Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus / YMMV

See also:

Alas, Poor Scrappy: Based on how annoying the player finds him, Super Spesh's abrupt and cold-blooded execution at Engel's hand will either be an upsetting wake-up call or something of a relief.
Alternative Character Interpretation:
- Was Grace being hostile towards Sigrun was because she is a paranoid Politically Incorrect Hero or was she subjecting a Secret Test of Character for Sigrun to show some backbone to stand up for herself and vehemently confirmed that she really performed a Heel–Face Turn? Notably, after Sigrun makes her point, Grace invites her to join them in their crusade against the Nazi tyranny and has that same smile she had after telling BJ about the dummy grenade in another Secret Test of Character early in the game.
  - Related to that, no one seems attempting to stop Sigrun when she's choking down Grace. Is it because they know that Grace is subjecting Sigrun to said Secret Test of Character? Or as mentioned in Replacement Scrappy below, they want Grace to learn her lesson for being a Politically Incorrect Hero?
- Was the portrayal of Hitler a deliberate attempt to cross the line twice, or an unvarnished imagining of what he'd look like in his seventies? Or both? It's known that real life Nazis used stimulants akin to crystal meth during WWII in order to work 20 hour days. While the Fuhrer's actions are violent and unpredictable, it's possible that he's just an old man displaying a mixture of drug damage and early onset dementia. Having his decisions unquestioned for most of two decades can't have done much good for keeping him grounded, either.
- The Reporter Lady who storms the stage when Engel reveals you've been captured to hit you and scream about how you killed her son and deserve death. Was that a real emotional outburst meant to show you that all the people you've been slaughtering had families you took them from, or considering everything you've heard throughout the game about the Nazi media was she a planted actor?
- The Freedom Chronicles. Are they really fictitious in-universe? Or are they legitimate stories (if somewhat exaggerated) that are merely documented as fiction?
Angst? What Angst?: B.J. survives a decapitation by having his head quickly retrieved and put on life support by Set, whom then put it back on the body of a "biologically engineered super soldier". A body that looks uncannily artificial and would raise some question such as whether B.J. can still procreate with it. However Blazkowicz never talks about the loss of his original body, let alone angst over it and the mood of the game actually become lighter from this point onward.
Anti-Climax Boss:
- After all the build-up, Frau Engel really didn't put up much of a fight, being killed in a glorified cut-scene. Granted, you do have to fight two giant Zerstörer robots right before that, so it might be justified (unless you just run right past them).
- Similarly, Rip Blazkowicz may as well be a QTE fight, despite the game establishing him as a major antagonist. Justified in this case because Rip Blazkowicz is an old man with a hunting shotgun facing off the Power Armored One-Man Army veteran that is his son.
Base-Breaking Character: The Adolf Hitlarious treatment of well, Adolf Hitler, has been divise. Many players love this portrayal of the Führer as a pathetic bumbling maniac for being cathartic and darkly humorous. However, many have pointed out that considering how the science used by the Nazis in this universe is capable of slowing the aging process and creating cyborgs, Hitler should be the first one to have access to it. Not to mention that Wolfenstein 3D's most notable fight was against Mecha-Hitler whom many longtime fans were eager to see into a modern title but got robbed of it in favor of a comedic portrayal that would feel more at home in a Mel Brooks movie.
Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: The birthday party scene. It's completely superfluous to the plot and seems more like something out of a sitcom.
Broken Base: B.J surviving a decapitation via getting his head transplanted onto a new body. Is it a Moment of Awesome demonstrating how indestructible Blazkowicz is, or an unfitting science-fiction Ass Pull?
Catharsis Factor:
- After seeing Frau Engel cause so many atrocities from both The New Order and this one, seeing her have her arm chopped off by BJ with a hatchet before burying the entire blade in her head and twisting it to split her head like a melon in the ending is truly a satisfying moment to watch. For bonus catharsis, she spends most of her time leading up to the moment being a Smug Snake about being the one to kill B.J Blazkowicz only for him to show up at her televised interview and render her greatest achievement false and taunt her as he kills her to make sure she dies in despair.
- Sure, it gets you immediately killed, but kicking Adolf Hitler to death while he lays on the floor during the audition is incredibly satisfying.
- After witnessing how horribly he treated B.J. as a child, and learning that he sold his own wife and B.J.'s mother out to the Nazis in exchange for a generous handout, B.J. killing his father more than counts for this. However, it's completely undermined by the fact that not once does he express even a modicum of fear when staring down B.J., remaining as flippant and domineering as ever. And when it's revealed that he was baiting a trap for B.J., he dies content and unafraid, believing he had won. His death also happens very quickly too, with little suffering, making him feel like a Karma Houdini despite everything.
Complete Monster:
- Rip Blazkowicz, B.J.'s greedy, racist father, married B.J.'s wealthy mother for money, then abused her and B.J. out of anger at his own poor business decisions ruining his enterprise. Attacking B.J. for playing with a black girl, Rip knocks his wife out for trying to defend their son, then tries to make B.J. shoot his dog. When America is conquered by the Nazis, Rip betrays his Jewish neighbors and wife by selling them out, leading to their internment and death in concentration camps. Attempting to kill B.J. when they meet again, Rip also wiretaps their phone conversation in an attempt to have B.J. captured and executed by the Nazis.
- The Freedom Chronicles: The Adventures of Gunslinger Joe: Übercommander Roderick Metze was a white supremacist who became a dentist for the thrill of torturing people legally. Happily joining the Nazis, Metze relished in a chance to lord over minorities, subjecting them to slavery and death. Taking an interest in sports, Metze abducted a number of athletes, torturing them in ghastly experiments to harvest their abilities for his own side. Metze also intends on activating a superweapon to annihilate the entire American Midwest, driven by his desire to rise ever higher in the ranks of the Reich.
Contested Sequel: In contrast to the near-universal acclaim The New Order received for revitalizing the franchise, New Colossus received a much more mixed reception. Some players and the majority of critics and journalists praised the game for its much heavier emphasis on cinematic storytelling, while many regular players (including the likes of TotalBiscuit) complained how this change in focus came at the expense of gameplay. The fact the game was noticably more difficult than the previous game in a way that felt cheap didn't help matters.
Critical Dissonance: Reception on the part of critics has been very positive, with critics praising the game's story and characters, as well as improving the intense gameplay from The New Order/The Old Blood. Among fans, it's more divisive, with some agreeing with the critics, and others finding problems with the game's length as well as some of the changes to the gameplay and the cutscene-to-gameplay ratio. There are also reports of Game-Breaking Bugs and crashes (see Porting Disaster).
Crosses the Line Twice: Showing the power-mad genocidal dictator of the Third Reich as a bumbling idiot? Simply par for the course for a lot of WWII fiction. Showing him as a senile, paranoid 71-year-old lunatic who is barely in touch with reality, remorselessly guns down random people at the slightest provocation (one of whom is Ronald Reagan), rants at length about Jewish spies, mistakes the director of his latest (badly-written) propaganda film for his mutti and shoves his head into her boobs for comfort, pukes, pisses blood in the ice bucket and all over the floor and then lets you stamp his head when he curls up on the floor mid-rant to take a nap? That is called The New Colossus, my friend.
Demonic Spiders:
- The Zitadelle robots. Gigantic walking war machines, capable of firing enough rockets in one volley to pretty much obliterate your armour and most of your health if you don't get to cover ASAP (and even then the blast might still knock you back and leave you helpless), on top of taking absolutely forever to go down—even a full tank's worth of shots from the Dieselkraftwerk won't cut it. The only way to give yourself any sort of advantage over one is to sneak up behind it and cut its fuel lines, and even that is much easier said than done.
- On higher difficulties, the Kampfhunds can become this (they're only Goddamned Bats on lower difficulties). During a big firefight, it's entirely possible for one to come up behind you and take off most of your health and kill you before you even realize what's happening.^note
- The Laserhunds. Fast movers and hard hitters, they can take down an unaware player with infuriating efficiency.
Ensemble Dark Horse: Sigrun Engel has been highly praised for being the type of character that you never see in a Rated M for Manly FPS, an overweight heroic ex-Nazi woman who is not a fighter but refuses to play a passive role in the Resistance. Critics admire her deeply, while most fans just want to give the poor girl a hug.
Evil Is Cool: Although Frau Engel is an extreme Hate Sink, she still has a large fanbase who thoroughly enjoy her character for Nina Franoszek's over-the-top performance, creepy yet still memorable scenes in both this game and its predecessor, she's a Benevolent Boss, and she technically succeeds in killing off the main character.
Fetish Retardant: Anya, who's in a late-term pregnancy, has a few "fanservice" scenes, including one where's she portrayed as violently gunning down Nazis while nude. However most players tend to agree that sexualizing a pregnant woman comes off as squicky, especially since it involves her putting herself in dangerous situation.
Game-Breaker: On easier difficulties, it is entirely possible to get through the entire game using nothing but the assault rifle. When first acquired it's unspectacular, but fully upgrading it turns it into a bone fide head-popping sniper rifle which has a higher ammo cap than the default SMG, and which shreds through armour like butter. It can even take down the heavier giant Mooks in only handful of shots. The necessary upgrade kits can be gathered within the Eva's Hammer itself.
Genius Bonus: The Nazi antigravity experiments in Area 52 are clearly based on the conspiracy theory of Die Glocke; there are a few signs with that name and the machine at the focal point of the complex has a bell shape.
Harsher in Hindsight:
- That Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan are seen collaborating in The New Colossus becomes more uneasy following the 2017 protests in Charlottesville, Virginia. Although many people have stated that this actually improves the game, as it both systematically explains how white supremacist Aryan ideology is toxic to everything it touches and allows you to brutally murder anyone who can't or won't learn that lesson.
- Remember back in Wolfenstein (2009) Deathshead told B.J. that "he wouldn't live to see the swastika flying proudly over Washington D.C."? After the events of The New Order, Deathshead is dead, and this game shows the swastika draped over the Capitol.
I Knew It!:
- BJ Blazkowicz had been speculated as being Jewish for years, but nothing concrete ever showed up. Until this game revealed his mother was Jewish. Also a Genius Bonus when you remember that Jewish heritage, unlike most other types of lineage, is transferred matrilineally, making his Jewish heritage even more concrete since it came from his mother.
- The head transplant plot point was successfully predicted just after the game's announcement due to several hints shown in the trailers. Most notably, the cover art depicts a post-surgery BJ.
Iron Woobie: BJ Blazkowicz. Had a horrifically abusive childhood, forced to watch many of his good friends die, stuck in a wheelchair (at first), discovers that his father sold out his mother to the Nazis, and witnesses first hand how the American people have simply given up hope. And yet, he keeps on fighting, determined to make things better.
It's Short, So It Sucks!: While about the same length of general gameplay as Wolfenstein: The New Order if you pursue side-content, the consensus seems to be that The New Colossus just sort of 'ends' a little early and anticlimactically (with the death of Frau Engel being mostly cinematic and the Final Boss being a pair of souped-up Ubersoldats), making it feeling like an episodic game in relation to the previous games. From there it's just revisiting old areas (through a simulation machine) for collectibles, side missions you didn't complete, and taking on the Oberkommandant Enigma assassination missions that often recycle areas from the main campaign. It's entirely impossible to literally play through the game's normal levels again with one's perks unlocked.
Jerks Are Worse Than Villains: While he's both a jerk and a villain, Rip Blazkowicz tends to be the most hated character by far, even more than Hitler himself, who shows up in one scene but is clearly a doddering dolt who's not all there and pisses on the floor at one point. Rip is an Abusive Parent who beats his wife, calls B.J. weak for being a decent and caring person, abuses the family dog, and then outright shoots it when he catches B.J. fraternizing with a black girl. As if this weren't enough, when B.J. comes back later as an adult he finds that Rip sold out his wife and the whole neighborhood to the Nazis just to save his own worthless hide. As such, no tears were shed when B.J. chopped that asshole's arm out and stabbed him in the chest.
Just Here for Godzilla: Many players will note that the arrest of B.J. for his father's murder and terrorism, as well as B.J.'s trial and execution (with a battle in the courthouse Dream Sequence in between), and his being revived via head transplant into a Super-Soldier body (with you being put in the perspective of B.J.'s literal talking head, also in between), is quite an accomplishment and more memorable than anything else in the game.
Like You Would Really Do It: Make it as gruesome as you want, MachineGames, you're not gonna convince us you'd let BJ stay dead. Doesn't help that they didn't do a very good job of hiding his survival, with many players correctly predicting the outcome months before the game came out.
Love to Hate: Even among Nazis, Frau Engel is an incredibly loathsome character, between horribly abusing her daughter Sigrun and executing both Caroline and BJ, so getting to brutally murder her with an axe on live television is an absolute joy to play. And between how terrifying she is and the sheer psychotic glee she shows at nearly all times, Engel steals every scene she's in, with many players even comparing her favorably to Vaas Montenegro.
Memetic Mutation:
- Its hatred from real life Neo-Nazis has become an endless source of mockery, with joke reviews for similar media involving killing Nazis such as Captain America and Raiders of the Lost Ark parodying their reactions.
- The scene of Adolf Hitler shooting a young Ronald Reagan has gained a lot of attention out of context.
  Hitler: Are you a sinister man in disguise? A Jew? A deceitful Jew?!
  Ronald Reagan: No, no Mein Führer. I'm from Arizona.
  BANG!
Moral Event Horizon:
- If Frau Engel hadn't crossed it already, telling her daughter to execute Caroline with an axe certainly counts. Then she goes the extra mile by doing the deed herself when Sigrun refuses, and brings Caroline's decapitated head to BJ while having her head 'kiss him' to degrade the crippled hero. What's more, when Sigrun rightfully calls her mother out, Frau Engel's response is to do the same to her daughter, but also presses Caroline's head against her daughter's privates to further embarrass her, and finally smacks her hard when Sigrun pushes her away in disgust.
- If Rip Blazkowicz didn't cross it when he knocks out his wife and chokes a young B.J. into unconsciousness, he definitely does when he tries to force B.J. to shoot his own dog, and shoots her himself if he refuses. And if that somehow doesn't work, there's also the revelation that he sent his wife to a concentration camp. Considering he made it clear he only ever married her for her family's assets and then foolishly lost it all, he has no one but himself to blame for his actions, but still persecuted and sent every single person he disliked off to die for self-vindication.
Narm:
- For some, the credits theme — a screamo cover of Twisted Sister's "We're Not Gonna Take It" — is this.
- Due to having a single character model, the younger Rip Blazkowicz is always seen wearing a suit in the flashbacks. It mostly works fine, but it does get a little strange when we see the final flashback where Rip deals with BJ's night terrors, still wearing his suit in the middle of the night.
- Apparently Machine Games couldn't be bothered with creating two versions of the end credit art, leaving non-Germans to wonder why the American rebels are shown striking out against a bunch of soldiers who are suddenly adorned with weird triangle logos instead of swastikas.
- Though Rip's villainy is effective because of how much more down-to-earth and realistic it is compared to the crazy world-conquering Nazi superscience of the rest of the game, for some it's hard to take seriously in part because hearing Glenn Morshower spew racial epithets just comes off as crudely hilarious rather than horrifying.
Narm Charm: The aforementioned end credits theme is this for other players, who feel that it's goofy and over the top in a way that perfect for the scenario at hand. The art it plays over, showcasing people in open rebellion against the Nazis and winning, definitely helps for some.
Older Than They Think: For anyone with an inkling of familiarity with the series (or the first person shooter genre, or video games in general), killing Nazis is not a new development in the slightest. That, however, has not stopped some from interpreting the game as a reference to the political climate at the time of the game's release in late 2017, not even a full year into Donald Trump's presidency (though the fact the comparison was made by members of the game's own marketing team might have had something to do with that).
One-Scene Wonder: Adolf Hitler only appears in a single scene around the middle of the game, but boy is it unforgettable.
Polished Port: The Switch port is a marvel of optimization. It's the full game, at a smooth 30, looking barely any worse than the other console version, and portable (and is actually better in Portable Mode, because the small screen makes it harder to notice the lesser visuals, and still runs at a fluid framerate).
Porting Disaster: Upon the game's launch, the Steam page was flooded with negative reviews- not because the game was bad, mind, but because so many people were experiencing Game-Breaking Bug after game-breaking bug with the game's actual launch. The game is somehow both a great PC port and a terrible one at the same time.
- The PC version of the game exclusively uses Vulkan as the graphics API, preventing many older (as in pre-2016) graphic cards from even running the game because of the inconsistent Vulkan support on older graphics cards.
Realism-Induced Horror: Rip Blazkowicz being so down-to-earth even within the game's setting is what makes him such a detestable character. Bigotry and domestic abuse were (and still are in some areas) disturbingly common in the real world. Also, Rip selling out Zofia could even give off some Anne Frank vibes.
Replacement Scrappy: Grace can be seen as this after taking over as the resistance's Big Good following Caroline's death. She is also likely this towards La Résistance in-universe in contrast to their full respect for Caroline, as her attitude is seen as so obnoxious to some members of the resistance that when Sigrun, another in-universe Scrappy, has enough of everyone's disrespect and throttles Grace, no one appears to intervene, probably to teach her a lesson.
Scrappy Mechanic:
- Annoying in that it's actually a vital part of shooter gameplay: player damage feedback. While the previous game wasn't the most consistent or efficient with it either, in The New Colossus there's barely any indication that you've been taking damage beyond the blurring and some darkening of the screen edges. The result is that there could be an enemy behind you plugging you with a shotgun and you may not have a single idea he's doing that until you notice you're taking damage while no one in front is shooting. Considering the Nintendo Hard nature of the game - especially when you only have 50 health at maximum - it's entirely possible and even extremely likely that you'll keel over dead and not have any idea what just killed you because two soldiers chewed through your health and armor out of view in seconds.
- Speaking of which, the fact that your health cap stays at 50 after you get the Power Armor and doesn't get to 100 until you get a new body in Chapter 6 has caused some grumbling from players who wish they got a health boost earlier.
- The inability to revisit the game's levels on a save file in the traditional sense akin to Wolfenstein: The New Order felt like a missed opportunity for some, as it allowed the player to replay the game with all unlocked upgrades intact, and to replay through the story without starting a fresh save file. Stages can be revisited to complete collectibles and complete additional challenges, but these take the form of revamped sandbox versions of those stages that play differently from how they were experienced in the story proper. As a result, all but one stage involves the player fighting enemies in hazmat or space suits because every stage in-story was the target of nuclear annihilation, or takes place on Venus.
Sequel Difficulty Spike: On a baseline, The New Colossus is noticeably harder than The New Order or The Old Blood. You no longer have the health and armor upgrades that significantly improved your durability, and in fact your health will be limited to 50 for the first half of the game. Player damage feedback also seems significantly worse than in the previous games, making it easy for enemies outside your field of view to blast away over half your health/armor before you even notice. This is especially apparent when replaying missions with the Combat Simulator, where you don't have access to weapon upgrades like the assault rifle's armor-piercing sniper mode or the Laserkraftwerk's charged shot which significantly tilt the balance of the game back in your favor. In addition, enemies simply do way more damage here than they did in the previous game.
Shocking Moments: An appearance by Adolf Hitler himself, in the flesh and even more deranged than you could ever have anticipated.
Signature Scene: The casting audition on Venus for Hitler's propaganda movie, which is widely considered to be the most hilariously dark segment in the entire game, if not the series.
Spiritual Adaptation: The nuked New York City level is the closest thing we have to a Fallout game set in that city.
That One Achievement: "Mein leben", which requires you to beat the game on the eponymous difficulty setting, which is a single-life permadeath mode with no checkpoints or saves. In other words, you have to complete the game without dying in one sitting, just like BJ himself. Have fun!
- To make this especially painful, if you haven't noticed the massive number of exposition breaks in the form of cutscenes and, even worse, in-game scenes that happen at the speed of plot, you will by the 2nd or 3rd attempt at this achievement.
That One Level:
- The courthouse battle transforms into this on any difficulty from "Bring 'em on!" and above. You start in the center of the room with your weaponry ready, but the start is rather jarringly abrupt and you're suddenly surrounded by enemies on every side. Considering you're a Glass Cannon in this game, at best, and enemies spawn all around as well as attempting to flank you, holding a position in the room is hell as it is. While there's plenty of cover, it's also likely to get shredded as the fight runs on, giving foes no small amount of opportunities to gun you down the instant you get reckless or caught off-guard. Good luck not dying in the first five seconds on the hardest difficulties. Made all the more annoying by the fact that the whole thing is a fantasy so none of it actually matters but you still have to complete it to proceed.
- The penthouse fight in Manhattan also qualifies, though it's not nearly as long.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
- When the Freedom Chronicles expansion was announced, many assumed it would be a series of side stories focusing on other soldiers fighting the Nazis all over the world, possibly running into BJ and company at some point. In reality, the stories are in-universe propaganda comic books about fictional freedom fighters, effectively rendering it non-canon.
- With the Nazi occupation of the USA, it would be reasonable to think that there would be a handful of Les Collaborateurs that would fight alongside their Nazi masters such as the hooded Klansmen, diversifying the enemy lineup a bit. Ultimately, aside from Rip Blazkowicz, the entirety of the game pits the Kreisau Circle against the German occupiers as per usual. The Klansmen are ultimately just a Palette Swap of the usual German Mook, using German dialogue.
- Some fans were disappointed that after all the buildup throughout the game where BJ assembles a coalition of resistance fighters strong enough to fight against the Nazi occupation, the game suddenly ends right as BJ announces the beginning of the Second American Revolution, and the fight to actually retake America is only alluded to in still shots during the credits, with the next game skipping ahead another twenty years.
- Caroline's Powered Armor disappears halfway through the story when B.J. is captured by Frau and is never mentioned again, even though it could have been used to make the final boss more memorable than a Cutscene Boss.
The Woobie:
- Sigrun Engel, Frau Engel's daughter. Constantly abused by her mother for being obese, is forced to participate in a war she wants no part of, and is told to execute Caroline. And she's only seventeen. No wonder she decided to pull a Heel–Face Turn. Worse, because she's related to Engel, when she does defect she spends most of the rest of the game getting constant shit thrown at her by the Kreisau Circle. It's only after she finally has enough and strangles Grace that anyone backs off and starts treating her with any sort of respect.
- Zofia Blazkowicz, BJ's mother. Trapped in an abusive marriage with Rip, heartbroken when her son ran off to join the army, and finally exposed as a Jew by her own husband and sent to die in a Nazi extermination camp.

YMMV / Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus

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