel movies. They’re Nazis but they’re not really the Nazis. We didn’t want to shy away from that component. And that, by definition, means that you’re making a political game. It’s just a fact of it, right?

Of course, whatever the current happenings are in the world doesn’t really factor into the story that we’re trying to tell. It’s a commentary on Nazism but it’s not a commentary on current events. As pretentious as it may sound, we’re in it to make a timeless piece of storytelling, a timeless piece of art. So we figure out early on what we want to do and we make a plan to execute and then we try to do that. That’s basically it.

Polygon: What is it about shooting Nazis down with a bunch of guns that’s so timeless?

JM: I think it can be different things. We had the theme for this game, which was catharsis. That’s something we tried to infuse into the gameplay, the story and everything that had to do with the game. I think it is very cathartic. If you approach your fictional Nazis in an honest way, I think it leads to pretty meaningful experience. It’s motivating, right?

Polygon: I have an idea of what the violence in Wolfenstein conveys to the audience, but in your own words, what does the violence say?

JM: I think it’s just this kind of experience. I think you can make many kinds of experiences with similar themes and with similar political attitudes that are completely non-violent. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. But we are making the game where you shoot shit then blow shit up. It’s that kind of experience and it needs to be that way. If you listen to heavy metal music, you expect a certain thing. That’s just part of what the genre is and this is this kind of genre. I’m not saying it’s the only genre or the best genre or anything like that, but it’s the kind of experience that it needs to be.

Polygon: Like, if people go into a Wolfenstein game, this is what they expect.

JM: Well, not even necessarily what they expect but it’s what we think a Wolfenstein experience is. Above everything, we need to honor that. If we’re making a Wolfenstein game it has to be about killing Nazis. It can’t be something else.

This interview has been edited and condensed.