The Wolfenstein Reboot Trilogy: Gaming's Biggest Fumble 

My brain is fried....

my favorite dscription of youngbloods is that you basically are playing as genderswapped Beavis and Butthead

"Wolfenstein: Youngblood makes you want to side with the Nazis simply because they talk less."- Random RU-vid User.

The idea of a serious game having you play as a six year old throwing lamps at a 40 year old white uncle ruckus is fucking hilarious and I can’t stop laughing

The reboot series fell apart the moment they refused to let us kill Hitler in a mech suit. Like come on

Wolfenstein The New Colossus: The only game in the world to give you a game over for killing Hitler

To bring up the Klansmen scene, it's very unlikely that the Nazis would allow the group to exist, at least without core members who are Nazis, since it's basically a group that exists outside the regime. The Nazis removed several things that were considered traditionally German, like fencing clubs, because they were bond-forming groups that existed outside of the regime.

"NO FUCKING WAY THERE WAS A FIRE ALARM CHIRP" 🤣🤣🤣

One of my favorite scenes regarding Klaus not mentioned here is the fact BJ immediately also assumed he was evil because, you know, he has a massive swastika on his shoulder. When Klaus explains that he defected and BJ demands to know why he hasn't gotten it removed then, Klaus responds that he'll get it removed when there's no more nazis. He wears it as a mark of shame and penance. A scar to remind himself of the evil he committed every time he sees it

Even in New Order there's little bits of humanity to the soldiers, in the first level after scaling the castle walls there's a commander you access from a secret passage he's giving a status report to Totenkopf, if you let the conversation go on long enough they actually discuss plans after the war and how much the officer is looking forward to going back home to his wife for example.

Trump era media was plain awful, especially if you didn't live in America. Having to be subjected to nonstop political nuttery you weren't even a part of, be it in games or in movies, got so exhausting. No matter who wins this year, I imagine it's going to be even worse. A whooooole lot of pain coming in the second half of this decade...

There was absolutely no excuse for the new Wolfenstein games to crash and burn as fast as they did.

gamergate truly was the worst shit to happen in terms of cultural impact/politics (comfy video btw, love ur stuff)

The election of Trump broke so many people's fucking minds and it unfortunately reflected in this trilogy.

They took the wrong lessons from new order and old blood. They took the comedic aspects of them and flanderized the rest of the series to be a black comedy and when they got to young blood it just became straight cringe comedy.

Imagine if when Hitler comes into the room, he’s actually a cyborg. I mean, what would’ve been better than fighting robot MechaHitler . That way you still have a reason that Hitler is strong and a threat. In fact, what if he’s such an advanced cyborg that he looks like he’s still OK but still addicted to amphetamines and then you shoot him and the bullet just bounces off his ass . No, I’m not saying go back to the double Gattling gun hitler……. instead have that be the upgrade and the final battle?

They fumbled the Wolfenstein reboots intentionally in order to simulate Hitler's fumbled invasion of Russia. It's immersive, one might say.

One good game, one good expansion... Then a nosedive into hell.

To me the most depressing part is the fact that this is the last thing total biscuit would review.

One thing I loved about new order was that BJ was a fleshed out and decent man forced into impossible circumstances, but who never misdirected his anger. We never see him treat anyone as less than himself. He shelters his love without treating her like she has nothing to contribute, and is kind to Max. He only hates the Reich, and never lets that anger become unfocused. Much more gentle than you’d expect from Wolfenstein.

Don't you love feeling weaker in a super suit than you did in the original when you were in a warm coat

Each game's credits song is a litmus test for quality. The New Order: "I Believe"- A bittersweet song about a better future that we'll never live to see, but helped build. The Old Blood: "The Partisan"- A historical song about standing your ground against impossible odds. The New Collossus: "WEEeEeEeE'rrrRee NoT GOoOonnNAaa TAAAAaaaaKe IIIITTT!!1!1!!"

You're absolutely right that they wasted the scene with Hitler, but on the other hand, the guy would also absolutely have been a mess by that point in his life, presuming he survived. Guy was not only a raging drug addict, his personal doctor was also a quack whose efforts sometimes feel like he was deliberately using Hitler as a human guinea pig. Speed for energy, downers to help him sleep, drugs for the stomach aches and constant flatulence caused by his vegetarian diet... the lunatic was actually getting bull semen injected into his bloodstream as a virility booster. It's some kind of unholy miracle he didn't just drop dead on his own.

The Pregnant Anya thing was SUCH a fuckn mistake. No pregnant Eastern European woman would ever endanger her unborn child. Play new colossus I just muted the cutscenes and simply enjoyed it as a fun shooting game

Characters that are actively fighting and doing dangerous stuff while pregnant is not empowering….its child fucking endangerment

The alternate reality where Mung Daal didn't become a chef and embraced science instead as Deathshead. Pour one out for New Order, boy we went downhill bad.

The thing that makes Roswell tolerable (as has Loli mentioned) was the reaction and terror of the Populice to the SS presence in the area. Especially upon direct interaction with said occupiers. However, I do rather enjoy the two Monocycle cops at the gas station. The people are scared of them, believing the notch in the rifle of one cop being a kill tally marker. When he admits it’s just ergonomic to his body. Kind of funny to hear how much of a day job it is to some of the Gestapo, to the point their guard is so low.

That bit where grown BJ meets his dad as an old man would have hit so much harder if BJ’s dad just sat there with no gun completely destroyed. Silently letting his son know that the Nazis took his mother away. Having him legitimately remorseful would have hit a lot harder. BJ leaving his dad alone in that big old house would have worked much better.

I agree with a lot of the criticisms leveled against New Colossus, especially the tonal inconsistency. The part that really left me scratching my head, was when you had to find the secret compartment in the U-boat and while stealthing you listen to two starving soldiers that had been hiding for months and one of them is breaking down while the other tries to give him hope they´ll make it out alive, just for Blazkowicz to slaughter them moments later. The game gives you these glimpses at the enemies as ordinary people, just to discard that idea seconds later and kill them in a often gleeful manner, which made a lot of the characters come of as some seriously unhinged psychopaths, while the game lacks the introspection to even acknowledge it, like Spec Ops; The Line did. Edit:Also thanks to Loli for putting into words that strange disdain for Mustache-Mans portrail in the game I had, that I could never really verbalize.

The tone shift from TNO to TNC really made me uncomfortable. How do you go from a game with an unironic, actually scary concentration camp level, to presenting the Nazi's being more like Cobra than an actual terrifying force? Also, '09 Wolfenstein can still technically be played, since it's classified as abandonware and available on most abandonware archive websites.

One minute it’s Schindler’s List, the next it’s Looney Tunes. Who thought TNC was a good idea?

Oh man… you’re opening an old wound with this video

The whole 2016 election shit really shot this reboot in the foot. New Order was a decent start... and then New Colossus happened. DUDE, TRUMP'S AMERICA IS LIKE HITLER'S AMERICA. Most pearl-clutching reactionary shit ever.

A character like Klaus could not exist in the newer Wolfenstein games like i bet if he was still alive in the newer games they would absolutely assassinate his character

I'm convinced that the new order and old blood were developed by different developers because the new colossus and youngblood just felt so crooked in comparison

RTCW is still the best Wolfenstein game. TNO was some really good groundwork but the 2016 election happened and everything after that, both writing and design-wise, was dog water.

The whole 2nd american revolution being relegated to the end credits cutscene was imo a terrible decision, like we are made to believe because BJ chopped Engel in half on the Wolfenstein equivalent of SNL the entire country suddenly rises up and the Nazi world government with nukes, space lasers and weather machines just lets it happen, like a game that cared so much about world building glosses over the implications of this massive event completely just to jump cut to the 1980s where we are made to believe America is still at war with Germany wich still probably enjoys a significant tech advantage while also somehow getting pushed out of every continent. I don't want the Nazis to win but at least explain how the most advanced military world dictatorship passively crumbled in 20 years while it had like 15 different doomsday weapons in it's arsenal and is known for not caring in the slightest for civilian deaths.

I remember a furry called out this game for calling the nazis as being correct He said they commited the holocaust because the jews didnt help out enough And if you play the first game that is true A jewish dude lets you on his 20000 leagues submarine and explains all the super tech his people had

Around the time New Colossus came out, an FPS channel named Jarek The Gaming Dragon cited it as his Game of the Year, and even back then, I'm still baffled as to why. Then again, he also put a JPEG of Donald Trump onto a CoD WWII thumbnail and went out of his way to call out people that didn't like Bioshock Infinite as racist, so he seems to have a clear bias.

I HATED the part with the secret Jewish engineer society stuff. “OoOoooHh tHe NaZis oNly Won bEcaUse oF tHe jEwiSh sUprEme TeCHnoLogY” well then… why not use it against them in the first place… ? Or even after the bombs fell?! And the more you think about it the worse it gets.

New Colossus two big issues. The first is they didn't have a villain they could lean on that was good enough to carry the game. Nootzi Hillary Clinton is not scary or a character that can carry a game as a villain. Anyone that starts the game and remembers that you back handed her jaw off. Then tossed her like a Loony Toons cartoon is not going to be afraid of her anymore. There is also the fact by the end of New Order you become a waking Nightmare to her. They should have just fully revived Hitler, or someone else completely different and stuck them in the spotlight. Death’s Head was from the research division. Nootzi Hillary Clinton was from the concentration camps. Pick another field like the economics department or war department and push them up to the front. I know Giancarlo Esposito and his type cast is in everything, but a cold non caring bureaucrat that was a by the numbers person would have been great for a villain. Instead of another crazy moron. The second was Doom had come out during development and you can clearly tell what levels were made BEFORE and AFTER Doom 2016. Doom 2016’s gameplay is designed around always moving. New Colossus DOES NOT HAVE THIS FEATURE. But the levels are designed as if THIS FEATURE EXISTS. YOUR GAME DOESN’T HAVE THIS GAMEPLAY FERATURE! STOP IT! As a result, the story is a dumpster fire and the combat is even worse.

the way to best summize the downfall of Wolfenstein is as such. They saw “Iron Sky” Ripped out all the comedy (it was a shitpost) and dated political banter and just kept the dated political stance without any irony.

The secret to any totalitarian belief in politics is to just ignore you were wrong and pretend like history started 5 min. ago.

a nine hour shooting game with three hours worth of cutscenes and at the start you have to wait thirty minutes before you can shoot something. that alone is unforgivable

I never believed those "uglyfication of Western games" claims. Until I played back to back New Order and New Colossus. Not only was the character stylisation worse, they also added imperfections to the characters they certainly didn't have before

Man, thank god for that whiny twitter user and his fart sniffers. I had forgotten about your channel and how golden your vids were. Keep up the good work!

Even with how terrible New Colossus was given enough time the reboot timeline could’ve possibly been salvaged someday, unfortunately Youngblood shattered any hope of that ever happening.

This video depressed me, I always used to watch extra credits for their history videos cuz they were fun and well animated. I had no idea the rest of their channel was piss poor takes on the state of the world and media. Rest of the video is fantastic as always, though.

1:33:27 - about that, i just watched "Look Who's Back", despite being a black comedy, they actually portrayed funny mustache guy as a man out of his element, but a man who knows how to work so well with people. One of the great moment there was, being dragged in some late night show joke/skit, he effectively used uncomfortable silence to let the audience get to his level. Him pointing out in thought that feeble men do not know the power of silence, and are afraid of silence, like the antsy talk show host. It's funny because it's ridiculous, it's frightening because it explores the nature and charm of charismatic people, and it taught me to be very wary of individuals like him, of individuals who likes and knows how to push the masses for their personal agenda.

The Wolfenstein trilogy reminds me of that one scene from Billy Madison "YOU BLEW IIIIT!!" Seriously how did they fumble the bag so goddamn hard

One of my favorite moments in New Colossus is when BJ has an argument with a bunch of Marxists. It was framed to be a back-and-forth of valid points from both sides, but pretty much everything that BJ argued was correct, whereas nearly everything the Marxists said was either misguided or downright wrong. BJ argued if the Marxists actually took practical action instead of protesting the war, maybe they wouldn’t be in their predicament. This is true because now the Marxists are having to fight the Nazis without an entire army backing them up. They waited until it was much more difficult to fight back. Meanwhile, Horton argues that the U.S. only got involved in the war to widen the pockets of the fat cats in Wall Street. If that was the case, then why did the U.S. declare war on Japan only after Pearl Harbor was bombed? Also, the U.S. never declared war on Germany. Germany declared war on the U.S.

Favorite part of the Ball of steel monolog is it's stupid on two level one it's just plain stupid. Two eveything said is exactly why Balls of Steel means bad ass. It's saying somone is so badass and thick skinned even what would be the most vulnerable part of their body is made of solid steel.

It’s Sigrün verdammt, you’re butchering my beautiful language.

3:51 I forgot Youngblood existed. All I remembered from it was that Jim Sterling was one of the 14 people who liked the twins in it.

I wouldn't say the 2009 game is non-canon, since The New Order does mention key events from it. Deathshead's face for instance is the result of the zeppelin crash at the end of Wolf '09 and Caroline Becker's supposed death is brought up in The New Order, mentions punching Hans Grosse and floating towards a light. Both events occur in Wolfenstein '09. So, despite the direction the reboot took, it's still in continuity with both RTCW and Wolfenstein '09. I like to call it the Deathshead or Totenkopf Trilogy. Starting in RTCW continuing in Wolf '09 and finally the final showdown in TNO. When I first played TNO back in 2014 I felt the gravity of the final battle, since I was dealing with someone that had evaded us since 2001. Not sure if anyone else felt that, but there you go. Really sucks that you can't buy it anymore. But if you can't buy, you can't really steal it, either, right?

Dead-on about how post-2016 media HAD to be Orange Man Bad and Conservatives Are Nazis commentaries; I remember how games that tried to NOT be political commentaries during that period were lambasted and their developers hung in effigy. Remember Cuphead and how game journos bitched about the game being "enjoyed by Nazis" and how the old-timey cartoon art style was actually a secret dogwhistle for Nazis because "old racist films were made in the same art style?"

1:28:00 also on the klansman bit, people seem to forget the klansman were religious zealots first and foremost, the NS regime was extremely secular and discouraged practicing religion openly. So people trying to say the klansman would welcome the nazis are stupid, while they hold a similar stance on national identity and race, thats where the similarities end, and are in fact completely opposed on religion. The fascist doctrine is inherently opposed to fundamentalism as it runs counter to the will of the state.

Love how you combine earnest analysis, honest and actively constructive criticism, and a "how you could have made this trainwreck work". TAL is what game journos should have been.

It's such a shame that The New Collosus was pure, destiled cringe and killed the franchise. Also as a Pole Im pissed that they retconned BJ into being a Jew. Blazkowicz was always stated to be a son of polish imigrants. It's like only jews are allowed to have power fantasy revenges against nazis. Also also - how is BJ blonde and blue eyed when his mother is a black haired Jewess and his father seems to have very dark hair too?

Mick Gordon needs an award for how much he carried the new Wolfenstein games after New Order.

You want to know a games story that was really affected by the 2016 Trump election and was even worse? Life is Strange 2.

Grace: I saw a child get half burned in front of my eyes when the bomb was dropped, this is DEADLY SERIOUS. Also Grace: Tch, men using the phrase "Balls of steel" when they're actually so sensitive is stupid! That's why I like Sigrun, she got fed up with Grace and choked her out to shut her up.

This franchise had so much potential after New Order and Old Blood... Then they fucked it so hard they might as well have taken it out back and gave it the treatment of BJ's dog.

I think this trilogy encapsulates everything for the 2010s. You had the rise of old IPs being reinvigorated and treated seriously. New levels of brutality that wasn't shy to leave an impact on the player. Then just... the collapse. Either the nepotism started rolling in, or a single year broke everything and everyone, the gatekeeping wasn't held up enough. Good thing is that you can still play older games. You can always play older games.

I love when people making stuff try to be "inclusive" or "progressive" but their brilliant idea is to make the character a stereotype.

The bit with the father could’ve been an absolute redemption arc for him where he could’ve had a last stand with his son and finally bonded with him. And ultimately sacrificing himself trying to protect his son, the only family has left because what father wouldn’t die to protect his own especially after everything he’s lost? That could’ve been a huge moment for BJ to see his father as something other than a man he feared but that deep down his father still cared about him . New Colossus was a monument of wasted potential.

Lmao “federal agent Richard Spencer” accurate

"Secret society of jews that tested the laws of reality as a way of getting closer to god" as someone who read up on gnosticism and freemasonry... that sounds... familiar

FOXU MOMMY MENTIONED!!!! KIRSCHE!!!!!

Really appreciate you pointing out my biggest flaw in New Colossus. It feels like someone trying to write '70s exploitation pulp, but they've never read or watched '70s pulp only heard people talk about it. In the same way people who find Tarantino movies as masterworks have never seen the movies Tarantino apes off of.

There’s a note in the first game about Engle or however the name is spelled. She was such a die hard nazi she had like 6 kids before or during her military career. So not only is she a competent well decorated officer but she’s so devoted to her cause she birthed 6 kids with no mention of a father or marriage. She quite literally gave her body to the cause as much as she could. That’s why she’s scary, she’s all in ride or die and she’s absolutely certain about it. She “knows” she’s right and can’t be reasoned or negotiated with. She’s an actual supernatural force of a person and ironically an actual strong woman.

Smh we dont fight hitler in mechsuit

The New Colossus was a heartbreaking disaster. Never before has a trash game made me this sad

oh god, the comments are a cesspit if you sort by newest. I hate r/gamingcirclejerk.

The whole "Punch a Nasal" campaign ended my desire to play New Colussus even though I liked New Order and Old Blood. These days, we know exactly what they mean when they call someone a fan member of the Austrian painter.

So much potential squandered by activists thinking they are writers...

The note regarding abuse being a common theme. Remember Adolf's childhood. He was abused by his father as well. In another life BJ could have been a dangerous tyrant in his own right but the writers aren't brave enough to explore this.

New Colossus fucking sucked. Even from the gameplay stand point, it was so short and the level design was such a cluster fuck

Hearing the freedom fighters red choir hit me like a brick. God damn, your a real one.

NEW ORDER: 😎 OLD BLOOD: (haven’t played it) NEW COLOSSUS: 😑 YOUNG BLOOD: (Again,haven’t played it… But from what I’ve seen-) “Ho-ly Jesus… WHAT IS THAT?!?! WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?!?! WHAT IS THAT PYLE?!?!?!”

A strong head start and a totally avoidable tragic fall. TDS affected a lot of people to this day. If you or a family member have been diagnosed with TDS- 🎩 🐍 no step on Snek!🇺🇸🇭🇰

Yet another example of why triple-A gaming needs to crash.

It's like you put into words why I hated everything that wasn't New Order or Old Blood. Return to Castle Wolfenstein still the best Wolfenstein game. They should make a HD remake of that, seriously.

The new colossus is the SKIBIDI BIDEN of gaming

I hate new collosus more because it uses it's story to shield itself from criticism. Ignoring the story the game just flat out sucks. It removes eveything great about New order gameplay wise. New order felt like a direct response to what FPS games were becoming hide behind chest high wall wait for shooting to stop pop out shoot repeat. New collosus brings that back especially on harder difficulty but without a proper cover mechanic making the whole things feel awkward and slow.

Unexpected Kirsche cameo, but welcome I dunno, the whole reboot trilogy never clicked with me. I'm kind of a history autist so there's just simply no way my mind could turn off to accept the absolute exponentially infinitesimal number of factors that would need to go in the Nazis favor to have a conquest of anything beyond Europe, already a stretch at that - world domination simply too far. Even if one man had developed wunderwaffen, they simply couldn't get the materials and industrial capacity to get those out in any numbers to turn the tide, let alone conquer the world. I guess Star Trek Enterprise was slightly more real in that stranded on earth aliens who wanna fuck up the timeline help advance several critical technologies, but the show still kept things in the bound of what was possible even with preventing key events from happening knowing the future, and alien schizotech bolted onto 194x stuff - the Nazis only had a toehold in North America, and were not making headway, and they hadn't won totally in the USSR either, with the remnant still large Red Army regrouping in Siberia. Even the time machine the aliens get to build as thanks for their help is still restricted to trying to make schizo futuretech work on incredibly old (by their standards) equipment. Like yeah, I get the characters are a part of the first, but the worldbuilding just threw my mind out of whack. And a lot of stuff was just more for filling a blank (causing more blanks - so the Nazis just totally surprise win over a victorious Japan somehow in one day?), to just nonsensical snark (the US atomic bombing thing being a flipped version of a common and sensical argument to why dropping the bombs on Japan was morally correct - it being flipped makes no sense, no America wouldn't surrender after one atomic bomb, no America is not a densely packed island nation whose infrastructure had already been destroyed, no it doesn't make sense as Germany was far behind in atomic weapons in the first place). Yeah I get there's a place for social commentary or bending the rules of reality or how things work in our minds to make a game, but honestly, W2/Spear of Destiny was more one could suspend their sense of disbelief than even the first in the nuTrilogy. And RTCW more than that. The paranormal elements of Wolfenstein were picked for a reason - its easier for the brain to accept Germany wins WW2 by unleashing ghosts and zombies to turn back the tide than Germany conquers the entire world because they leaned into SCIENCE (and Jewish secret societies) harder.

Uh oh here come the Loser Twitter weirdos crying over pointless things

It's kind of impressive that a reimagining of a classic Id series could crash and burn so quickly and only after 1 game. Young Blood was like the shit cherry on the top of the diarrhea cake. There was a point they should've toned things down for New Colossus, but nope, they kept going with things nobody wanted. Oh well, at least Return to Castle Wolfenstein is still exists.

I've never liked the twist of the hidden jewish engineers creating the advanced technology. It undermines the villains, and worst yet is how they use that going forward.

I hate how they changed Anya in the sequel. Her relationship with BJ was indicative of how well they balanced each other: BJ didn't have all the brains,, but had allthe brawn, while Anya couldn't hold a gun, but was very educated. But New Colossus came out right around the time where media depiction of pregnant women fighting was seen as progressive. It was everywhere in comics, books, TV shows, and games, and I don't know why. It's just disgusting and irresponsible.

It should be illegal to have such a strong original and then a complete trashfire of a sequel. I call this the "legend of korra" effect.

"The premier expert on Bridge at the moment is this mentally ill fox woman." I see you too are a man of culture.

I think having a marxist character could have been interesting and lead to conflict internaly. Since the communist party of America discouraged involvement in the war early on, but obviously would now be against the Nazis after they win. They also could have had the opposite of that and had some operation Valkeri typ characters.

The New Order was the peak for Wolfenstein alongside The Old Blood but it went downhill and never recovered.

If twitter glue-eaters think it's bat, it has to be good.

44:04 - 48:05 Excuse me while I clap at my monitor

Hitler in this game is oddly reminiscent of Biden

Been looking forward to this one's full release. Unlike these games, especially New Colossus, you did not disappoint with this review Loli. It really is unfortunate when you see the potential these games had. The little scenes in Roswell with the KKK members trying to speak German, the little kid and his mother correcting him using English instead of German, and the one lady who tries to impress an SS officer only to end up insulting him and possibly ending up on a list.

Desk Ketchup Bostonian was not someone I was expecting to see in the vid.

Looks like this blew up on Twitter and the Reddit window-lickers have found it and are now declaring anyone who dislikes the 2nd game a 'you know what' whilst sniffing each others farts.