Wolfenstein: The New Order is out now; here’s our Wolfenstein: The New Order review.
Bethesda have revealed that their upcoming Wolfenstein game The New Order will be slipping from its penciled in launch window of Q4 2013 back to next year.
Talking to Polygon, Bethesda’s VP of PR and Marketing Pete Hines explained that the delay comes down to several factors, with the challenge of developing a current and next generation game simultaneously and the combination of genre elements the game uses being the main reasons behind the decision.
“Working on next-gen and current gen definitely has an impact, you’re developing for two different things,” explained Hines. “The fact that the next-gen stuff is still moving is also definitely a factor. But the most important thing was definitely just looking where it was at, what they needed to polish. Because it’s just not trying to be a shooter, because it’s trying to be a shooter that also has driving elements, story elements, narrative, stealth sections — each one of those has to be excellent. It’s not just like we’re making a shooter, where if the shooting is good, then all 16 hours of the game will be good because it’s all we’re doing.
“We didn’t just want to do a one-note Wolfenstein game. We wanted to make something that brought in all these elements, and as it turns out, the polish time you spend on the shooting stuff has no impact on what it feels like in the stealth part.”
Developer MachineGames have been working on The New Order for an extended period, and are ensuring that it provides a more diverse experience than the game’s pure-shooter predecessors. Hines feels that having already spent so much time getting those elements in place, it would be a waste to rush the game out the door to meet a release date, but only be able to ship a less-polished version of the game’s true potential.
“MachineGames has been working on this game for a while,” Hines said. “You don’t want to waste all that time and effort for the sake of a couple of months, if a couple of months could make all of the difference in the world.”
“This needs to be the best Wolfenstein game ever made, and you can’t shortcut that. It can’t have the same historical impact of Wolfenstein 3D, but it can be a better game.”
Our Tim got to play The New Order a couple of months ago and thought it was a cracking good blast, so we’re pleased to hear that Bethesda are spending the time the game deserves rather than rushing MachineGames. You just can’t rush an experience that lets you draw a phallus with a laser beam.