The first-person shooter genre was forged in the grey, stone halls of Castle Wolfenstein. This medieval monument turned Nazi fortress carries all manner of connotations for the series which bears its name. But what is it about these connotations that compels us to return to Wolfenstein's corridors? Why, after 23 years, is it still exciting to find secret walls and gun down Nazis in this cold and oppressive castle?
For me, Castle Wolfenstein has an almost mythological quality about it--as much as a mythology can form around a video game locale. It is where first-person shooters as we know them were born, and it was the first testing ground of the genre's required skillset. With that skillset, Castle Wolfenstein presented a straightforward but difficult challenge: "Escape me."
Everything you need to know about Wolfenstein is in this one screenshot.
Its walls bear an imposing contrast between their grey stone and the warm reds of the swastika banners draped over them.
These origins are also the source of its secret pushwalls: What were once escape passages for kings under siege now conceal Nazi gold and other treasures. But this version of Castle Wolfenstein didn't feel much like a real location, as its levels were designed more like a maze to puzzle your way through than as something approaching a real castle interior. Yet the narrative fantasy of your escape from capture still felt well-realised. You searched for keys to open locked doors, all the while surviving on scraps of prison dinners and dog food, scrounging weapons and ammunition from the bodies of fallen Nazis. After killing the castle's boss, a massive foe with even bigger guns, the camera spins around you as you triumphantly leap toward freedom. With that, the self-contained story that is your escape from Castle Wolfenstein concludes--appropriately enough, because it needed to stand alone as Wolfenstein 3D's freely available shareware release.
Grounding the iconic elements of Wolfenstein 3D in something closer to reality was fascinating because it attempted to create a concrete representation of the blanks your imagination filled in from the previous game. Secret pushwalls were reimagined as compartments behind loose bricks or maps mounted on walls, along with traditional sliding bookshelves and hidden anterooms--all of which hid now-expected Nazi gold. The narrative of your escape from the castle itself was also leant greater bombast and drama; rather than leaping toward freedom, you steal a cable car and make a precarious journey down the mountain range, with Castle Wolfenstein disappearing into the fog at your back.
We finally get to see Castle Wolfenstein from the outside.
The castle's history is also divulged in written notes, detailing a medieval king and his explorations of the occult.
But those secret walls are rare in this version of Castle Wolfenstein, because The Old Blood presents this location as one that's being torn away from the inside by the Nazis in their occult explorations. Those iconic grey stone walls have literally been demolished and dug through, revealing crypts and catacombs that hide centuries-old secrets. These makeshift tunnels twist and turn in on themselves in ways not possible 23 years ago. While this helps to develop the overall plot of The Old Blood, the story of your escape from Castle Wolfenstein itself now plays out at a slower, more sedate pace, as the game's new stealth mechanics recontextualise the prison break as a stealth mission, not a multi-level gunfight.
But it is also the origin story for an entire video game genre, bringing with it a kind of purity and simplicity which makes shooters appealing at a base level. When you return to Castle Wolfenstein, you're not just revisiting a fictional location--you're visiting a museum. That is where Castle Wolfenstein's mythological quality comes from, and that is why, no matter how the context may change, we keep returning to its grey stone walls.