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Concept
Wolfenstein
Summary
Wolfenstein is a series of World War II video games originally developed by Muse Software. The majority of the games follow William "B.J." Blazkowicz, an American Army captain, and his fight against the Axis powers. Earlier titles are centered around Nazis attempting to harness supernatural and occult forces, while later games are set in an alternate history in which Axis powers won World War II.
The first two games in the series, Castle Wolfenstein and Beyond Castle Wolfenstein, focused on stealth-based gameplay from a top-down perspective. Beginning with id Software's Wolfenstein 3D, they shifted to, and helped popularize, the first-person shooter genre. After ZeniMax Media acquired id Software, including the Wolfenstein franchise, developer MachineGames became the series' primary developer.
Castle Wolfenstein was developed by programmer Silas Warner, along with Dale Gray and George Varndell, and published in 1981 by his company M.U.S.E. Inc. (later known as Muse Software). Warner is cited as a pioneer in the early eras of video gaming, especially in the stealth genre.
Castle Wolfenstein was initially conceptualized by Warner after he saw the 1961 British-American war film The Guns of Navarone, which follows the efforts of an Allied commando unit as they attempt to destroy a seemingly impregnable German fortress. That same day, Warner played the multi-directional shooter arcade game, Berzerk, in which the player navigates through a maze with laser-shooting robots. After playing the game, Warner thought about taking the design of Berzerk and replacing the robots with Nazis. He eventually settled on the idea of a game based on the arcade shoot 'em up genre, where players dodge enemies with the intent of killing them, but instead changing the objective to escape the enemy guards and their castle, not necessarily to kill and destroy them; this made shooting guards a means to an end and not an end in itself.
Castle Wolfenstein is often credited as one of the first video games in the stealth genre, as it focuses more on avoiding or disarming enemies, and killing them is considered a last resort.
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