Call me a sexist, but I feel like we need a middle ground between "get back in the kitchen" and "come to the gunfight with me despite your lack of combat training".<\/div><\/p>\n
BJ obviously isn’t going to assault the Ausmerzer all by himself. That would be crazy, right? <\/p>\n
He takes his pregnant wife.<\/p>\n
This is absurd. Ludicrous. Poppycock. Nonsense. I might even go so far as to say it’s really dumb. <\/p>\n
I’m sure some people will defend this by pointing out that pregnant women have done extraordinary things in the past. Granted. Pregnant women have run marathons, slain feral beasts, fought fires, climbed mountains, and assembled IKEA furniture. I’ll agree that in this universe, such a thing is easily<\/em> within the realm of the possible.<\/p>\nThe problem is, in The New Order Anya was a simple nurse. Once she joined the resistance, Caroline gave her a job doing research and signal intelligence. But here we are just a few months later, and suddenly she’s the most qualified person on the boat to accompany BJ into a gunfight?<\/p>\n
I realize it’s obnoxious to point out something so obvious, but the Nazis are dangerous<\/b>. Engel cut off Caroline’s head. She disfigured WyattOr cut of Fergus’ arm.<\/span> with an axe. She executed Super Spesh during the failed escape attempt. She cut off BJ’s head. And those are just her accomplishments since the game began. If we look a bit further back on her resume we see she was in charge of hunting down non-Aryans and running a concentration camp. <\/p>\nBJ does not fear any foe. He’ll fight monsters, giant robots, platoons of Nazis, and gunships. He’ll brave fire, ice, radiation, blood, hunger, torture, chemical weapons, and loss of limb for the cause. He is a natural-born Nazi killing machine, a grim reaper specifically targeted at all adherents of one particular ideology. He feels pain while being undaunted by it. He loves without it compromising his convictions. Tireless, selfless, unwavering, William Joseph Blazkowicz is an unstoppable agent against the Nazi empire. He is the ur first-person protagonist. <\/p>\n
Except…<\/p>\n
The only thing he fears is seeing something happen to Anya. (And by extension, his unborn children.) This theme is repeated again and again. Her glory is what keeps him going. She was there in his daydreams at the start of New Order, representing the paradise suburban life he’d be living if not for the Nazis. Even when he thought he was dying, his central thoughts were how he could make it less painful for the woman he loved.<\/p>\n
SO WHY WOULD HE BRING HER TO THE LAIR OF HIS NEMESIS WHO KEEPS CHOPPING PEOPLE UP?<\/p>\n
He wouldn’t. Full stop. He just wouldn’t. This doesn’t work.<\/p>\n
<\/div>
Oh, it's time to take credit and NOW you idiots show up? Where were you when Anya had to fight a Nazi death squad all by herself?<\/div><\/p>\n
Sure, you can do a hand-wave and say that Anya is just a badass capable of doing this stuff. But is she really the best person for the job? Isn’t there anyone<\/b> back at base capable of running around and shooting Nazis? Don’t they sort of owe it to him to not make his wife do this, seeing as how he does so much of the heavy lifting for the group?<\/p>\n
And hang on… Didn’t we just spend a big chunk of the game rounding up all these supposedly badass allies? Why are they staying behind while Anya the pregnant nurse goes into battle? If nothing else, this should wound their pride. They would demand BJ take one of them in Anya’s stead. <\/p>\n
Or better yet, make it sound like everyone is assaulting the Ausmerzer together. Maybe have the sniper protecting Horton while he plants explosives to open a door so Grace’s team can shut down a defense system that Sigrun has mapped out for them, and all of this is going on while BJ is doing his thing elsewhere. It would make it feel like this is a resistance movement of talented people and not like a group of do-nothing losers who follow BJ and his pregnant wife around while they kill everything. <\/p>\n
Yes, they show up at the very end and pretend to participate in the conflict. The problem is that this is a couple of minutes before the closing credits. They needed to be more involved so it feels like recruiting them wasn’t a waste of time. From BJs perspective, he saved both of these resistance groups. Then he did all of their work for them. Then they sat around while Anya accompanied BJ into battle. Then they showed up at the very end when it was time to get on TV and take credit for everything. <\/p>\n
Seriously. Screw these idiots.<\/p>\n
Anya’s Big Scene<\/h3>\n
<\/div>
This MOMENT OF EMPOWERMENT would work so much better if the story had ever bothered to make us feel that Anya was lacking in power.<\/div><\/p>\n
After the big fight, BJ reconnects with Anya and we get a cutscene where she saves his life. An elevator opens to reveal a huge group of Nazis. She throws a grenade into the group and tackles BJ out of the way. She catches on fire and has to rip off her top. The grenade goes off and the room is showered in blood. <\/p>\n
The whole thing builds up to a shot of pregnant Anya, bare-breasted, drenched in blood, firing two machine guns into the remaining Nazis while belting out a primal scream.<\/p>\n
Ah. So that’s<\/i> why the writer made us bring her. I get it now. It doesn’t work, but I see what they were trying to do.<\/p>\n
You know, I’m not against this scene in theory. This could have been a cool moment if the writer had given it the proper buildup. Maybe there would be this theme about how desperate war makes us that we would send a pregnant nurse into battle. Maybe they could give Anya a character arc where everyone at base keeps treating her like an invalid and it pisses her off because she’s still fit and able-bodied and she doesn’t want this patronizing bullshit. This would be the moment where she silences the doubters. Or maybe she would be dealing with a bunch of rage after BJ’s nearly-lethal beheading, and this is her cathartic release. But as it stands, this feels like it comes out of nowhere.<\/p>\n
<\/div>
Just to be clear, that's not Anya's blood. That's the blood of her enemies. She's fine.<\/div><\/p>\n
Bringing Anya on this mission didn’t make a lot of sense, but the writer did it anyway because they wanted this moment of “I am woman, hear me roar!” Which would be fine if at any point the writer had implanted the desire to see Anya roar in the hearts of the audience. The writer set up things they never paid off and here they’re trying to pay off an idea they didn’t set up.<\/p>\n
If you’re going to turn your videogame into a movie, you need to do better than this.<\/p>\n
The New Order didn’t attempt anything like this so I can’t say New Order did it better, but New Order didn’t turn your friends and allies into useless do-nothings just to set up novelty scenes that don’t work. <\/p>\n
Final Fight<\/h3>\n
<\/div>
Are these two really supposed to be the final boss? Because we faced a bigger mech like five minutes ago. The only thing that makes these guys the ULTIMATE THREAT is their HP, and we can't see that.<\/div><\/p>\n
While you wouldn’t know it from the pace of the game, we’re actually in the home stretch now. Not only has the story not bothered to build up this assault or raise the stakes, but the gameplay isn’t really giving us a lot in the way of fireworks either. We do get a big fight against a couple of large mechs, but they don’t feel anything like a “final boss”. It’s a hard fight, but not an interesting one. <\/p>\n
The bare-minimum for a fight like this would be to give Engel some brutish henchman. Give him a name and make him seem like a big deal, so when we face off against him we understand we’re having an important fight. We don’t even get a half-assed line of dialog to hastily introduce them. This would be something like, “Once you reach location X, you’re going to have to face off against Engel’s elite Totenkopfhunde!”I just typed “Skull hounds” into Google translate. I have no idea if this works in German, but you get the idea.<\/span>. That would at least create some vague sense of anticipation. Instead we just walk forward until we meet a couple of nameless monsters, and when it’s over you don’t even realize you’ve just beaten the “final boss”.<\/p>\nIn New Order the game established the imposing London Monitor early in the story. Then the game showed it looming on the horizon. Then you had to fight it directly. It followed a nice arc that introduced a threat, raised the stakes, and then resolved the problem. While I wasn’t a fan of the fight against DeathsheadI don’t remember what my problem was with the fight, but I remember being disappointed.<\/span>, that fight was at least built up and resolved. But here New Colossus just drops you into boss encounters without warning or buildup.<\/p>\nWho am I shooting? Is this a famous one-of-a-kind Nazi badass cyber-soldier, or is this just the next tier of mook I’ll be facing going forward? <\/i><\/p>\n
Say it with me now: The New Order did it better.<\/i><\/p>\n
We’ll wrap up this series next week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Note: This post is going to show both gore and nudity. Together. I’m going to share a particular screenshot from the game and I don’t want to undercut the point I’m making by censoring stuff out. Just, you know, be aware of this if you happen to be reading at work. Party! Once BJ gets […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[612],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-retrospectives"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=42210"}],"version-history":[{"count":29,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42210\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42390,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42210\/revisions\/42390"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=42210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=42210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=42210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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