What you need to know
- Wolfenstein: Youngblood is a first-person shooter which should launch in July.
- The game takes place many years after the events of Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus.
- Unfortautnely, it looks like the title features pay-to-win microtransactions.
- You can preorder it for $30 on Amazon.
Updated June 13, 2019: Wolfenstein: Youngblood's social media page said that the microtransactions are cosmetic only. This is contradictory to what MachineGames senior game designer Andreas Ojerfors said. The social media team alleges that you can't "purchase weapon or ability upgrades with real money... As you play, you... collect in-game currency called silver to upgrade your equipment." Silver can't be purchased with gold bars. It's unclear why the game designer is saying the opposite.
Wolfenstein: Youngblood is an upcoming co-op first-person shooter from MachineGames. The team successfully rebooted the Wolfenstein franchise and managed to tell powerful stories through Wolfenstein: The New Order and Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus. The studio's new game seems to take a similar approach, even though it's a little lighthearted in terms of dialogue.
While microtransactions aren't that common in single-player games, they have started to become the norm in recent months. For example, Ubisoft's Far Cry New Dawn featured pay-to-win microtransactions where you could purchase a powerful weapon for your hard-earned currency. Without it, I thought it was impossible to progress further. Unfortunately, it seems like Wolfenstein: Youngblood also features them.
According to a report by VG247, you have the ability to purchase "gold bars with real money." The gold bars can be used to upgrade weapons and slaughter enemies with ease. You can also earn these upgrades through in-game coins, but it's unclear how hard it is to find them.
As well as skins and emotes, the game allows you to spend coins you find dotted around the levels to unlock weapon upgrades and attachments. However, you can skip this process entirely by purchasing gold bars with real money, which you can then use to shortcut through these upgrades.
Let's hope that they don't require significant grinding like Far Cry New Dawn. However, only time will tell. The title launches next month so we should know soon enough. MachineGames senior game designer Andreas Ojerfors didn't think they were a big deal.
I've been playing through the game at work for the last two weeks and I haven't done any microtransactions. You don't really need to, but they are there if you want to, if you want to speed things up. But I never felt the need to do that. When I play the game it doesn't even cross my mind.
How do you feel about pay-to-win microtransactions being part of single-player games? Do they impact gameplay? Let us know. Since it's a co-op shooter, gamers may feel compelled to upgrade their weapons early because they want to be the ones to kill more Nazis when playing with friends.
Find your father
Wolfenstein: Youngblood takes place years after Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus. Your father, B. J. Blazkowicz, has gone missing and it's up to you to find him and bring him back. This requires you to travel to Europe and take on even deadlier Nazis.
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