Wolfenstein 2 voice actors Brian Bloom and Nina Franoszek have discussed the game’s controversial marketing, which has drawn parallels between the game’s Nazi-occupied America and real-world America’s politics.
Wolfenstein 2‘s most recent ads have encouraged players to “Make America Nazi-Free Again,” a clear play on Donald Trump’s presidential slogan, along with including the hashtag #NotMyAmerica. This marketing angle has proven to be divisive, with detractors condemning publisher Bethesda for the comparison between current-world politics and Nazi Germany, while others have praised the company for addressing the elephant in the room in a post-Charlottesville world.
Also: It Would Be Weird if Wolfenstein 2 Wasn’t Political
Now the game’s voice actors have spoken out about this marketing tactic. Speaking on the Donkey Cons Artists podcast Bloom, who plays hero B.J. Blazkowicz, and Nina Franoszek, who plays its main antagonist Frau Engel, opened up about their personal thoughts on the game’s marketing. Bloom distanced his performance in the game with its ad campaign, saying that the only relevance Wolfenstein 2 has to real history “is that Nazis are bad guys.”
Read his comments in full below:
“The only thing [the new game] has in common with anything in history is that the Nazis are bad guys, and I hope and think and thought and still do that we all agree. It’s nice that you can jump behind the barrel and be B.J. and although it’s complex, it’s not complicated. Through his barrel and sensibilites and belt-fed diplomacy do his best to solve this problem. It’s awesome to be involved in that and wherever it crosses with what’s happening currently, that was not what we were making or what I was doing when I put the dots on.”
Though Franoszek didn’t directly address its marketing, she did offer some context regards to her background and the impact it had on her role in the game. “My father is Jewish and my mother is German. In the past, there was a German general on the mother’s side and Jews trying to survive in Poland on the father’s side, so the subject was very close to me,” she said. “I’ve done a lot of research to understand my own past and been to Auschwitz and all that, but as an actor what really convinced me was the script. The script to me was very similar to Inglourious Basterds and I was given the opportunity to play sort of the Cristoph Waltz character as a female with a boytoy.”
Wolfenstein 2 will release on PS4, Xbox One, Switch and PC on October 27.
