Bethesda wowed audiences during E3 with its reveal of Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus, partially thanks to clips of fake television shows and commercials from a Nazi-occupied United States. These snippets only hinted at the kind of world players would face in Wolfenstein II. Now, Bethesda is posting full versions of these videos on its YouTube channel, and they’re probably the kind of programming that would have aired in America had the Nazis won.
The most recent video is the fictional game show “German or Else!” and feels straight out of the 1960s. The show’s stage is bright and colorful, but the audio and video quality is muted and grainy, as if the show were being watched through an old cathode ray tube television. Everything in the video, from the music to the title sign font, screams classic 60s television, which helps make the trailer feel authentic, or at least as authentic as you can get with an alternate history game show.
The game show starts innocently enough, but it quickly turns dark without losing the cheery attitude. The host asks the two contestants to guess the German translations of abstract nouns in several sentences. Each sentence is clearly meant to hammer in the propaganda that Nazis are superior and everyone should obey them. Furthermore, the losing contestant looks absolutely terrified throughout the video, as if the show hides a terrible secret (spoiler warning: the game show does hide a terrible secret). While the winner gets 1000 Deutsche marks, the loser is forced to go to a re-education camp — something the audience applauds and loves. The show segment ends with the host stating, “Remember, only 173 days left of English. Make sure you’re prepared,” after which credits full of German names scroll by, and the trailer finishes on some Wolfenstein II gameplay.
The ending of the game show illustrates how horrible life is for Americans in Wolfenstein II. English, the most common language in the United States, is being supplanted by German; marks are the national currency instead of dollars, and anyone who can’t keep up with the changes is forced into historically accurate re-education camps. Everything that isn’t an architectural style or a strawberry milkshake (or the KKK) is being replaced with a German/Nazi equivalent. However, the Nazis, quite ironically, spread their propaganda by appropriating American culture and corrupting it so that even the most kid-friendly aspects espouse the sick and twisted ideals of the Nazi regime. Then again, the Nazi Swastika is a corrupted version of an ancient Asian religious symbol, so Nazis making something innocent synonymous with evil is nothing new. Still, the game show, thanks to its little touches and details, is a gut punch to any red-blooded American and makes the world of Wolfenstein feel believable. Those who made the trailer should feel proud they created such a horribly brilliant and realistic fake game show.
The never-ending saga surrounding Microsoft’s proposed $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard has a new participant. Today, Senator Maria Cantwell, a Democrat from the state of Washington, said some things about the subject that were hard to understand.
The senator, whose remarks were reported on by ResetEra, spoke at a Senate finance committee hearing on “the president’s 2023 Trade Policy Plan,” which we are sure was quite interesting.
Senator Cantwell said that she had been told that Sony “controls a monopoly of 98% of the high-end game market” despite the fact that “Japan’s government has allowed Sony to engage in blatant anti-competitive conduct through exclusive deals and payments to game publishers, establishing games that are among the most popular in Japan.”
This 98% statistic is highly deceptive because it ignores PC, Nintendo, and mobile games and instead refers to Sony’s adoption rate over Microsoft in Sony’s native country of Japan, a fact that shouldn’t surprise anyone who is even somewhat familiar with the video game business.
What can we do to rectify these problems and create a level playing field, she said of US Trade Representative Katherine Tai after charging Japan’s Federal Trade Commission with improperly failing to look into this purported “exclusionary conduct”?
It is absurd to claim that Sony has a monopoly on the Japanese video game market, as Luke Plunkett of Kotaku correctly points out, “because Sony doesn’t even have a 98% share of the market for the God of War series, a title they own, as Steam is getting 30% of every sale on PC.”
It goes without saying that we can’t expect elected officials to be experts in every field, but this is a visible step at a time when the ongoing attempt to buy the company is at a very important point.
Is it significant that Microsoft, along with Nintendo, maintains its headquarters in Redmond, Washington—Senator Cantwell’s district—or that Microsoft has given Cantwell more than $500,000 over the past two decades? Let us leave that up to you.
Pizza Possum is an arcade action game in which you, a possum, attempt to consume as much trash as you can without being discovered. It is a web-based sequel to the anarchy simulator Untitled Goose Game.It will eventually be available on the PS5.
We couldn’t help but notice that the possum in the title doesn’t look like the cute Australian possum that comes out at night to visit people.On the other hand, it looks like the horrible North American opossums are the ones that will attack trash cans and cause general chaos.Even though we think the second choice was better in terms of theme, we prefer the first one and are happy to explain why.
Your thoughts on Pizza Possum? Does it possess the necessary mass appeal to successfully skitter along the back fenceline while setting the dog off in the process?
Resident Evil 4 is now out, and the excellent remake can be bought right away.Even though you probably plan to play it all this weekend, you can take comfort in the fact that The Mercenaries, Resident Evil’s almost-required challenge mode, will be available as free DLC on April 7.
The mode’s exact details are still unknown, but if it’s anything like previous versions, you can expect some pretty hard tasks to test your skills.
You’re stumped about something? If you are still debating whether to purchase Resident Evil 4 Remake, be sure to look at our exhaustive guide for the answer or our in-depth review. Are you spending this weekend playing Resident Evil 4? Are you anticipating The Mercenaries?
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