Bethesda Takes a Stance on The New Colossus’ “Not My America” Ad

Gearing up for the release of the Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus at the end of the month, Bethesda kicked off a new marketing campaign and tweeted a video with a hashtag #NoMoreNazis and featuring slogans such as “Not My America” and “Make America Nazi-Free Again”. As Realgear reported, the publisher faced a barrage of criticism.

Gearing up for the release of the Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus at the end of the month, Bethesda kicked off a new marketing campaign and tweeted a video with a hashtag #NoMoreNazis and featuring slogans such as “Not My America” and “Make America Nazi-Free Again”. As Realgear reported, the publisher faced a barrage of criticism.

Despite the fact that the Wolfenstein series has been around for quite some time, Bethesda had to defend the content of the Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus. The studio faced the challenging mission of convincing all those angry folks who have condemned the game as promoting violence, Nazi-killing language, and accused Bethesda of creating an ad that refers to the political situation in the United States, that these arguments are groundless.

Speaking with GamesIndustry, the Bethesda Vice President of PR and Marketing, Pete Hines tried to clear up the confusion. He said that “It’s disturbing that the game can be considered a controversial political statement at all.”

Mr. Hines revealed that the story and the setting of the Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus was plotted during the development of The New Order. Therefore, neither Bethesda nor the developer MachineGames were able to predict that The New Colossus release would coincide with the complicated turn of events in the United States.

He defined it as a “pure coincidence” that Nazis are marching in the streets of America this year” and made it clear that “When it comes to Nazis, you can put us [Bethesda-Ed] down in the ‘against’ column.”

Bethesda representative went on to say that “Wolfenstein has been a decidedly anti-Nazi series since the first release more than 20 years ago. We don’t feel it’s a reach for us to say Nazis are bad and un-American, and we’re not worried about being on the right side of history here.”

Interestingly enough, Bethesda has never had to explain why the entire Wolfenstein The New Order chapter is based around the Polish-American protaginist “B.J.” Blazkowicz infiltrating a Nazi concentration camp. It does not look like the Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus will “shy away from what the game is about”

Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus launches across all platforms on October 27th. Its Switch release is planned for 2018. If you have missed the latest trailer Bethesda has published, you can see it below.

Andrew is arguably the geekiest member of our team. He has a knack for new gaming hardware and awesome gadgets. Although Overwatch is his current favorite, he thinks the Counter Strike Global Offensive is the best shooter of all times. He is constantly hunting for news about new hero releases and patches. Andrew believes that playing video games is not just a hobby but a way of life. He regards his job at RealGear as a way of helping fellow gamers make the most of their gameplay by writing reviews about the hardware he uses and the FPS/ RTS he plays.

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