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Wolfenstein: The New Order delayed into 2014

Wolfenstein: The New Order, MachineGames revival of the classic shooter franchise, has been delayed from its tentative launch window of Q4 2013 into 2014, Bethesda Softworks VP of PR and Marketing Pete Hines told Polygon today.

Hines explained that several factors played into the studio’s decision to delay the game, including challenges associated with developing for current and next-gen simultaneously and the multitude of genres that MachineGames is incorporating into the traditionally shooter-centric series.

"Working on next-gen and current gen definitely has an impact, you’re developing for two different things," Hines said. "The fact that the next-gen stuff is still moving is also definitely a factor. But the most important thing was definitely just looking where it was at, what they needed to polish. Because it’s just not trying to be a shooter, because it’s trying to be a shooter that also has driving elements, story elements, narrative, stealth sections — each one of those has to be excellent. It’s not just like we’re making a shooter, where if the shooting is good, then all 16 hours of the game will be good because it’s all we’re doing.

"We didn’t just want to do a one-note Wolfenstein game," Hines added. "We wanted to make something that brought in all these elements, and as it turns out, the polish time you spend on the shooting stuff has no impact on what it feels like in the stealth part."

Hines emphasized that the game has been in development for quite some time at MachineGames — time that Bethesda doesn’t want to waste by not allowing the game to have the development time it needs.

"MachineGames has been working on this game for a while," Hines said. "You don’t want to waste all that time and effort for the sake of a couple of months, if a couple of months could make all of the difference in the world."

"This needs to be the best Wolfenstein game ever made, and you can’t shortcut that," Hines said. "It can’t have the same historical impact of Wolfenstein 3D, but it can be a better game."