Nazis aren’t Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus’s worst villains

In video games, you kill Nazis. That’s what we do. Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus (read my review) doesn’t try to disrupt or examine this. The latest shooter from developer Machine Games treats Nazis like zombies, aliens, or robots — or the same way games have always treated Nazis. But Machine Games uses our history with Nazis in games to take a political stance that is modern and relative to today.

Wolfenstein II brings Nazis to America in an alternate-history sci-fi world. These villains are as cartoony and over-the-top in their evil as Mecha-Hitler, the half-human/half-robot boss, from the original Wolfenstein 3D. That’s a formula that has worked for the series, and Machine Games doesn’t screw with it. Instead, the studio makes its point by asking how certain kinds of Americans would respond if Nazis were in control. Everyone always says how they would’ve fought Hitler and his kind if they had been in Germany in the 1930s and ’40s, but The New Colossus has its doubts about certain people.