| genre = First-person shooter

| modes = Single-player, multiplayer

Return to Castle Wolfenstein is a 2001 first-person shooter game developed by Gray Matter Studios and published by Activision.

Upon release, Return to Castle Wolfenstein received a generally favorable reception, with critics praising the visual presentation and design of the game's open-ended levels in its single-player campaign and quality of its multiplayer gameplay. However, critics considered the game was not as innovative or impactful as the design of its predecessor, and expressed that its narrative and themes were unoriginal. Splash Damage created some of the maps for the Game of the Year edition. A sequel, titled Wolfenstein, was released in 2009.

Gameplay

Return to Castle Wolfenstein is a first-person shooter in which the player navigates levels and fights enemies including Nazi soldiers, undead, and experimental mutants. The player acquires weapons and ammo throughout levels, including for pistols, submachine guns, rifles, grenades, rockets, flamethrowers, and experimental weapons including the Venom, a minigun, and the Tesla Gun, which shoots electricity at enemies. Some weapons have alternate fire modes, such as rifles that have a scope, or shoot projectiles. The player can also engage in melee combat by either kicking or using a knife.

In the game's single-player mode, players use combat and stealth to complete objectives across 27 levels in 7 missions. and may include activities such as reaching the end of an area, defeating all the enemies, collecting certain items, eliminating specific enemies, or stealth missions. Several missions and the endgame also feature more difficult boss battles.

Stealth missions require players to sneak and take cover through levels to avoid enemy detection. Guards in these levels will independently patrol the area and have their own routines. Players can take down enemies from behind whilst sneaking if undetected. Some stealth missions lead to failure if enemies sound an alarm. To support the pitch, a demo was created set outside a castle that demonstrated the enemy AI and a feature involving enemies setting off an alarm when detecting the player. id Software CEO Todd Hollenshead stated that studio had been searching for a development team to revive the series and the pitch was "jaw-dropping" and "captured the imagination of what the potential could be for a modern Wolfenstein". The game's publisher, Activision, invested in a 40 per cent equity stake of Grey Matter.

Return to Castle Wolfenstein was announced in January 2000. id Software provided "significant involvement" to Grey Matter with guidance on animation, art and research, However, id Software had limited creative interference in the studio's vision for the game,

The game was designed in the id Tech 3 engine developed for Quake III, the fourth game to use the engine. This approach supported the creation of "enormous maps" and allowed the team to design levels that offered multiple paths to the player to complete a mission. Levels were designed to showcase the game's "dynamic" scripting system for enemy behavior, who would patrol areas, react to dead enemies or noise, sound alarms or call for reinforcements. Additional features, including dragging dead bodies, silent attacks, and exchanging uniforms, were tested and removed to "significantly simplify" the game to make it "easier to play". The studio dispensed with several elements from the original game they viewed as unenjoyable, including key cards and save points, Photographs of castles, cobblestones, and other visual elements were used by the team from two visits to Europe to create textures of the game's German setting. However, the studio aimed to balance plausible historical depiction with "mysterious and bizarre" elements for entertainment value, The castle and cable car also bear close similarities to the 1968 war film Where Eagles Dare. The game was released for Linux and Macintosh platforms in 2002, with the Linux port done in-house by Timothee Besset and the Mac port done by Aspyr Media. In 2003, the game was ported to the PlayStation 2 and Xbox video game consoles and subtitled as Operation Resurrection and Tides of War, respectively.

Both console versions include an additional single-player prequel mission, set in the fictional town of Ras El-Hadid in Egypt. The latter half of the level features an extensive underground burial site with many undead enemies, as does the original first mission. This prequel level is likely closer to the developers' true intentions for the story, as indicated by the distinctly Egyptian design of the burial site, including the presence of sand, traps, mummies and hieroglyphs on the walls in some areas (in the original storyline, this site is found in the middle of a German village during the second mission). By contrast, the single-player storyline in the Windows version starts at Castle Wolfenstein. The PS2 version has a bonus feature which allows players to purchase items at the end of each level by finding secrets. In the Xbox version, a Secret Bonus is awarded after every level when all the secret areas for that level have been found. It also has several new equipable items and weapons as well as new enemies. The two-player co-op mode is exclusive to Xbox and allows the second player to play as Agent One, altering the game in which he was never killed and played out the missions to the end. This allows for the story to support that Agent One either survived. The Xbox version also has downloadable content, system-link play and had online multiplayer via Xbox Live before Xbox Live was terminated for original Xbox games. A Platinum Hits edition of the game was also released for the Xbox. The PlayStation 2 version does not support online multiplayer.

The source code for Return to Castle Wolfenstein and Enemy Territory was released under the GNU General Public License v3.0 or later on August 12, 2010. The ioquake3 developers at icculus.org announced the start of respective engine projects soon after.

Community mods

On October 15, 2020, a community overhaul mod RealRTCW was released on Steam as a free modification for original game. It features new renderer, expanded arsenal, rebalanced gunplay, new high-quality models, textures and sounds.

On November 19, 2021, day of the game's twentieth anniversary, free modification Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory Single-Player & Cooperative was released on Steam by French modder William Faure, head of a small team of developers at Dark Matter Productions since 2013 who was also involved in the development of RealRTCW, restoring the single-player campaign of the cancelled Return to Castle Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory expansion with approval and external support from original game developers.

Ahead of the game's twenty-fifth anniversary, a celebratory PC port of Threewave Software's console-exclusive prologue Cursed Sands again developed by French creator William Faure was announced on March 21, 2026, with a release on May 6 (same date as the Xbox version's, Tides of War, in 2003) of the same year as a modification for the original game, and as a free DLC for remaster RealRTCW on Steam and GOG, published by Dark Matter Productions.

Film

A Return to Castle Wolfenstein film was announced in 2002 with Rob Cohen attached to direct. Little information has been available since, however, with the exception of a July 20, 2005, IGN interview. The interview discussed the Return to Castle Wolfenstein film with id employees. In the interview, Todd Hollenshead indicated that the movie was in the works, though still in the early stages.

On August 3, 2007, Variety confirmed Return to Castle Wolfenstein, to be written and directed by Roger Avary and produced by Samuel Hadida. On November 2, 2012, Roger Avary signed on to write and direct the film. The film is being described as a mix of Inglourious Basterds and Captain America.

Reception

According to review aggregator website Metacritic, Return to Castle Wolfenstein received "generally favorable" reviews. and on par with its contemporaries.

Critics generally praised the gameplay and single-player-missions, with particular praise directed towards the variety of environments, open-ended levels and multiple objectives. with Richard Shoemaker of PC Zone finding they provided a "pause in the relentless action" and were integrated well with the game. with Electronic Gaming Monthly stating the lack of any features was an "inexcusably raw deal" given the pedigree of the game's online gameplay on other platforms. It fell to position 7 in its second week. By the end of 2001, the game's domestic sales totaled 253,852 units, for revenues of $13.1 million (~$ in ).

In the United States, Return to Castle Wolfenstein sold 350,000 copies and earned $17 million (~$ in ) by August 2006. It was the country's 48th-best-selling computer game between January 2000 and August 2006. Combined sales of all Wolfenstein computer games released between January 2000 and August 2006 had reached 660,000 units in the United States by the latter date. Return to Castle Wolfenstein received a "Silver" sales award from the Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association (ELSPA), indicating sales of at least 100,000 copies in the United Kingdom. By January 2002, Activision reported that shipments of Return to Castle Wolfenstein to retailers had surpassed one million units. The game sold 2 million copies by January 2004.

Awards

PC Gamer US awarded Return to Castle Wolfenstein its 2001 "Best Multiplayer Game" prize. The editors wrote: "No other FPS rewards this level of teamplay, sports this kind of graphics, or is this blissfully free of cheaters."

{| class="wikitable sortable"

|-

! Year !! Award !! Category !! Result !!

|-

| 2001

| Game Developers Choice Awards 2001

| Excellence in Programming

|

| style="text-align:center;" |

|-

| rowspan="5" | 2002

| rowspan="4" | 5th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards

| Online Gameplay

|

| rowspan="4" style="text-align:center;" |

|-

| PC Action/Adventure

|

|-

| Computer Game of the Year

|

|-

| Visual Engineering

|

|-

| The Eighth Annual PC Gamer Awards

| Best Multiplayer Game

|

| and released on August 18, 2009. A successor to Wolfenstein titled Wolfenstein: The New Order and a standalone prequel expansion titled Wolfenstein: The Old Blood have also been released in 2014 and 2015. The Old Blood references RTCW with characters with similar names and the X-labs being mentioned.

The New Order storyline was followed up in Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus which was released in late 2017.

Sources

Notes

References

  • Official id Software website