Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus is all about punching Nazis out of America

The Wolfenstein video game story is quite disturbing. It’s built on a fictional alternative history, where the Nazis won World War II. By 1961, they have crushed all opposition and corrupted American culture with “Nazification.” In 2014’s Wolfenstein: The New Order, the American hero BJ Blazkowicz awakens from a coma and helps lead the opposition to the Nazis by gunning them down at every turn. The first-person shooter was one of the finest of the year.

Now the developer, Uppsala, Sweden-based Machine Games, is back with a sequel, Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus, which actually takes place in a pacified America. At the close of 2014’s The New Order, Blazkowicz is victorious, but he is also gravely wounded. The sequel begins some months later, as Blazkowicz is still recovering from his wounds. He awakes in a hospital ward in a warship, and finds that he has to escape from Frau Irene Engel, a former SS commander and now a lieutenant general. She has been scouring the region for him, and one of Blazkowicz’s protectors warns him, “Today, she found you.” But thanks to the friends, Blazcowicz hasn’t been captured just yet, and he attempts to escape the ship crawling with SS soldiers.