Wolfenstein: The New Colossus

Description

This level occurs in a secret area of the submarine called Section F. The player has to track down and destroy a radio signal that some hidden Nazis broadcast after the resistance captures the submarine. On a later revisit of this level, the player has to navigate an altered version of Section F to find and retrieve a nuclear warhead. I was responsible for the entire gameplay scripting, event scripting, and gameplay puzzle setup for all parts of this mission.

Section F is the first level where the player faces different gameplay elements based on the priorly chosen timeline (by rescuing Wyatt/Fergus in ‘Wolfenstein: The New Order’ or during a quick recap at the beginning of this game). Depending on the choice taken, the player receives a unique signature weapon called Laserkraftwerk (LKW) or Dieselkraftwerk (DKW), respectively. Whereas the LKW can cut through different metal surfaces via a powerful laser, the DKW can launch a sticky and explosive projectile onto other surfaces which the player can detonate at will. Utiliziting those weapons is not only helpful in combat, but also for solving interesting gameplay puzzles. For destroying the radio signal, for example, the player can choose to cut open the door into the radio room via the LKW and destroy the radios with a grenade, or it could find a hidden opening on the ceiling of the room and lunch in a few DKW charges to detonate and destroy anything with it.

To better reflect this in the design and the gameplay for not only this but also all following levels, we had to design a system that lets us swap out certain gameplay prefabs dynamically while making sure there is always at least one other solution to a given puzzle, as those weapons have limited ammo and a recharge station may not always be nearby. Being prepared for all eventualities was one of the more considerable challenges with this level and required some clever use of layers and visual scripting nodes to swap out certain elements. A clean and organized way of working was crucial and reduced stress and frustration later in the debugging phase.

Description

This mission is happening in Roswell, where the player has to infiltrate Area 52 and plant the nuclear warhead retrieved earlier in the campaign. To get deeper into the facility, the player must jump aboard a high-speed rocket train at the underground train station, fight to the front and eventually hijack the train before it reaches its destination. I was not the gameplay owner of this level. Still, as I earned my trust as a reliable problem solver within the team, I had the opportunity to take over the train hijacking sequence in particular, as it required some careful and complex scripting. From a technical perspective, this has been the most challenging task for me in the whole project, but it was great fun and a tremendous learning experience.

The complexity of this event stems from the multiple approaches the player can choose to enter the next part of the level. Stealthy players can slow the train down so that it peacefully enters the next station, not causing further disturbance to the patrolling guards. The player can exit the train quietly, move on stealthily, and take out the enemies one after the other. More action-oriented players can choose to speed the train up and crash it into the station. Doing so will cause the alarm to go off and lets the players hop off the train guns blazing.

The setup of the train section before entering the cockpit consisted of a stationary train level with the tunnel environment looping around dynamically. We had to be clever about the critical moment where the player gets teleported into a physically moving train inside a static environment, all while considering the branching choice beforehand. Getting this right required a lot of back and forth with one of the physics programmers and took us many weeks to solve to our satisfaction. We used a first-person event, which stuck the player to the train’s control lever and initiated the teleport at just the right moment, so we could mask out and hide things from the player efficiently. Afterward, the corresponding script logic gets executed depending on the choice (with all our learnings from the penthouse helicopter), and the event ends.

Description

After visiting his old home in Texas, BJ finds himself captured by the Nazis and has to answer for his crimes. The level consists of the press area, the holding cell, and the courthouse. The player wakes up at the press conference of BJ’s capture and gets transferred into the holding cell. Super Spesh joins BJ in disguise as his lawyer and tells the player about the resistance plan to free him. As this plan fails, the player ends up at the courthouse, facing its final sentence, where an eventful conclusion to BJ’s life unfolds. I was responsible for all the gameplay and event scripting of this level.

This level is quite heavy on first-person events and requires a lot of sequencing and scripting in collaboration with the animation department. Since we had a functional pipeline established at this stage, there was nothing that caused too many headaches. It was enjoyable for me to work on, as I greatly relish setting up events and in-game cutscenes.

One notable challenge for this level was the destructible environment, not from the perspective of setting up the destructible objects but instead getting the level back into a clean state after the courthouse combat. It turns out that breaking free from the shackles and eliminating a courthouse full of Nazis was all just a dream for BJ, and the player ends up right back where the judge is about to give his final sentence. We did not want to load into this (or another) level again and then branch the scripting accordingly, so we had to design a system that takes care of all the destructibles, pickups, blood decals, etc., afterward. That and the scripting to reset the events into a neutral state took more effort than anticipated but worked out great.

Description

In this level, the player has to return to Manhattan, infiltrate a Nazi Bunker and retrieve the New Orleans Dossier. I was in charge of gameplay scripting and event scripting on this level.

Manhattan Bunker is the first level where the player has access to one out of three new core mechanics; the ‘Battle Walker’; an extension of BJ’s legs to help the player reach the higher ground, the ‘Ram Shackles’; a modification of BJ’s armor, that gives the players highly increased strength to crash through previously indestructible objects and the ‘Constrictor Harness’; an aid to led BJ’s body contract, giving the player the ability to crawl through tiny spaces such as pipes and ventilation shafts.

The level design had to reflect this, and from now on, always provide at least three options to progress traversal puzzles. Those could sometimes be close to each other, giving the player a different opportunity to enter a room and sometimes be apart quite substantially, so different players get to see different parts of a level. In the Manhattan Bunker, however, we tried to stay conservative as we wanted the players to ease into this new way of playing the game, which happens quite late in the game overall.

Other than that, it was a straightforward level to work on, with only a few more outstanding events or gameplay elements. One example would be a scripted section where one of the commanders was launching grenades at the player before hiding inside a bunker, but if the player is fast and observant enough could interrupt it and let the event conclude differently.

Description

This level occurs in New Orleans, where the player has to fight through the Nazi-occupied city and find another resistance leader named Horton. I got full gameplay ownership of the level and was in charge of the entire gameplay scripting, event scripting, and gameplay puzzle setup. I also contributed some layout sections in later parts of the level, namely the sewer sections after the Panzerhund ride and the intro section of the third part.

New Orleans was the first level I worked on when joining MachineGames, and I was pleasantly surprised when I got full ownership of a level right from the get-go. The project just came out of pre-production, and we still needed to establish our workflows. It was also the first level to receive a fully playable gameplay pass, as we used it for internal demos and presentations. I’ve been with this level from the beginning of my time at MachineGames up until shipping the game, and it has been a big honor to work on it.

Besides various events and techniques covered by the other levels above, notable challenges are the transitions from cinematic enemies to AI. There are a couple of scripted sequences where enemies go on about their pre-scripted event and seamlessly transition into patrolling or combat gameplay. Usually, we would use cheaper entity types created particularly for such events, but from a narrative standpoint, we had to stay with AI. One example would be the Panzerhund and some soldiers purging the streets below as the player exits the wall section at a high vantage point. It would have been possible to let the Panzerhund disappear somewhere the player can’t see and swap it out with an AI, but our ambition was always to make those events feel as natural as possible. Therefore, we wanted the event to be interruptible at any point, which required the Hund and the soldiers to be real AI. At the same time, we needed to make sure that none of the reactions of dying civilians played out anymore once the player decided to interrupt.

Thinking of Panzerhunds, another challenge was the section with a fully controllable one the player could ride. It posed some significant challenges to the level design. Things had to be positioned further apart than usual without seeming too gamey like we crafted it for this ride in particular. Doing so required a lot of playtesting and iteration until it felt right. Another problem to solve was the Zeppelin attack during said section, which transports a group of enemies onto the street and can either be shot down and crashed or left alone and escape. The enemies attached to the Zeppelin and the animations of the Zeppelin itself had to react accordingly, which required some complex scripting with a couple of different branches. This way of developing was only possible later in the project when we improved the pipeline enough to attempt such events.

Description

The TV studio is the game’s epilogue, where the player has to infiltrate and interrupt a TV show recording to assassinate Frau Engel. I was in charge of the gameplay and event scripting of this level.

Like the courthouse level, the TV studio was very heavy with event scripting. It’s a reasonably small level with only a hallway and two rooms. Other than some complexities regarding the AI behavior of the TV crew behind the cameras and some minor gameplay scripting, such as the elevators, this level posed no noteworthy challenges in development. As the player was in charge of the pacing, it took a bit of work to get the timing right when BJ rides down the elevator and decides to interrupt the TV show recording in progress. Still, we eventually solved it with some intelligent blending options of the animations and camera tricks on the elevator. It can still contain a couple of minor glitches here and there, and it would be interesting to have another look years later with a different pair of eyes.