I wrote 10 years ago that MachineGames did something almost beyond belief with Wolfenstein hero BJ Blazkowicz, turning him from an anonymous slab of bicep into a "magnificently human" character: a man clinging desperately to a dream that he knows in his soul has no happy ending." Wolfenstein: The New Order and its sequel, The New Colossus, were both ridiculously good: Fantastic shooters at the guns-and-guts level, elevated to greatness through their commitment to story and characters.

Pretty good marketing campaign, too.

Make America Nazi-Free Again. #NoMoreNazis #Wolf2 pic.twitter.com/52OESypw4POctober 5, 2017

Now, eight years after the last mainline Wolfenstein game, it looks like the series might finally be coming back to life. Windows Central reported a rumor today that Wolfenstein 3 is in development, coinciding with the Wolfenstein TV series being developed for Amazon that was announced in 2025.

That's thin by itself, but then Kotaku came along and said the same thing, citing its own sources: A new Wolfenstein game is happening.

It should come as no surprise, really: The game industry is built on recognizable brands and sequels, after all. But we've waited an unusually long time for this one. After The New Colossus in 2017, we got the spinoff Youngblood in 2019, which was very good but suffered for the absence of its anchor, and Cyberpilot, a VR game.

But then MachineGames switched over to other things: Some horsing around with Quake and Doom, and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle in 2024, which turned out to be a big hit. That success left me a little concerned that MachineGames would end up as 'the Indiana Jones studio,' a terrible waste of a developer that could be doing far better things with its time (which I admit is a very personal bias that also reflects my feelings on Arkane's Blade), and so I'm quite pleased that it's being given another shot at its best work.

Lotta things you can do with a hatchet... and a Nazi 😈 [4K60] - YouTube