Wolfenstein II creative director on making sure the game stayed authentic

A portion of a GamesBeat interview with Jens Matthies, creative director of Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus...

GamesBeat: What’s it been like being an expert on American culture?

Jens Matthies: Well, I think I’ve been that for a long time. It’s weird. You can never—I pay a lot of attention to the U.S. and always have. I think it’s because I’m such a huge consumer of American culture. But of course some things are always strange when you start spending significant amounts of time here. Not objectively strange, but strange from my perspective. Things you discover over time as you spend a lot of time in the U.S. and interact with Americans. Even so, it’s not like we know everything. Sometimes you have to consult with people to figure some stuff out.

GamesBeat: It looked like you spent some time in Texas.

Matthies: A bit, yeah. But more than that, we have — there are a number of Bethesda studios in Texas, especially id Software. To make the Texas segments as authentic as possible in terms of dialogue and characterizations, we consulted with Kevin Cloud at id, who’s very attuned to how things used to work. He consulted on the script and that led to some changes. The actor we cast for Rick, B.J.’s father, Glenn Morshower, grew up just outside Dallas and was very — he was around when people from this era were around. He was also operating as a consultant on the characters.

GamesBeat: You had lots of ways to stay authentic, but still look at a culture from the outside.

Matthies: Yeah, yeah. But it depends, too, on — I think there are a lot of human universals. It’s hard to say, of course. It’s not as if I have a high degree of familiarity with every culture on the planet. But at least there are many universals between northern Europe and the U.S. I think if you go for those universals, which we tend to do when we think about our characters, it doesn’t become that big of a gap to bridge. But we’re constantly talking to people and looking for ways to improve and make it feel more authentic.