Wolfenstein: The New Blood announced, coming this May

Bethesda has a nice little surprise for gamers today with the announcement of a full-fledged prequel to last year’s excellent Wolfenstein reboot.

Developer MachineGames’ Wolfenstein: The Old Blood takes place before 2014’s The New Order, way before. Set in the days of WWII, The New Blood sends Blazkowicz on a two-part mission deep behind enemy lines. Part one is entitled ‘Rudi Jäger and the Den of Wolves‘ and sees the series hero braking into the iconic Castle Wolfenstein to take out a prison warden who’s got the top secret location of General Deathshead’s compound of terror. If you played the first game in the now-series, then you know that Deathshead isn’t the nicest of guys, and beating him would mean turning the tide of the war.

‘The Dark Secrets of Helga Von Schabbs’ is part 2’s title and sends B.J. to the city of Wulfburg, where he will have to go head to head with “an obsessed Nazi archaeologist is exhuming mysterious artifacts that threaten to unleash a dark and ancient power”. That sounds a lot like the plot of Return to Castle Wolfenstein, which was an excellent title all its own, and I’m pretty excited to see how the current fiction melds with the more overtly supernatural elements that Bethesda is teasing.

“Diving back into the world of Wolfenstein has really been fun for us,” said Jerk Gustafsson, executive producer at MachineGames. “We’ve enjoyed exploring the events leading up to The New Order. We think fans will really enjoy the story, all the action and, of course, jumping back into the combat with new weapons.”

Hopefully this isn’t the end of B.J.’s adventures against the Reich either, as there’s a heck of a lot of material to be explored, and the ending of The New Order definitely teased that there’s a lot more to be done.

A current-gen exclusive, Wolfenstein: The Old Blood hits the Xbox One, PS4, and PC on May 5th in digital downloadable form. Both parts are being sold together and will cost you $19.99 USD, which is also pretty great.