Wolfenstein

The Wolfenstein story starts back in 1981 with Castle Wolfenstein, a top-down sneaking game about escaping a Nazi stronghold using disguises and patrolled corridors. The real turning point came in 1992 with Wolfenstein 3D from id Software. Fast movement through a maze, weapons held in the first person, hidden doors and simple but instantly readable combat made it a game that largely defined the first-person shooter and cleared the way for Doom. The conversions to SNES, Jaguar and 3DO are a neat illustration of how far apart the platforms of the era stood, and the Japanese release also saw significant changes to its content.

The brand returned with Return to Castle Wolfenstein in 2001, which added an occult plot, stealth stretches and a polished multiplayer component. After another restart in 2009 the series passed to MachineGames, and Wolfenstein: The New Order in 2014 gave it a new purpose: an alternate history in which the Nazis won the war, and a surprisingly serious, well-written cast around B.J. Blazkowicz. The Old Blood served as a shorter companion piece, and The New Colossus in 2017 moved the story into an occupied United States. The New Order and The New Colossus are now widely treated as the peak of modern Wolfenstein, because they married old-school shooting weight to storytelling nobody expected from this name.