Friday saw the release of the one the most anticipated games of the year, "Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus." In the months preceding the release, there was no shortage of promotional materials that gave glimpses of how violent the game would get. However, once the game was released, players were met with a shocking new level of visual and thematic violence during the game's first 10 minutes.
The opening of the game showed a flashback of the protagonist B.J. Blazkowicz's personal hell as vividly as the current Nazi hell that he was in. It visualized racism, homophobia, bigotry, domestic abuse, and even animal abuse in a vicious sequence of events that could make even the most collected players uncomfortable.
It showed the domestic violence that he and his mother suffered at the hands of his violent and bigoted father, who is also shown in the sequence having cruel racist and anti-Semitic tirades.
In one scene, his father ties up young Blazkowicz, puts a shotgun in his hand, and orders him to shoot the family's dog. Even if the player intentionally misses, the dog will still end up dead as Blazkowicz' father will do it himself.
The scenes from his past repeat themselves as the game's adult Blazkowicz is captured by the Nazi and is forced to watch as the homophobic Nazi officer Frau Engel berated her own daughter for her weight and asked her to decapitate Blazkowicz's ally, Becker, with an axe. When she fails to do it, Engel, just like Blazkowicz's father, does the deed herself.
It is easy to see that the game is trying to send a message about these topics, which are still very relevant today. While the rest of the game is excellent and shows a great handle on the theme's inherent brutality, some players may be turned off by the over-the-top volume of violence that the game depicts in its opening parts.
