GR: That extends to the social issues too, how J tells B.J. It’s such an amazing sense of freedom to have an idea like that, and put it in the game. Whenever they have a problem with something it’s quality related, it’s never content related. But that’s never a concern with Bethesda. With any other publisher it would have been impossible to get that into the game. Matthies: It’s the absolute freest reign we’ve ever had in any game we’ve created. I was at GaymerX and a panelist called out how they couldn’t imagine another triple-A having a scene where the main character would drop acid with Jimi Hendrix. GameRevolution: You guys had an incredible amount of freedom in this game. Trauth would record first, and then Gideon Emery would come in and the other actors would be miming their parts while we played the audio from the tape we had selected with Wyatt-to Gideon-and then he would act his part separately, sort of. A lot of times we would record it-for example with Wyatt, the actor called A.J. The separate characters, Tekla and J, were easier in terms of recording and putting it together because it’s completely different scenes, but with Fergus and Wyatt they’re often in the same scene interacting with other actors, and that was tricky to deal with in recording. Matthies: Once we felt we had that, the natural conclusion-we felt that was very strong in the drive it would give you as a player-the natural consequence was that it gave you these branching timelines, and we liked that even though it meant making it harder on production. When asked about the challenges of creating the branching timeline, Matthies said the initial choice between whether you selected Fergus or Wyatt to live was done to create a driving antipathy towards the game’s villain General Deathshead.) The choice creates two different timelines, with different characters, events, and styles of character interactions. (One of the game’s most striking features in The New Order is a choice you make in the first chapter of the game, set in an alternate history 1946, where World War II is still being fought. But that’s not our philosophy and it’s not Bethesda’s philosophy. When money is involved there’s a tendency to go where the money is.
![wolfenstein the new order giant robot wolfenstein the new order giant robot](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/OJcryiu1hCg/maxresdefault.jpg)
Jens Matthies: Of course a lot of us agree with him, there’s a lot of movement in the same direction, and following the leader. I had a chance to sit down recently with Jens Matthies, the game's Creative Director to talk about its development over Skype-it was 10 in the morning in California, but 7 pm in Sweden, where Machine Games is located. When I asked if Spector’s comments had affected development, Matthies said that they hadn't, adding that they got to meet with him, and that he was speaking more about the general watering down of the industry: