14 DAY TRIAL // MachineGames, the developer of Wolfenstein: The New Order, emphasizes that it set out to make more of a story-based action adventure game than a mindless first-person shooter, and that the idea to not include multiplayer was easily accepted by publisher Bethesda.
The Wolfenstein series has been around for decades and many first-person shooter fans still fondly remember the great Wolfenstein 3D that tasked players with shooting dozens of Nazis.
As such, when it was revealed that Wolfenstein: The New Order would reimagine the series, many shooter fans went in expecting the same more or less mindless shooting experience.
However, they were pleasantly surprised to see a great story and quite a lot of adventure elements, particularly relating to the Resistance safe house in which protagonist BJ Blazkowicz spent quite a bit of time between missions.
While talking with GiantBomb, MachineGames' Jens Matthies mentioned that his team wanted to make an evolved shooter.
"Whenever we were doing interviews, we would say 'This is more of an action adventure, as opposed to a straight-up shooter.' But I don’t think people really understood it until they actually played the game, and they saw what we meant by that," he said.
"For us, I wouldn’t say that the reaction to that was unexpected. That’s the game we wanted to do. I will say, though, that the game is pretty adventurous in terms of its themes and in terms of the things you get to do in the game and the places you go to."
What's more, the fact that the game is a first-person shooter without a multiplayer mode has certainly surprised some players, and Matthies mentioned that pitching the original project without an online mode to publisher Bethesda wasn't that hard.
"Most publishers have a certain set of components that they feel like 'this is what a game has to include.' But that’s what makes Bethesda unique. All they want is a quality product. If the game is good, they can sell the game, and that’s all they really care about."
"When we told them that the best game we could make is a single-player only game because we can keep the whole team focused on the core experience, they were perfectly fine with that. That was one of those moments where we felt like we really ended up with the right people."
Wolfenstein: The New Order came out last month for PC, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, and Xbox One.