RealRTCW is a Game Mod for Return to Castle Wolfenstein released on October 15, 2020, 19 years after the release of the original game. Developed by a team of various fans of Return to Castle Wolfenstein (officially credited as Wolfmap, RTCW Coop Team, and Dark Matter Productions), the mod updates the game with higher quality textures and visual effects, as well as new high quality weapon models. It also features a number of gameplay tweaks including new weapons, new enemies (taken from the Xbox port's bonus content), tighter more accurate gunplay with weapon recoil instead of the original game's cone-of-fire mechanic, slight tweaks to weapon stats and enemy A.I., new and rebalanced difficulty levels, etc. Built on the iortcw source port, the mod also runs on modern systems with modern resolutions with no need to mess around with the configuration files.
The mod is available at Moddb, Github, and as a workshop download on Steam for Return to Castle Wolfenstein.
As a mod for Return to Castle Wolfenstein, many of the tropes on that page still apply. This mod also provides examples of:
- Angry Guard Dog: One of the new enemy types is a German Shepherd guard dog who's a bit tankier than the human German guards. Later in the game you'll encounter the X-Shepherd, the cybernetically augmented version of this.
- Game Mod: RealRTCW has been popular enough in the mod community that a number of mods have been made for it, including a full fan-made single-player campaign using the Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory maps, and a mod which replaces all the enemies with Elite Guard (including a number of new character models).
- Harder Than Hard: The game modifies the higher difficulties to reduce your maximum health and ammo capacity, with you being limited to 50 health on Death Incarnate. The hardest difficulty, Realism, limits your health to a mere 25.
- Healing Potion: The game adds bandages and adrenaline as usable items. Bandages heal your health a certain amount when used, while adrenaline buffs you up.
- 100% Completion: While in the original game finding all secrets and treasure was merely for bragging rights, RealRTCW actually rewards you at the end of each level for finding all secrets and treasures, usually with new guns or bandages and armor.
- Improperly Placed Firearms: The mod attempts to avert this; most notably, the Elite Guard now use German weapons (i.e. Luger pistols and MP34 submachine guns) rather than the British Sten guns they used in the original game.
- Mighty Glacier: The mod adds the Occult Priests from the Xbox Tides of War console port into the main game. They walk slowly, but can take a lot of firepower to bring down (requiring several mauser rifle headshots to drop) and can quickly drain your health with lightning if they get close.
- More Dakka: A machine gun which B.J. fires from the hip is one of the new weapons added by the mod.
- Revolvers Are Just Better: One of the new weapons is a service revolver that B.J. starts out certain missions with. It kills most normal enemies in one shot, but you're not going to find much ammo for it behind enemy lines.
- Shotguns Are Just Better: While the original game noticeably lacked a shotgun, RealRTCW adds an Ithaca 37 shotgun to the game's arsenal, first acquired from Kessler in the village. It noticeably averts Short-Range Shotgun, having a decent one-hit-kill range of up to several dozen feet, though this does become more chance-based past close range.
