CALL TO ACTION

How COD’s second studio escaped Infinity Ward’s shadow

The Gray Matter bundle is a cosmetic purchase available for 1,600 COD Points in Black Ops IIII. It’s as mundane as it sounds—you get to unlock a fancy reactive camo effect for your weapons, but ultimately it’s just another pack in a multiplayer service game. Yet it’s also a tiny tribute, to a tiny studio that exerted an invisible influence on Treyarch during the most critical period in its history.

Gray Matter Interactive was the developer behind Return to Castle Wolfenstein. In the ’90s, it had made the Redneck Rampage games: Sweary, gory, and self-consciously controversial first-person shooters that achieved the highest honour of the time—impressing id Software.

To Gray Matter, id entrusted BJ Blazkowicz and the daunting task of updating Wolfenstein 3D—an FPS so rudimentary it had no ceilings or floors—for a new millennium. The studio leaned hard into the occult elements id had only alluded to, reimagining the series as a pulp adventure. The initial demo even included an alarm sound from Raiders Of The Lost Ark.

Played today, Return to Castle Wolfenstein marks a clear transition point for the FPS genre. In its early levels, castle corridors and secret rooms evoke Doom and Quake. Then, as it breaks out into the German countryside, it predicts the stealth and freedom of movement to come in Far Cry. Finally, it enters the bombed-out ruins of Kugelstadt, realising the cautious house-to-house combat Medal of Honor had reached for on the PlayStation.