YMMV / Wolfenstein: The New Order

See also:

• Wolfenstein: The Old Blood (YMMV)
• Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus (YMMV)

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• Adorkable: Wyatt starts out as Gosh Dang It to Heck! individual and by New Colossus, he began to awkwardly talk Jive Turkey and behaves like Cloudcuckoolander especially after taking what seems to be acid. Though that does not stop him from being an effective ally.
• Aluminum Christmas Trees:
  • A nuclear cannon might sound bizarre, but the United States had nuclear artillery shells and put cannon-fired bombs on battleships in the late 50s through the 80s.
  • One note makes reference to the Sonnegewehr, a solar powered Kill Sat that essentially acts like a giant magnifying glass. Well, this was actually a real concept, albeit one that never got past the initial idea.
  • The soundtrack features a selection of period tunes from fictional bands, a few of which serve as direct Nazi propaganda, boasting about the Eye of London and their space program. While Nazi Germany despised jazz for its black and Jewish influences (and briefly tried to "Wagnerify" the genre to remove them), Goebbels recognized how much American and British servicemen loved swing, and created a Ministry of Propaganda-sanctioned big band combo, "Charlie and His Orchestra", to play hits with new English lyrics mocking the Allies in order to demoralize the enemy.
• Anticlimax Boss: The final fight against Mecha Deathshead. It's a straight out slugfest in a room filled with pipes and catwalks. The floor-to-ceiling pipes make it very difficult for the boss to draw a bead on you, the environmental hazards don't pose much of a threat if you're attentive, and dual-wielding assault rifle rockets or fully-upgraded Lazer Kraftwerk will chew him up, even on the highest difficulty settings.
• Anvilicious: The game pretty much bolds, italicizes, and underlines that all fascism does — especially nazism — is put power in the hands of maniacs. It’s a system that seems almost specifically designed to enable and promote the worst aspects of humanity, so we must never let it flourish anywhere.
• Broken Base: There's been some pushback on The New Order due to the fact that it represents a Darker and Edgier shift for the series. Some players preferred the lighter and more cartoonish approach of the previous games, and felt that, while The New Order certainly deserved to exist, the Wolfenstein franchise was a poor place to put it.
• Catharsis Factor:
  • After seeing all the horrors the Nazis commit, nothing feels better than blasting the bastards into Ludicrous Gibs.
  • There's one memorable scene early on that has a unique takedown animation where B.J. drowns one Nazi in his own piss.
• Creepy Awesome: Deathshead looks like he has a skull for a face (which is how he got the name), and he rarely ever raises his voice above a contemptible whisper. And yet, he's the Big Bad.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • The shotgun-wielding Fire Troopers and their cousins the Rocket Troopers are heavily armored, impossible to stealthily kill, and rarely — if ever — miss when firing. This is especially a problem when they attack during a firefight with dozens of weaker enemies. Fire Troopers get even worse when they start packing shrapnel rounds, which can bounce and rip nice large chunks out of your health (especially when you're low on armor). The only consolation is that they're weak to rear attacks, but good luck trying to get behind one of them, as they are usually always placed facing towards the player.
  • The chaingun-wielding Super Soldiers are even worse. Unlike the Fire Troopers, they don't have a weak spot, and can dish out damage just as quickly, if not more so, than the Fire and Rocket Troopers.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • J, just by the virtue of him being Jimi Hendrix, including playing the acid rock version of "The Star-Spangled Banner just before he goes down.
  • Anya seems to have become pretty popular based on her actions in the game and her actual backstory plus the implied backstory of her being an underground Nazi-killer. Caroline and Tekla have both been discussed as positives in the game due to being well-done female characters in a genre that typically doesn't have much time for them.
  • Fergus is also rather popular, likely because of his snarky attitude and status as the Only Sane Man.
  • Though not as popular as Fergus, Wyatt is also quite popular, due to his light-hearted and Adorkable Gosh Darn It to Heck! and The All-American Boy personality that contradicts with the Darker and Edgier tone of the game and the fact he's really a Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass who is every bit as helpful as Fergus.
• Evil Is Cool: As despicable as the Nazis are, their armor, robots and weaponry is pretty nifty.
  • As many gamers have pointed out, the Nazi music in the game is really good. If there's one upside to living under Nazi rule, it's that they make awesome songs.
• First Installment Wins: The New Order is the first and most beloved of the game in the new continuity. While opinions of them vary, none of it's follow ups are held in nearly the same regard, be it for weaker story (The Old Blood and Youngblood) or weaker gameplay (The New Colossus).
• Genius Bonus: The term "Da'at Yichud" isn't random. In Kabbalah, "Da'at" (consciousness/knowledge/sentience) refers to a specific state of being where all the aspects of God's creation are perfectly united as one. "Yichud" (union) is a period after Jewish marriage where the husband and wife are allowed to be alone in a room together for a time. This sums up the purpose of the Da'at Yichud — becoming as close to God as possible by thoroughly investigating his creation and applying it, while staying out of the world at large — fairly accurately. Alternately, it can be simply translated from modern Hebrew as "Unity of knowledge", as the group considered the division between different sciences unnecessary and instead pursued the great theory of all and everything.
  • The first and final missions task BJ to kill Deathshead at his base of operations, a towering Nazi fortress. A man in a high castle, as it were.
• Goddamned Bats:
  • More like Goddamned Drones. They take a negligible amount of ammunition to bring down, but they move quickly and it's very easy to expend more bullets than necessary to kill one. Too bad there's never just one, and they often accompany enemies who can easily kill you while you're softened up.
  • Both Kampfhunde and Prison Guards, especially when they catch you in a clinch attack. While they don't take much damage, if players don't stab them to death quick enough, they can drain their health away even when blocking them. The former can reach to Demonic Spiders during gunfights where the other enemies can take potshots at you when they start biting you.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Private Prendergast undergoing a Trauma Conga Line in the game's Downer Beginning to a point he himself rants to the heavens for it and later revealed to be Killed Offscreen in the Time Skip is more heartbreaking due to his portrayer Nicholas Tucci's untimely death at age 38 after succumbing to a fatal illness.
  • Deathshead mentions that he hasn't practiced his English for quite some time when he first meets Blazkowicz, stating that it is a "dying tongue". Then comes The New Colossus, where the Nazis are actively trying to erase the English language to establish German language as the new lingua franca of the Occupied American Territory, as stated in many promotionals and events in the game.
  • In the Wyatt timeline, when J brings up the Jim Crow laws that he and his family had to abide by before the Nazis took over, he states the US government and indirectly BJ were no better then the Nazis, prompting BJ to place J in a chokehold. Then comes The New Colossus, where we learn the BJ's father was an Abusive Dad and a Politically Incorrect Villain who made BJ's childhood hell, especially for befriending an African-American girl; his father's bigoted beliefs is also what instill BJ's hate for what the Nazis stood for. It is no wonder BJ would instantly goes into Tranquil Fury towards J as he doesn't want to become like his detestable racist father.
  • Dwight Schultz plays the Nazi Big Bad in this game. In real life, Schultz would become an unapologetic supporter of Donald Trump, who elevated the Alt-Right in The New '10s.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Bobby Bram's Q3 Rocket Launcher keychain. B.J. would later become a playable character in Quake Champions, after skipping III Arena and all of its versions.
  • In the Fergus timeline of The New Order, Tekla accuses BJ of cheating death, due to his disappearance at Deathhead's castle. In The New Colossus, BJ, once again, cheats death, on live television, no less.
• Iron Woobie: B.J. after losing those he cared about during his missions and discovering the Nazis won the war and took over the world and Caroline due to losing her legs, but both still pursue trying to defeat the Nazis to liberate the world.
• Jerkass Woobie: Bobby Bram, he was initially short towards B.J., but his attitude is most likely a result of losing his wife Charlotte to the Nazis and the fact he's about to embark on a suicide mission.
• Love to Hate: Deathshead, Frau Engel, and her lover Bubi have this trope in spades. All of these three are sadistic monsters and we love them all for being just that. This trope was also somewhat reflected in Yahtzee's review of the game.
  Yahtzee: One of the first things we do is watch a soldier shoot a room full of hospital patients before we stab him right up the lebensraum, and the principal villains only need to smile and play card games to become infinitely hateable.
• Moral Event Horizon: If Deathshead didn't cross it when he forced Blazkowicz to choose whether he would vivisect Fergus or Wyatt, then he crossed it when he trapped Fergus/Wyatt in an And I Must Scream situation for fourteen years by using their leftover brain as the Wetware CPU for his Machine-Man.
• Narm:
  • Klaus' death would be more poignant if Max Hass wasn't screaming "Max Hass!!" repeatedly.
  • BJ must be REALLY good with those throwing knives, since hitting an enemy anywhere (even the leg) will result in an instant KO.
  • Some of BJ's "tortured tough-guy Shell-Shocked Veteran" musings can sound a little ridiculous.
• Narm Charm:
  • As noted in previews for the game, the developers seem to be aiming for this, like when you visit a Museum and Blazkowicz finds out the Nazis conquered the Moon.
    B.J. Blazkowicz: "They put a Nazi on the moon. Fuck you, Moon."
  • The brain extraction transforms into this if one interprets Deathshead being more than capable of doing it the practical way, but opts to inflict more pain instead. Fits perfectly with his character.
• Nausea Fuel: Shooting an enemy in the neck will result in them clutching their throat and make nasty gurgling while they simultaneously bleed out and choke on their own blood.
• Obvious Beta: Came out with a massive Day One patch, and the PC version still had a lot of problems running on AMD graphic cards. Has the same texture pop-in problems Rage (2011) had (though not quite as glaringly obvious as Rage was), an issue with the Tech 5 engine that's never been solved by Id almost three years after the earlier game came out, and framerate is often uneven. That's on top of there being a glitch in Chapter 14 where some collectibles disappear if you reload a post-death checkpoint. A little tinkering with the graphical options (a few effects do not improve the visuals much while being resource hogs, and texture problems are reduced by setting an higher FOV) makes things good even on mid-range systems, and said glitch repairs itself if you reload a checkpoint while still alive, although it's still evident the PC version wasn't tested enough before release.
• Player Punch: For a game as silly as this, it has its moments. Then again, this is also from the same people who made The Darkness, so this is to be expected.
  • Deathshead extracting the eyes of your comrades is pretty grueling to watch. It gets even worse when you find out what he did after he extracted their eyes; He then removes their brains while they are still alive and then waits 14 years later to put it in a robot for you to fight.
  • Seeing the world as conquered by the Nazis.
  • "Camp Belica" is a pretty horrifying level, and save for the giant robots, is a pretty accurate representation of what a concentration camp is like.
  • The assault on HQ. The place is in flames, your comrades are captured, Klaus and J/Tekla wind up dead in the process.
  • The game ends with B.J.'s possible death. The music and his final speech are what sells it. Even though the sequel reveals that he didn't die, B.J. becomes Dented Iron to the point of nearly being a Death Seeker, knowing he's on borrowed time. Even then, his decision to just call in a nuke as a Heroic Sacrifice is pretty poignant.
• Porting Disaster:
  • The PC version has problems running on AMD hardware. Strange, considering the PS4 and XONE are made with AMD hardware.
  • The X360 version lacked tutorials which never explained the dash-sliding and leaning mechanics, as well for the Game-Breaking Bug bricks the console's Bluetooth communications chip (prevent connection with any wireless controllers).
• Scrappy Weapon: The American SMG from the prologue fires underpowered pistol ammo and is completely eclipsed by the German rifles. Of course completely intentional on the part of the games' developers, it's to show just how badly outmatched the Allied soldiers are against the 1946 German war machine.
• Spiritual Successor:
  • This game, along with its expansion pack and sequel, are often considered this to Escape from Butcher Bay and its sequel Assault on Dark Athena, due to the similar stealth mechanics, melee executions, weaponry and dark tone. It also helps that they are all made by the same people.
  • Have you ever wanted to play a game based off of the works of Tarantino? Specifically based off of Inglourious Basterds? Well, here it is. Hell, when you consider Anya's implied backstory as a Nazi-slaying Serial Killer.
  • The game is also one of the best adaptations we'll ever get of The Man in the High Castle. And one without the constant shilling of the I-ching.
  • A badass soldier who took part in World War 2 has a long slumber, wakes up after a timeskip, returns to fighting for America after his forced hiatus, and primarily fights a vicious Nazi leader with a skull motif? Captain America would like his royalties.
    • Goes a step further in the Wyatt timeline where Wyatt (who could very easily be a stand-in for Bucky) often calls B.J "Cap". Considering B.J. is even voiced by an actor who played one incarnation of Steve Rogers, it's possible that this might've been intentional.
• Surprisingly Improved Sequel: While Wolfenstein (2009) does have some fans and has grown into something of a Cult Classic in some circles, it received a tepid reaction from critics and not the best sales. The New Order, on the other hand, impressed critics with its darker tone than previous installments, a stronger story, shooting mechanics, soundtrack and more. It even debuted #1 in the UK in terms of video game sales.
• That One Achievement: Many of the Demolitionist perk challenges can be this. The player needs to get a double kill (or higher) with a single grenade just to unlock the entire tree (the other three perk tree challenges are far more straightforward). Then there's the challenge that requires the player to get kills with an enemy grenade, whether it be by throwing them back or by shooting them as they're being primed. And then there's another challenge where the player has to get killed only via grenades that have been tossed back. As a result, the tossed back achievement in Steam is the one achievement where the fewest players registered have accomplished. This last challenge is made significantly easier once you realize that you can just throw your own grenade at your feet and then pick it back up to lob at enemies.
• That One Attack: Anytime whenever the Kampfhunde and Prison Guards grab you in a clinch. While they don't do that much damage especially when you block their attacks, they can slowly drain your health away if you don't stab them to death quickly enough. To make matters worse, you're unable to move, especially with the Kampfhunde during gunfights and you're getting shot at by the Nazi soldiers.
• That One Boss: The Warm-Up Boss and Final Boss (The Fergus/Wyatt-bot and Deathshead's mecha respectively) can be tricky to figure out how to take them down. The former just takes a matter of timing and throwing grenades at the right moments. The latter requires you to find a series of cannons to destroy the blimps powering his shield and then fighting him in an increasingly hectic basement that is on fire.
• That One Level:
  • Chapter 8, "Camp Belicia", is more of the annoyance over difficulty version. You're sent to infiltrate a concentration camp, so you have absolutely no weapons. All you'll have to fight with for the majority of the chapter are knives. Then there are various cutscenes that can't be skipped, padding out more time.
  • Chapter 10, "Berlin Catacombs", involves using a small underwater boat to navigate through the flooded underground of Berlin. It's incredibly difficult to find collectibles without a guide, and the journey is slow going. At the end, you're introduced to those giant Super Soldiers.
  • Chapter 12, "Gibraltar Bridge", is this for some players. You're sent on a ruined bridge to steal the identity of one of Deathshead's top commanders. Sounds easy? Not so much. In addition to the tricky level design (be prepared to fall to your death quite a bit), enemies have a tendency of using every possible angle to attack you from. Also, there's quite an abundance of Supersoldaten around every corner. At least this is the level where you get the rocket launcher attachment for the assault rifle, which makes the going a bit easier.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Splitting the narrative into two timelines is this for some players, as it seems to promise more radical differences between the two than are actually delivered, and is often accused of being a cheap way of adding in some replay value. In fact, other than the character you pick for Deathshead's experiments the two timelines are more or less identical even down to the dialogue at times as despite being completely different in personality, the surviving character in one timeline will at times say things that are almost exactly the same as the surviving character in the other timeline. Most of the other differences are largely cosmetic; a different mechanic for unlocking secrets and hidden areas (hotwiring in one, lockpicking in the other) leading to some possible shortcuts, a different stat upgrade (health in one, armor in the other) and a different secondary character who adds some spice but overall doesn't really affect the narrative in any meaningful way. And the use of the chapter select feature allows one to unlock both upgrades by playing through the game again on a different timeline (while keeping whatever was unlocked before). For what it's worth, most players seem to think the Fergus timeline has the edge over the Wyatt timeline, if only because the Health Upgrades add a permanent boost to the character's health, whereas the armor boost simply makes armor pick-ups increase your armor to 100 quicker.
• Ugly Cute: The Panzerhund, though maybe "terrifying cute" would be a better descriptor.
• Win Back the Crowd: For the Wolfenstein franchise and old school FPS fans, it has.
• The Woobie: Anya, due to having to live under a world ruled by Nazis and losing her friends who have pulled a Face–Heel Turn on her and losing her parents.
  • Max Hass, as he's brain damaged as a result of his wound on his head and reduced to a Manchild, then losing his father figure Klaus to the Nazis.
  • All members of the Kreisau Circle would qualify, ranging from ex-Nazi Klaus, who lost his son and wife to the Gestapo to J for being facially scarred and living under a life full of racism. Fergus or Wyatt (if one of them survived in 1946) also counts due to them suffering Survivor's Guilt following being saved by B.J. back in '46 and lamenting how they should have died that year and that they could not live up the advantages of the one who has been dissected. However, being resistance members against the Nazis makes them Iron Woobies.
  • Fergus or Wyatt, if one of the two are picked to be dissected and having his brain transferred to a machine to fight B.J., with the one who had been sacrificed to beg for a Mercy Kill.
    • Even the one you don't pick qualifies. It's clear through their rant to B.J. about halfway through the game that they're still suffering deeply from survivor's guilt even fourteen years later. That combined with the stresses of managing one of the last pockets of resistance in a Nazi-controlled world will turn anyone into The Woobie.

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