With its Nazis-winning-WWII premise, 2014`s Wolfenstein: The New Order manages to be both pulpy and serious. Yes, it has robot Nazi dogs, but it also has a concentration camp scene that`s presented with tact, and that balance keeps the fantastical grounded in a brutal reality. The upcoming sequel, Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus, walks that same line, and it goes one step further: it brings you out of Europe and to alt-1960s America amidst threats that persist in real-life in the present day.We recently played a few hours of The New Colossus, broken up into two levels. The first is the opening wheelchair mission, which we played at E3, and the second starts out in Roswell, New Mexico during a 4th of July Nazi parade. Blazkowicz arrives in Roswell dressed as a fireman and carrying a nuke in his fire extinguisher, and the first thing you see, just ahead of you on the sidewalk, is a pair of Klansmen in white robes and hoods.It`s an uncomfortable feeling, walking toward KKK members in broad daylight in a game and knowing that there`s nothing you can do. But this feeling is also compounded by the knowledge that there are KKK rallies happening in real-life America in the year 2017, an America where the Nazis didn`t win the war. It`s simple fun to blast Nazis to hell in Wolfenstein, but seeing the KKK stroll past a Nazi officer who says he likes their `style` is not so much fun as it is deeply unsettling.All around Roswell, there is evidence that the language employed by the fictional Reich (and everyone subjugated by it) is not far from sentiments you can still hear today. A newspaper review for a `dystopian` novel about a world where the Allies won, for instance, discusses the moral depravity of different groups, including LGBT people. A newspaper clipping later in the mission features a letter to the editor thanking the Germans for saving America from social ills. A cheekily color-swapped version of the Abbey Road cover in a music shop window reminds you that you a ...
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