Wolfenstein 3D - Rounding The Corner | Trav Guy

[Music] Wolfenstein 3D was far off from being the first FPS, even from our friends over at id Software, but it was the first to set the bar for what we would define as a first-person shooter in this new generation. id Software's previous endeavor, Hovertank 3D, and later Catacombs 3D were the first to incorporate raycasting technology, a sophisticated method of scaling and skewing 2D images to give the impression of traversing a simple three-dimensional space. This was leagues more complex than how first-person perspective games were achieved in the previous 10 plus years, often using wireframes and vector graphics. At the time though, raycasting, even with artificial contrast to give the illusion of depth, was only capable of casting blank, flat-colored walls, at least until Blue Sky Productions, a group that would later become Looking Glass Studios, was able to incorporate 2D images as textures in their raycasting engine for their proto-immersive sim Ultima Underworld. Steigen Abyss. Stigeon. Stagin. A bit, how do I say that? John Carmack, in his supernatural ability to understand how technology works even at a glance, saw this engine from Blue Sky and thought, "Hey, I could do that," and then, to no surprise, he actually did it, and at less cost to processing power. Catacombs 3D was the first game by id Software to use this updated raycasting engine, an early dark fantasy FPS that was one of the first FPS games to implement key gameplay mechanics that we would later come to commonly associate with FPSs as we know them today: a player mugshot in the corner, blue health vials, colored keys a player held, weapon or hand in this case in the center of the screen, tick-based pseudo-RNG that Doom would later go on to refine, and as a bonus, a funny skeleton man in a robe acting as the main antagonist who in later games would show up as a weaker recurring version of itself as a common enemy. Even the demon enemy from Hovertank 3D, which was reused in Catacombs, was clearly a precursor to the pinky demons in Doom, even if the sprite sheet for it would inspire the Baron. Tom Hall, though, who had his heart set on making a third trilogy of episodes for Commander Keen, gave up on that goal when he saw that Carmack was focusing all of his time and effort into this new raycasting engine, to which at that point he suggested using it for a sci-fi game that he dubbed "It's Green and Pissed," before some time later John Romero suggested that they try remaking the 1981 PC dungeon crawler Castle Wolfenstein, which was a game focused around a POW escaping a fictional Nazi castle, stealing their war plans, and delivering it to the Allied forces, even down to its mechanics of using stealth and putting on enemy uniforms to sneak around the guards. This was obviously dropped in favor of a faster game meant to encapsulate that feeling of storming a Nazi bunker and mowing down SS, being its own reward, hence the screen that would show at the end of the levels how many Nazis you killed, encouraging the player to partake in America's favorite pastime of mowing down Nazis, or at least, you know, what kids from my generation were told was America's greatest pastime. Wolfenstein 3D started production before they even knew that they could use the IP for the game. They contacted the IP holder Silas Warner, only to find out that the studio went bankrupt back in '86 and were able to grab the IP for a mere 5 grand. That was back in April 1992, and if we adjust for inflation today, that's still around 10 grand, but I mean, for copyright, that's still pretty cheap. Though they still came up with other names for the game just in case, which is a relief because some of these names would really have not caught on as well, in my personal opinion, though Castle Hollowhammer would at least be reused in the game's setting for the second episode. John Romero and Tom Hall, the former who designed a bulk of the levels for Wolf 3D, took direct inspiration from Pac-Man mazes for the maps, an inspiration that would later lead to a Pac-Man-based secret level later on. Though Romero, being the man focused on presentation and substance that he was, obsessed over the design and appearance of the game above all else, urging Carmack to implement objects to the world that would act as garnishes, some not solid, others impassable, some purely cosmetics such as lights hanging from the ceiling, statues, and pillars, everything that you would come to expect from an interpretation of a Nazi castle. Carmack even wanted to take it a step further and have animated wall textures, something that wouldn't be realized until Doom. Unfortunately, he couldn't make it work here. The game originally was going to go even harder with its anti-fascist messages to educate the player on the human rights atrocities that the Nazis committed back in World War II, but removed them to avoid any more controversy than they were already anticipating, to which I say, the cowards. At least Machine Games had the balls to do it. Even then though, the publisher at the time was still concerned about violence and shocking content of the game, which only led to Adrian Carmack adding even more shocking imagery to the game like skeletons, bloody wall textures, idle corpses, and a MIDI rendition of the Nazi anthem, which I think is taking it a little bit too far, and I really considered not even playing it into this video to give any Nazi apologists a feeling of gratification. But if the Nazis were able to appropriate the swastika into a symbol for hate, then I and id Software can appropriate their anthem into a theme for slaughtering them. The premise of the game was adjusted from an American soldier fighting his way out of Castle Wolfenstein, recovering Nazi plans to deliver to the Allies, and finally killing Hitler himself. And in May of 1992, the shareware episode of the game was released onto Apogee's website, with the first three episodes of the game releasing sometime later for 30 dollars a pop. Again, after inflation, that's about 60 today. Later, a 20-dollar expansion called the Nocturnal Expansion was released and a 10-dollar official hint book, which offered a ton of insight into the development of the game, which I'll be citing throughout the rest of the video, came to a total of 60 dollars for the whole package back in '92, or 120 today. And then come on, do you really need to tell me how big of a hit this game was? Yeah, I don't think Wolfenstein itself was as influential to the industry as Doom or Quake was in terms of substance, but it was a huge step forward for that engine's arms race that led to the crazy innovation we would see later on, and goddamn was it a pretty big step. No shit. The game sold well, especially after their previous smash hit with Commander Keen, with an engine that would later be used in commercial releases for the next couple years, peaking with Super 3D Noah's Ark and also Prize of the Triad. If you buy the game today off Steam and boot it up, you might be wondering why I said the final product shipped with three episodes when the game clearly has six. That second batch of three episodes was that Nocturnal Missions expansion pack that it originally sold separately. A lot like episode 4 in classic Doom, for example, episodes four through six are commonly regarded as being not good, and I agree. We'll get there after we recap the first three episodes, but all you need to know for now is that the quality control seemed to be lacking. I remember reading somewhere that each map in this Nocturnal Expansion was only given a single day of dev time, but that might have been a miscommunication. Scott Miller learned that the average time it took to develop a map for the Wolf 3D engine averaged about a day, which is what led to him inspiring the team to make another expansion. I think maybe something just got missed there, like a game of telephone. All right, so I want you to hold on to everything I just told you about the engine and how important it was and just take it as consideration because I'm going to be using the EC Wolf source port for this pl

generation it's software's previous endeavor hover tank 3d and later catacombs 3d were the first to incorporate raycasting technology and at the time sophisticated method of scaling and skewing 2d images to give the impression of traversing a simple three-dimensional space this was leagues

more complex than how first-person perspective games were achieved in the previous 10 plus years often using wireframes and vector graphics at the time though raycasting even with artificial contrast to give the illusion of depth was only capable of casting

blank flat colored walls at least until bluesky productions a group that would later become looking glass studios was able to incorporate 2d images as textures in their raycasting engine for their proto-immersive sim ultima underworld steigen abyss stigeon stagin

a bit how do i say that john carmack in his supernatural ability to understand how technology works even at a glance saw this engine from blue sky and thought hey i could do that and then to no surprise he actually did it and at

less cost to processing power catacombs 3d was the first game by id software to use this updated raycasting engine an early dark fantasy fps that was one of the first fps games to implement key gameplay mechanics that we would later

come to commonly associate with fps's as we know them today a player mugshot in the corner blue health vials colored keys a player held weapon or hand in this case in the center of the screen tick-based pseudo-rng that doom would

later go on to refine and as a bonus a funny skeleton man in a robe acting as the main antagonist who in later games would show up as a weaker recurring version of itself as a common enemy even

the demon enemy from hovertank 3d which was reused in catacombs was clearly a precursor to the pinky demons in doom even if the sprite sheet for it would inspire the baron tom hall though who had his heart set on making a third

trilogy of episodes for commander keane gave up on that goal when he saw that carmack was focusing all of his time and effort into this new raycasting engine to which at that point he suggested using it for a sci-fi game that he

dubbed it's green and pissed before some time later john romero suggesting that they try remaking the 1981 pc dungeon crawler castle wolfenstein which was a game focused around a pow escaping a fictional nazi castle stealing their war plans and delivering it to the allied

forces even down to its mechanics of using stealth and putting on enemy uniforms to sneak around the guards this was obviously dropped in favor of a faster game meant to encapsulate that feeling of storming a nazi bunker and

mowing down ss being its own reward hence the screen that would show at the end of the levels how many nazis you killed encouraging the player to partake in america's favorite pastime of mowing down nazis or at least you know what

kids from my generation were told was america's greatest pastime wolfenstein 3d started production before they even knew that they could use the ip for the game they contacted the ip holder silas warner only to find out that the studio

went bankrupt back in 86 and were able to grab the ip for a mere 5 grand that was back in april 1992 and if we adjust for inflation today that's still around 10 grand but i mean for copyright that's

still pretty cheap though they still came up with other names for the game just in case which is a relief because some of these names would really have not caught on as well in my personal opinion though castle hollowhammer would

at least be reused in the game's setting for the second episode john romero and tom hull the former who designed a bulk of the levels for wolf 3d took direct inspiration from pac-man mazes for the maps an inspiration that would later

lead to a pac-man based secret level later on though romero being the man focused on presentation and substance that he was obsessed over the design and appearance of the game above all else urging carmack to implement objects to

the world that would act as garnishes some not solid others impassable some purely cosmetics such as lights hanging from the ceiling statues and pillars everything that you would come to expect from an interpretation of a nazi castle carmack even wanted to take it a step

further and have animated wall textures something that wouldn't be realized until doom unfortunately couldn't make it work here the game originally was going to go even harder with its anti-fascist messages to educate the player on the human rights atrocities

that the nazis committed back in world war ii but removed them to avoid any more controversy than they were already anticipating to which i say the cowards at least machine games had the balls to do it even then though the publisher at

the time was still concerned about violence and shocking content of the game which only led to adrian carmack adding even more shocking imagery to the game like skeletons bloody wall textures idle corpses and a midi rendition of the

nazi anthem which i think is taking it a little bit too far and i really considered not even playing it into this video to give any nazi apologists a feeling of gratification but if the nazis were able to appropriate the

swastika into a symbol for hate then i and id software can appropriate their anthem into a theme for slaughtering them the premise of the game was adjusted from an american soldier fighting his way out of castle wolfenstein recovering

nazi plans to deliver to the allies and finally killing hitler himself and in may of 1992 the shareware episode of the game was released onto apogee's website with the first three episodes of the game releasing sometime later for 30

dollars a pop again after inflation that's about 60 today later a 20 expansion called the nocturnal expansion was released and a 10 official hint book which offered a ton of insight into the development of the game which i'll be

citing throughout the rest of the video came to a total of 60 dollars for the whole package back in 92 or 120 today and then come on do you really need to tell me how big of a hit this game was

yeah i don't think wolfenstein itself was as influential to the industry as doom or quake was in terms of substance but it was a huge step forward for that engine's arm race that led to the crazy innovation we would see later on and god

damn was it a pretty big step no shit the game sold well especially after their previous smash hit with commander keen with an engine that would later be used in commercial releases for the next couple years peaking with uh super 3d

noah's ark and also prize of the triad if you buy the game today off steam and boot it up you might be wondering why i said the final product shipped with three episodes when the game clearly has six that second batch of three episodes

was that nocturnal missions expansion pack that it originally sold separately with a lot like episode 4 and classic doom for example episodes four through six are commonly regarded as being not good and i agree we'll get there after

we recap the first three episodes but all you need to know for now is that the quality control seemed to be lacking i remember reading somewhere that each map in this nocturnal expansions was only given a single day of dev time but that

might have been a miscommunication scott miller learned that the average time it took to develop a map for the wolf 3d engine averaged about a day which is what led to him inspiring the team to make another expansion i think maybe

something just got missed there like a game of telephone all right so i want you to hold on to everything i just told you about the engine and how important it was and just take it as consideration because i'm going to be using the ec

wolfe source port for this playthrough trying to play the original release of wolfenstein 3d on dosbox as it comes on steam just didn't do it for me and i'm going to blame the lack of dedicated strafing keys i talked about the strafing toggle

key back in my quick scourge of armagon video but this was a game that took full advantage of it remember when fps's were controlled exclusively by keyboard not with dedicated turning and strafing keys but with an alt key toggling the arrow

keys between turning and strafing hey i totally respect people who played the game like this back in the day and even today it's not for me though i want dedicated strafing keys to play it like a modern shooter and given that like

every console port for the game added these dedicated strafing keys back then yeah i don't think that it's that big of a deal so you play as william joseph blaskowitz shortened to b for billy which is also short for william j blaskowitz yes a man

abbreviated to bj is going to single-handedly take down the third reich and i can't think of anything more cathartic if i tried canonically before the events of episode 1 he had already made a pretty big hit against the nazis

chemical warfare but this first trilogy of episodes is how bj became a symbol for freedom and justice where it's presumed that he became homeless shortly thereafter but that that's not canon i hope gameplay is about what we expect

four weapons one being used for a knife as a last resort though unlike doom and later id games all three weapons chew through the same pool of ammo merely increasing their fire rate believe it or not they actually don't have separate

attributes for how they determine accuracy despite it really feeling like they do colored keys open colored doors though this time they're gold and silver and the color of the door doesn't matter because they mix up the sprite used for

it all the time walk over food and items to pick them up to heal yourself or grant ammo and every forty thousand points grants bj an extra life yes this game has a live system and it's not like one ups that were later used in

doom eternal that were more like extra health bars but traditional 1-ups if you die you're back to the beginning of the level with just a pistol and an extra life is consumed if you run out you're back to the beginning of the episode

which only happened to me once in the first level of episode 2 you'll see why i'm gonna be running this game on i am death incarnate the equivalent of classic doom's ultra-violence difficulty and to take it a step further i played as much of this

as i could without quicksaves which i quickly developed an exception for when i got to the second episode and then just completely threw this rule to the side about midway through episode 4. but with that said let's jump into it

[Music] episode one is shareware please do not distribute episodes two through six it's easy to do but the next game will cost more money yeah that sure sounds backwards hey there kid with no money who literally cannot afford to play our

game remember to pay full price for it or else the next game will be even more unaffordable episode 1 begins with bj and a cell armed with a pistol with eight rounds and the corpse he looted it off of and that's all you really need go

kill nazis in this bizarrely blue nazi dungeon guards are gonna be your first obstacle a flat 25 hp and drops four rounds of ammo on death netting you a profit if you're able to kill one with three shots

or fewer you'll learn pretty on that the meta for taking out large groups of enemies is to alert all the guards in the room lead them to a bottleneck of some kind most often a door and blasting them the second they show their face

enemies can open doors so you don't need to keep them open at all times though that doesn't exactly stop me you might think this is an exploit and not the intended way to play but it's told to us

directly in the hint book just don't forget the machine gun behind this push wall yeah get used to these kind of secrets because there's going to be a lot of these in the run i went into this hoping

that i could go for 100 secrets but there are some maps where that's literally impossible carmack originally declined the idea of a secret push wall when tom hall proposed it early on only to add it into the game and not even

tell tom about it nice dude that's a galaxy brain play for sure in this first push wall we grab the machine gun my personal weapon of choice for most of the game it shows through ammo at a moderate pace it sounds okay a

little peashootery but that's really all i could ask for there's really no reason to go back to the pistol i do because i didn't understand how hitscan was calculated before recording this which i'll explain in just a little bit i'll tell you

there's nothing more satisfying than firing into a room and hearing a ton of nazis waking up knowing that they'll soon arrive at the end of my barrel [Music] we are of course taking the secret exit here one that i already knew about

thanks to doom 2 but just feels kind of weird in retrospect to have a secret exit in the first level there's only one of these per episode strangely long for being one of the second levels in the game the only

reason i voluntarily revisit this level is if i'm doing a no saves run and need to grind treasure for 1ups which actually isn't even a bad idea i capped my lives about 10 minutes into the level the path to the elevator to end the

level is pretty straightforward literally and gives us a nice tease of the more non-linear level design we're going to be seeing a lot more of later on with these golden keys as well as the ss the spongiest non-boss

enemies in the game at 100 health and drops a machine gun for the player if they don't already have one you can exploit this if you want to min max your ammo pickups since picking up a machine gun yields 6 bullets rather than the 4

from the magazines you pick up though that also means killing all the ss on the map with just a pistol which yeah i'll pass not much else to say about this level let's just wrap it up oh shit sorry wrong room checking each

of these cells for loot gets pretty monotonous pretty quick more often than not i find dog food rather than treasure oh right nazi dogs normally i'd feel distraught over killing dogs but their nazi dogs they made their choice literally one health

point and equipped with a melee attack making them the least threatening enemy in the game no matter how many there are it's an odd choice to use german shepherds as the nazi dogs though since the nazis used german shepherds but they

were more messengers search and rescue sort of things if memory serves the nazis used rottweilers as attack dogs rather than german shepherds it's not really too surprising remember bobby prince had to remind the team several times that not all germans are nazis so

it was clearly some kind of societal disconnect speaking of disconnect the chain gun [Music] vj's tool of choice to just connect nazis from life just look at that smile look at him that's a happy young man right there i'm not gonna lie i didn't

use the chain gun very much whenever i played this game on normal difficulty and i didn't see its full potential until trying death incarnate it's great for spring wildly as you sprint to cover mowing down rooms consisting of more

than one ss and near guaranteeing the enemy won't shoot you while you're firing [Music] i don't know why nazis up gold and holy symbols so much but if they're hoarding him that means that i'm gonna take it instead

how many people do you think played this game back in the day without a guide or an auto map of some kind and had no idea that this map was shaped like a swastika you can't find a healing pizza in the

middle of it which i only assume is an allegory for how breaking through the core of nazis is healing all right yeah that's a stretch fuck alright well there's my first death of the run the first of unfortunately

many that also means it's back to square one with just the knife and pistol it's not the worst level to die on though because the chain gun is right here at the beginning [Music] man it feels so gross picking up the

chain gun before the machine gun or i guess the chain gun gives you the machine gun as well i never knew that well that's all secrets and treasure but i'm missing one kill oh while no use crying over

god damn it the bastard went off script i had this whole bit planned where i cried over missing this one dead nazi and then opened the elevator to kill the one that jumps out to surprise you but nope this guy just had to find me on his

own right fucker oh it's gonna be like that did you know that tom came up with other names for the game including castle ostenstein luger's run the fourth reich adolph spain hard sell luger me now thank you very much castle hasselhoff how do you

dusseldor castle verlassen stormwind hollow hammer shoten zentana garu select i'm using google translate for these dolph typhoon why did the notebook not mention this in episode two or whatever i have nothing to say for this level the massive hallway with ss firing you

from between the pillars and e1 m7 is an iconic moment for me hull thought this would make for a cinematic experience for the player that having two guards firing at you perpendicularly from the elevator would certainly create some

tension he apparently came up with this idea of going to sleep one night so that's the kind of level design we're dealing with here for what it's worth i think it holds up all right after dying a few times to the hordes i realized

that the best strat for pistol starting this map was to loot a machine gun off of the ss at the southwest corner of the map i needed it if i wanted a remote chance of surviving okay i'm starting to

run low on ammo i could really use some of that motherfucker yeah i ended up losing almost half of my lives here most of which i lost in the same room because i really struggled without a machine gun

this led me to finally look up how hit scan and damages calculated wolf 3d after the fact because these damage numbers are all over the place determining if the player is even hit by hitscan in the first place is the

distance on the grid from the player i'm going to be calling these blocks from here on so you take the number of blocks the player is away from the enemy multiplied by 16 if the player is inside of the enemy or by 8 if the player

cannot see the enemy but is in range all subtracted by 160 if the player is running or 256 if they aren't and then seeing if that number is larger than a randomly generated number between 250 or not if that number generated is higher

than that randomly generated 256 value number that means the player is hit and calculates another formula depending on damage if the player is less than 2 blocks away then it's a randomly generated number between 0 and 250 which

i'll explain as x in this example divided by 4. if they're between 2 and 4 blocks away then it's x divided by 8 and if you're more than 4 spaces away divide by 16. if the shooter is an ss though

then the distance is inherently multiplied by two-thirds the wiki that explains this is saying that the ss are better shots but that doesn't make sense if it's multiplied by two-thirds because multiplying a whole number by a fraction would lower the value of it so i'm

assuming that it means multiplied by one and two-thirds this also means that at most being four plus blocks away from the enemy you can take maximum damage of and i'm rounding up here 16 damage per shot from an enemy and a high of 64

damage when shot from less than two spaces away damage coming from bj is a bit simpler if you're further than four blocks away the hitscan will only register if a number between zero and 250 divided by 12 is less than the

distance away damage is guaranteed to hit when you're less than four blocks away though where damage beyond two blocks away is rng of 255 divided by four and rng 255 divided by six if you're more than two blocks away maxing

out at and again rounding up 64 damage and 43 damage respectively the takeaway from this should be to avoid the most damage possible stay running at all times not look at the enemy and be more than four blocks away from them but to

maximize damage stay less than four blocks away to guarantee damage or be less than two blocks away from the enemy if you have a death wish the former is obviously not ideal for death incarnate again i didn't even think to look this

up until after i recorded all of the footage used for this i'll probably just remember it when i move on to spear of destiny sometime in the future alright where do we go after that uh e1m8 has this weird push wall path it's not

really much of a maze but each of these push walls count as a single secret bringing the secret total count here up to 13. oh don't worry it gets worse as we keep playing e1 m9 the first of six

dedicated boss maps and the first map to introduce us to hans gross putting that in google translate says that it translates to grosse the last of his siblings to be slain by bj and canon which includes his sister gretel get it

hansel and gretel yeah that fairy tale about kids being lured in and eaten by a witch except here they're being lured in by the nazi party tomato tomato he's got some brothers too which act as easier versions of hans as normal enemies he's

not that smart no surprise even on death incarnate his telegraphs are night and day just go behind cover whenever you see him telegraph don't think about it more than that hans as well as all of his siblings are programmed to drop a

gold key on death rather than activating the end level boss screen like the rest of the bosses do this hans is unique though with a hitscan formula identical to the ss meaning he's got a higher chance of hitting you from farther away

making him easily the most dangerous of his siblings which is made even worse when he realized bosses don't flinch so it really just becomes a game of peeking in and out of cover in the hint book kevin cloud suggests leading him to a

secret room where you could fire at him and constantly run over food to keep healing yourself the only issue here is that i'm on death incarnate and one single volley from his chain guns is enough to kill me

in retrospect i don't even know why i tried that honorable mention i fucking hate this boss music [Music] not for the music itself but because of the ad-lib sound card it's so fucking grating on my ears by the time i make it

to the end just please make it stop yeah bj jumps in joy finally escaping the castle holding a prisoner for an undisclosed amount of time oh hey i wasn't done reading that shit uh missing one percent of all treasure yeah that

sounds about right congratulations you run out of the castle and hook up with the underground informing you of the rumors of hideous human experiments that were seen around counselor hola hammer the fabled operation eisenfaust or iron fist is real and dare i say it might be

worse than the netflix adaptation terminate the nazi scientist dr schaubs before an army of the undead march against humanity wait hold on literal nazi zombies how long has that trope been around for i thought that was a call of duty thing

hey wanna know why i made an exception for episode 2 to my no quick save rule oh my god episode 2 introduces the patent pending nazi zombies the mutants the only enemy in the game with a flinch window so short that it's completely

possible that it will shoot you in between shots from your machine gun meaning stun locking them with the pistol or even the knife is impossible and that fact is made even worse when you learn that they're the only non-boss

enemy in the game aside from a unique enemy that appears later on to have scaling health across difficulties with 45 hp on daddy difficulty easy and 65 on death incarnate now that's only a difference of 20 health which you might

think isn't too much but then when you inevitably do a no quick saves run and you're forced to pistol start some of these maps you start to realize how big of a difference that 20 health makes oh and that's even leaving out the best

part yeah your ears aren't fooling you they don't have a wake-up noise meaning you can activate a whole room of these fuckers and not even know it until you're full of lead honestly i always thought that they just had a gun grafted

to their chest but they actually have a third hand sticking out of their chest that's holding a gun that fires whenever they salute if that makes any difference though i got a game over on this map because i just kept fucking up my

routing so since it's the first map it's really not that punishing and after a lot of trial and error you learn that there is a machine gun dead ahead the chain gun is also behind a push while near the entrance of this level and of

course we're going to be taking the secret exit that's just the kind of show that this show is as of the last year or so [Music] oh this party hasn't even started yet there are nazi guards that are held up

in these blocked off cells making me believe that there's some environmental storytelling implying that they're hiding from the mutants but that that doesn't make sense the only door in this main room that you spawn in leads directly to the exit elevator with the

rest of the level tucked away behind 56 push walls hell sometimes even gotta push two walls back to back to get a move on god damn tom hall lube me up before you send me down the deep end but

hey it's not all for nothing you did it champ here's a fuck ton of gold crosses to make sure you get at least one extra life for your hard work just remember where these pockets of health and ammunition are so you can come back to

heal yourself when you need it honestly you should remember that anyway for the rest of the game going forward absolutely brutal opening with these mutants cock blocking you from the get-go if you die you're basically screwed because you gotta book it to the

red brick section of the map to take out the normal guards and ss just to get a machine gun and the gold key while also avoiding the mutants that will inevitably hunt you down but once you get past them it's pretty smooth sailing

alright we got a silver key now that's two different colored keys to keep track of unfortunately that's where it peaks remember though these locked door textures aren't consistent aside from that though it's another straightforward map i still died a couple of times in

this opening room where you grab the gold key but there's an ss at the beginning to grab your machine gun back and not one but four rooms filled to the brim with treasure to boost your score and lives

[Music] oh you fucker you gotta be really careful with this long haul of mutants you can do that thing that you do on a lot of other shooters like this where you peek in and out of cover and shoot

whenever you bounce in but holy shit is it archaic here you stop on a fucking dime in the wolf 3d engine obviously it's a relic for the time i'm not gonna shit on the game for this however i am

still going to complain it feels really weird this trick is going to get a lot more use once we get to the nocturnal missions yeah this map sucks on death incarnate these mutants will catch you off guard and shred your health down

which i guess is the game's way of teaching you to pre-fire around every corner to guarantee stun locking whatever could potentially hit you but because of the mutants and how fast they fire once they wake up you really need

the chain gun to get the maximum use out of it otherwise you still risk getting blasted and they will blast you the second they see you oh great a map shaped like a massive anti-semitic boomerang each of the

branching arms are at least nice enough to color-code itself with different materials blue brick wood etc it's also not a bad idea to get in the habit of firing the millisecond you open a door because even though you still collide

with the door while it's opening hit scans don't follow the same logic as soon as you interact with the door to open it your guns and your targets will act like that door is wide open and you will inevitably get killed while the

door appears to be mostly closed it's just another relic of the time oh fuck you oh okay nope i don't like these walls and no it's it's not lean the hint book implies that this pink ooze is actually blood from the mutants

which turns a purplish pink during the conversion process i can only wonder how many mutants they went through to paint the entire wall of this floor oh i get it now hmm which elevator do i choose eeny meeny miny

the fuck no it's okay we got this oh this fucking sucks oh this isn't good hey anyone got any floor pizzas [Music] all right sir i mean this as disrespectfully as i can please give me that gun fuck so this is a short level where you

could run straight to the exit elevator which is right next to where you spawn uh unfortunately that's not the kind of run we're doing here [Music] oh oh what's this is this environmental storytelling damn i hope whatever's in

here is actually a big deal actually hold on a second i don't want to fucking die all right that's better holy shit that could have gone so much fucking worse oh boy e2m8 the home of the infamous aardwolf maze a massive push wall maze

taking up over half of the west side of the map consisting of non-canon hans brothers a good amount of treasure one-ups and a call apogee say aardwolf post well okay it's not actually there anymore the graphic was there in the

original release of the game but as soon as wolfenstein 3d hit digital stores like steam for example they took the texture out of the game to avoid a whole slew of calls not even sure if the number is the same anymore the maze is a

bitch i wouldn't even have attempted this without a map of some kind i used this one off of joe siegler's blog from 3d realms but you gotta be careful because once you get to the end there's actually two push walls each leading you

in a different direction and fucking you out of the other taking one will lead you to a hans brother which is mandatory if you're going for all kills and the other takes you to the yard wolf room which is now replaced with a skeleton

and a one up if we ignore the artwolf puzzle there's only three push balls on this map oh god what did i just walk into here i hope you guys are just vibing and not fiddling with bugged pathfinding is that

is it supposed to look like that i feel bad not for them though they're nazis pixelated nazi toilet [Music] dr schubs the big bad doctor who's responsible for the nazis army of the undead and now wants bj to join his

mutant militia he's mean obscene and wants you green i didn't come up with that i'm not that clever that's from the hint book he's got 2400 health on death incarnate and yields a projectile as his weapon of choice against bj yes a

projectile weapon in a game that up to this point has been exclusively hit scans which holy shit is that a breath of fresh air simply strafe to the side to dodge his syringes and you're more than equipped to deal with this guy

especially after firing through a massive horde of mutants at the beginning of the map that's honestly the hardest part of it thankfully like all boss maps there's still a pocket of health and ammo to help you get into

shape just before the primary encounter shobs is the first dedicated boss npc of the game meaning that once he dies we get to see that slow-mo replay of his death upon killing him the same one that was added to the game in response to the

game potentially being too violent at the time as a kid this guy always reminded me of number two from the kids next door but my refined up-to-date cartoon palette now can't unsee blended brandon from gravity falls fuck that

show is so good you stand over shabs's putrid body glad your mission is finally over yeah i'll say if i see another mutant-infested castle i'm gonna do something mildly inconveniencing to my toilet though the nazi threat is never over until you cut

off the head our mission now is simple infiltrate the crumbling third reich's titanic bunter and bunter infiltrate the crumbling third reich's titanic bunker and terminate hitler oh man you make it sound so easy actually it is because aside from a secret level

in episode 6 we'd never see the mutants again we got a couple of new enemy types between here and there but they don't even compare to the fucking nazi zombies [Music] all right it's back to basics just nazis

and castle walls but with a new episode comes a new nazi descent six feet under the officers uh glass cannon 50 hp only half of that of the ss but they're fast aggressive and serpentine left and right towards the player an interesting chess

piece to introduce to the board this map also has morse code playing in the music that i thought would be something basic like an sos or whatever but no it actually reads and i quote two big bad wolf from little red riding hood

eliminate hitler imperative complete mission within 24 hours out a fitting easter egg to put into the first song you hear in episode 3 where our mission is literally to eliminate hitler oh yeah i guess it's not too late to

bring up the music honestly if it weren't for the ad-lib sound card that delivers some really chunky noise that sounds like a sega genesis about to go critical this soundtrack would be a lot more digestible that said there there is

a pretty good library here several tracks stand out taking cues from the american anthems and propaganda which creates a surprisingly consistent atmosphere for the time a personal favorite of mine is suspense playing an e1 m4 and e1 m8 i just love that deep

warbly note that kicks in every 8 beats or so i had this song stuck in my head for hours after playing the game and writing the script it's kind of hard to put into words the nocturnal missions being that

they're a basic expansion only gets one new song and it's arguably for the most bullshit stage in the game we'll get there soon e3 m2 a level romero designed specifically to be filled with death traps alluring to the curious eye i

don't know what he was talking about though because i thought it was pretty easy uh let's see i beat e3 m3 100 under the part time yeah these levels are starting to get kind of short uh e3 m4

has a lot of officers in it let's see what else all right i'll shit you not i don't have a single note written down for e3 m5 that's just kind of the levels we're dealing with here but hey it might

be a matter of preference but i'd rather deal with these than have to deal with the mutants again it's just boring it's not unfair e3 m6 at least tries something new with its big steel maze to get the gold key and shoves a bunch of

these officers behind pillars that you can shoot through but can't move through making it feel incredibly rewarding once you find that secret entrance into their back rooms to mow him down with a chain gun while not great advice all around

the way that i like to deal with these mazes is always turning left whenever i'm put out of choice to turn it's not a perfect solution for every maze but it works and if there is no choice say your

only options are going forward or turning right just go forward because that's the closest there is to a left it's obviously not a perfect solution to every maze but it works a lot for the mazes in wolf 3d especially here

[Music] ah i'm out of ammo time to resort to the only way i know how to survive by sitting at this corner and knifing every nazi that comes out at the choke point [Music] yeah i don't know why i thought that

would work we're gonna be taking the secret elevator out of this map but you still gotta open the main elevator to kill this officer hiding inside of it for 100 kills they try to fake you out of this secret exit by putting a silver

key door in front of you in a map that doesn't even have a silver key there's a push ball to the side of it that takes you to the maze that leads you to the secret exit behind another push wall by

this collection of treasure i wouldn't be too surprised if some players back in the day just thought that the treasure was all there was to this area imagine making it all the way here and not realizing that there's a secret exit

right there holy shit it's pac-man yo yo yo yo out motherfuckers the way fuckers blinky's got a warrant out for my ass cheeks yeah that was fun a bit underwhelming but the music was really cute and i love

these illegally distinct packing ghosts it's a fun secret that everyone should experience at least once in their lives welcome to tom's gauntlet a level where he wanted you to face this brutal onslaught of nazis before you make it to

hitler's lair he really wanted to make you work for that kill yep i see what he meant all right let's wrap this shit up yeah okay thanks for putting barrels back to back here to make it practically impossible to hide from the hordes good

shit tom holy shit it's him it's nemesis from catacombs 3d but instead of a skeleton he's a pussy yeah these are fake hitlers if it wasn't obvious 500 health on death incarnate and the only non-boss with a projectile in the original release of

the game these fireballs were tied to your cpu speed except not in the way that you might think where the faster the cpu the faster the balls it's actually the opposite if you're playing on a higher end pc then the balls

actually move slower and can be subjectively more dangerous that way not seen here though the projectiles can't pass through non-solid objects meaning that you can really just hide behind some of these and open fire i don't see the point though

oh shit he's got a mech he's mecca hitler god what a fucking name one that's lived on for decades because of the sheer absurdity of it you know this game really misrepresents the guy if this were real life he probably would

have shot himself once he heard that bj was nearing his chamber at the very least i don't think he'd have the balls to face him outside of his mech even with his double chain guns he's just a tougher hans with a second phase that

moves a bit faster he still telegraphs his attack as bright as day and despite only having half of the chain guns outside of his mech suit it still fires the same so you still need to be careful his mech has 1200 health and adolf

himself has 900 again just being a slightly different hans but honestly i mean at this point i could really care less bj stands over hitler's splattered visage kicks his head off his remains and spits on his corpse the third reich

has been ceremoniously slain by a man named blowjob but hey the adventure isn't over yet at least for the player we still got three more episodes to go through but they're not a sequel instead being a prequel telling the tale of how

bj ended up getting captured in castle wolfenstein to begin with not like it really matters though you're not really playing this game for its narrative though to completely ignore what i just said this is canonically the end of the

wolfenstein 3d family of games since spear of destiny is a prequel as well so enjoy knowing that all of these games lead up to some hitler giblets whoa okay that that sure is a new wall texture episode 4 may be a prequel telling the tale of

how bj stopped the nazis chemical warfare before taking up his main mission to steal nazi war plans and kill hitler but that doesn't mean it's any easier than episode one okay actually i don't know if anyone's actually thinking

that but i did because i am stupid being able to see a texture representing the outside of the castle is a nice touch though greens blues nature something we're all about to leave behind for the future of nazi killing i don't have a

lot to say about e4 m1 so i'm going to resort to the hint book did you know that id originally considered having hitler youth attack the player with knives and also hid posters of david duke spelling david puke around the area these were cut for

the same reasons that the nazi atrocities were cut from the story well that's depressing e4 m2 lives on forever in my memory for being the first level that managed to softlock me because of bullshit push walls a common theme that

we're gonna be seeing more than once from here on if you're going for all secrets which i don't recommend at this point you'll need to make sure to activate particular pushballs in order when going in and out of said secrets

otherwise you're going to miss some secrets or worse just get stuck kind of sad that the level with symmetrical corners and a secret that'll fuck your wife is the highlight of this episode it's always a good sign when you enter a

level and immediately get loaded up with ammo and health oh if you die a lot like i did don't worry there's a chain gun here in this brick section just before the hordes i i still died a lot

oh fucking terrible level okay so look at this map each of those white arrows is an officer and they're all close enough to wake up the minute a single one of them wakes up there is no safe haven here except for the single secret

next to the start of the map but i fucking died and there isn't another weapon in this map this is also before i gave up on my no quick saves rule so this is kind of on me but my only choice

for an e4 m10 pistol start run was to activate the enemies run into the secret and then mash my knife button over and over because see even though enemies can shoot through each other they can't move through each other so you just gotta get

that sweet spot right looking at the doorway and knifing them the second they stepped foot in the room this was my only option if i didn't want to reload my save but i did it it took me almost

seven minutes of constantly mashing mouse one but i fucking did it oh are you kidding me there's still a stray out there e4 m4 has a push wall that forces you to decide between ammo or health though you're not gonna know that without

looking at a map for whatever reason this push wall is programmed to go one of two ways one leading to health and the other to ammo but it's not like e4 m1 where it depends on which order you

push multiple push walls and doesn't cut you out 100 secrets regardless of which path you take so that's nice ah shit we got another straggler gotcha bitch tom says that he tried to make the dogs dangerous for e4 m5 but

when you have an enemy with only one health point i find that really hard to believe yeah no a single guard is more dangerous than all of these dogs this map is filled with fake elevators with a barrel

inside of them so you can't actually use them sometimes there's a nazi behind it that you can kill though and by filled with these fake elevators i mean that there's three of them like this and the one that you need to find to exit the

level is on the far east side of the floor hey did you know that you could drink the blood off the floor if you have low enough health i cannot recreate how excited i was when this happened that feeling of pure joy

hearing bj slurp that fluid off the floor just blew my mind because i heard that you can drink the blood off the floor but i never saw it in game i just i i wish i could hear that man slurp one

more time okay where do we go from that ah let's see it's nice i have the blue dungeon wall texture back the gimmick here is that all of these doors lead to literally nothing except for an officer or three except one of these closets the

fifth one from the top of the map has a gold key in it that you need to progress so they they want you to check each one of these nazi closets oh shit that's a lot of them i'm not

sure if this is an easy wolf thing or a quirk in the wolfenstein 3d engine as a whole but the ss and this map have a tendency to open the gold key door on their own when you alert them regardless

of if you have the key and when i first started this level i thought you know i'll play fair i'm not going to go through that doorway until i have the gold key until i accidentally quick saved myself after i softlocked myself

the mandatory push was to take you to the golden key can softlock you if you activate them in the wrong order now i've been making individual saves per level so the worst that i'm punished here is having to replay the previous

level that's still not fun at this point i'd lost all respect i could have given to this map and just blitzed my way through that gold door the second the ss opens it with nothing but my chain gun

alright let's make a quick save here to make sure i don't soft lock myself oh my god i did it again we got another push while here programmed to go two directions but one of them literally fucks you out of a secret and this has

to have been intentional i get what they're trying to do here they're trying to be assholes but it's not fun thankfully the push while taking you to the blue dungeon area isn't gonna fuck you over though you would still find

your way to this area regardless it's more of a shortcut to this area now that's a wide fucking elevator all right now hold on a minute i still missed a couple of nazis i'm starting to see a pattern with these episode four

maps no matter how many times i play this level this hallway here is a bitch you're not gonna have a good time unless you have enough ammo unless you come up behind these officers because for whatever reason sometimes they don't

alert everyone the first boss of the nocturnal missions is auto gift which literally translates to poison maker the man responsible for the nazi's chemical weapons opts to use a reskinned projectile taking the form of a rocket launcher which is honestly

quite impressive for the engine but in the end it's still a projectile programmed to leave a trail of sprites behind to simulate smoke and an explosion animation for when it hits a surface again impressive for the engine however it really fucking hurts my ears

before you fight him though you'll need to oh hey look both keys and an unsuspecting guard oh god yeah that's okay i could just use this push while here that gives me both of the keys without activating the hordes

of nazis fuck you tom still doesn't mean it's time for auto yet i'm just gonna run past him and open these locked doors so i can get some health and ammo before i start open season [Music] alright there we go now where were we

otto [Music] the twisted scientist behind the nazis chemical warfare is giblets at your feet but the fruits of his labor grow elsewhere including the guarded fortress of verlangen where the plans for the upcoming gift creek lay infiltrate the

castle steal the plans and take out general fethgaze [Music] hey would you believe me if i told you that only three maps in episode 5 had more than one sentence worth of notes some are even lucky to get that because

episode 5 is just fucking boring it's not terrible it's kind of like comparing x6 to x7 would you prefer a game that's broken and unfinished but has some substance or just boring the answer is b i would rather have something boring i

do like this new blue skull wall texture though that's pretty nice i'll never forget this room with the barrels and hordes of ss on the other side somehow that's one of the most memorable set pieces in the game for me despite what i

literally just said ah fuck hold up a second excuse me shithead i need some [Music] that's ammo you know someone here had the bright idea of putting two chain guns in this map just in case you know you died twice

[Music] i have no idea why any map needs more than one chain gun in it i'll be honest map 4 is the highlight of episode 5 for me it's a basic level but i love its symmetrical layout with each red brick

area having its own secret behind a banner it's basic but i really liked it i didn't write down any notes for e5 m5 aside from the fact that it leads to this game's secret level which for that i also don't have a single note about

aside from and i quote safest secret level in the game yep okay cool e5 m6 yet another map with two chain gun pickups i do like how this map is a big circle with you diving deeper into the rings inside of the circle

except it still manages to be a slug e5m7 is at least a better take on the swastika map from earlier on though there is a push while near the beginning designed to deliberately cuck you out of a shortcut when looping back if you

activate it from the wrong side it's not a soft lock though thankfully you just gotta take the long way back e5 m8 i literally got nothing it's not until we get to the boss of episode five that i finally have

something worth talking about gretel gross or grossy the little sister of hans from episode 1 gretel who's just a reskinned variant of the common enemy variant of hans it's not even a reskin of the boss version with better accuracy

because even in software is afraid of having women being as tough as men the concept art for gretel describes her as huey her chain gun is a single barrel in it rather than the gatling style miniguns that hans has but my brain

that's assuming the worst from people thinks that they did this to make it look like tit sagging to the side just like hans she drops a key on death because again she's just a reskin [Music] welcome to episode 6 the worst episode

in wolfenstein 3d in my personal opinion although episode 4 is pretty close tom bragged that romero had a hard time with e6 m1 which is kinda sad the exit is visible from your spawn point behind some pillars clearly another gimmick map

where ninety percent of the gimmick is corner peaking across every inch of this map [Music] oh my god these hulls are so fucking annoying but the secret for the gold key is somewhat clever this new texture for the walls that has this little divot at

the bottom when you push it back it gives the appearance of the key coming out of that little hole at the bottom which is a really small detail but i i really like it the gold key is only

necessary if you're going for 100 treasure but it's it's still neat i still managed to miss some gold though fuck me i guess e6m2 was designed by bobby prince the composer of the game it's a bunch of long hulls in this giant

ring around the map to encourage the player to sprint it's still really fucking boring to be honest and the doors are placed at what feels like completely random intervals it's not bad it's just slow i was able to run

straight to this level's secret elevator because a guard managed to open the gold door though i didn't know that at first and almost locked myself in here before even finishing the rest of the map [Music] thank you you gotta grab the gold key by

the main elevator behind three push balls and then backtrack all the way back to the beginning to go to the secret elevator and god i wish that's the worst thing i had to say about it because oh boy the secret level

e6 m10 without a doubt the hardest wolfenstein 3d level that i've played to date spear of destiny expansions notwithstanding if you're attempting this map pistol start with no quick saves then aid you deserve a fucking purple heart and b there's a chain gun

right here at the start because holy shit you're going to need it first off the mutants are back and they are a whole bag of fuck this map is divided into four quadrants with three of them having a hans brother that you need to

kill to drop a key you only need one key to finish the map so you really could just kill one of the hans brothers and just book it right to the end which is in the center of the map however because

i'm going for all nazis killed i was a little bit over my head here first off the east side of the map has this bullshit vine segment that's riddled with mutants that blend into the vines i gave up on clearing this area midway

through and left to go to the upper quadrant but that was a bad fucking idea because the mutants somehow managed to follow me over but i'm not gonna fucking reload my quicksafe at this point if you're starving for ammo in the northern

quadrant you're kinda shit out of luck cause the only room with ammo up here is the one with the hans brother i had to lure that fucker out of here just so that i could get health and ammo but oh

boy now i've got a groose on the loose grosse on the low see i found him oh shit blinky is loose too oh you gotta save this secret for last if you're going for a hundred percent because once

you open the store blinky is set loose on the whole fucking map i came back here later for the recharge and if you sprint through blinky you don't lose too much health but oh with how chaotic this map gets it's not worth letting him free

oh last bullet all right let's go all right there's the last hans brother and god fucking damn it i'm missing one fucking nazi [Music] there you are you little bitch that has got to be one of the most

monotonous experiences i have ever had with an id software game and that says a lot i've played through rage actually i don't i don't think it was that bad yeah okay fuck that other level i think that this is the most dangerous the dogs have

ever been in wolf 3d not much else to say but e6 m4 is a breath of fresh air after the chaos i just had to endure i got nothing for e6 m5 but e6 m6 was at least designed to have hordes of enemies

wake up the minute they hear a gunshot i don't know why the hint book is making a big deal about that because another map did that and did it way more threateningly e6 m7 is okay so you get to the main lobby of

this map which is four long hallways with pillars in the armpits that have officers behind them you shoot some of them and then you go around you activate this push wall over here that just gives up halfway through at this point i

thought okay maybe it's just broken whatever maybe that is the secret just pushing it in and i go on with the level and i think okay maybe that's just consistent because i make it over here to the other side symmetrical to the

previous push wall that fucked up and this one is also blocked too so i keep going i suffer through this vine maze that isn't as bad as the secret level but still has officers behind it at least that doesn't compare to the

mutants i scour the map collect everything i can and then i check my score and i'm missing one fucking nazi i go around this map for almost another 10 minutes doing laps around this bitch to no fucking avail and so i do what anyone

hunting nazis would do i open the debug menu and have the game show me enemies in the auto map and what do i fucking find i find that that wall that i pushed that got stuck midway through had a

officer right fucking behind it i will not let his bad deeds go unpunished you all right the final level before the final confrontation and you know what it's not that bad of a level actually the top and bottom halves are divided

into separate dungeons to explore making small chunks of progress to each respective key it's really not that bad though holy shit there are so many guards and not enough ammo to pre-fire when you turn these fucking corners thankfully there's like three secrets on

the outskirts of the map with tons of health and ammo so you're not completely sol general fetch aside fedgis fuck you the only enemy in the game let alone a boss to be equipped with two separate weapons a rocket

launcher forcing you to strafe and a chain gun punishing you for strafing too far like every other boss room it's best to duck into the secret room and bottleneck their henchmen now before taking out the big boss all right

fuckhead shall i have this dance [Music] oh wait know the challenges i'm going to miss the treasure the world is now safe from the horrors of nazi chemical warfare bj returns home to receive a medal of honor before being

informed of activities around castle hellhammer congratulations you've finished episode 6 of wolfenstein you are truly one of the great heroes the world cheers your name you get a photo with the president oh no thanks i don't care who's president i don't want that

people named their babies after you okay that's pretty cool you marry a movie star oh no i'm good thank you i appreciate the nazi killing but i'll pass holy shit these nocturnal missions suck which is a huge shame because the

first three episodes of the game aside from the bullshit hit scans with the mutants is a pretty good time that i think holds up pretty well with a source port like ec wolf its reliance on hit scan enemies is pretty taxing today i'd

rather play quake or doom and if memory serves that taxing feeling of hit scans is only made worse in wolf 3d's prequel the spear of destiny but we'll get there in time all things considered though it's still a pretty cathartic outlet for

nazi killing and no matter how archaic the game is that is something that i can always appreciate [Music] you