-For the Uncensored!
(this play through is a walk through. I did not capture any footage of my own. thanks goes to Game Riot for the footage).
Chapter 1
The Beginning
To beat the game on Mein Leben difficulty requires strength of will. For many people who have played Wolfenstein 2: The New Collosus, the first ten minutes is distinctly concerned with narrative control. The first ten minutes, detailing the immediate events after the The New Order, is key to understanding the very nature of the game mechanics. The beginning of the game is called “Heaven” as it’s meant to introduce the player to Blazkowitz’s predicament. He was suckered into killing General Deathshead, but Deathshead committed suicide with a bomb, wounding Blazkowitz, to near death.
The first person view point offers very disturbing moments. Waking in and out of surgery. Going back to his past with his parents, as he’s beaten by his father for “getting sweet under the pauper tree” with a young African American girl. It shows Blazkowitz hiding in the closet, and from the first person perspective, is quite jarring.
Only Blazkowitz is forced to kill his family dog. The player is being dragged to the basement, and his father gives him a lecture about “Sometimes in life you have to punish the animals out there. It’s kill or be killed. The old and the weak are doomed. All manners of scum and weakly minds. Dirty bodies of cockroaches. Doing everything they want to rob the white man of what he’s earned. It’s on us to straighten out the queer. It’s on you. Finger on the trigger. Now, shoot her.”
It forces the player into this moment that no game has ever presented. To kill the family dog. Many people didn’t like this because it was disturbing. Of course it is. And young Blazko is tied to a board where he can’t escape either. It’s moment when a player must make a choice. They can shoot the dog or they can move the gun to the right, and just scare the dog. The gun ricochets, and forces the player on his back, “You are so weak and feeble just like your mother.” His father then shoots the dog for him.
It’s a scene that often gets cited as long and protracted. For me, it was a reminder that Bethesda Softworks wanted to take risks, because much of the story relates to what torture and how someone must overcome adversity in order to achieve his goal.
In the first person, all of this happens to the player. It makes the player emotionally invested, but for some it will push people away. Sometimes it’s the gameplay, but the weird thing is, it only serves as a reminder of what you must overcome yourself. In the scene it’s meant to put the player through emotional trauma, and the will power to achieve Mein Leben is the realization of what Blazkowitz and the player must embark upon.
Through an America after the Nazi’s released an atom bomb on New York in 1945, demoralizing the world, Blazkowitz must then pick up the pieces. But to beat the game means learning what I haven’t. Becoming what I must in order to achieve “expert player” status because I have already played it for the stories and secrets. But this trial is herculean, for a millennial. It’s the way most men must go out and prove their worth to the world. A game player, like myself, sees myself in this journey, too.
Section 1: Trials, Tribulations, and The Wheelchair Section.
Blazkowitz awakens from his five month recovery only to be worse off. Blazkowitz is moving through the submarine the team captured from New Order, in a wheelchair. For starters, the level is fantastic because much of the level is accurate to how someone in a wheelchair would be in real life. Plus the wheelchair can’t move up and down steps, very much like in real life. What this level proves is that most of the time, the character cannot move unless the player moves the wheelchair. It’s amazingly animated and Blazkowitz hold his weapon in his left hand while moving with his right hand. It’s sentimental because it does bring us back to the first game, New Order, where Blazkowitz recovers in a hospital, and he begins his murder quest to kill General Deathshead and stop the Third Reich.