Wolfenstein Parody Thoughtfully Examines The Ethics Of Violence Against Nazis

You round a corner, finger wrapped around the trigger like a child clinging to a safety blanket. A nazi appears. You try to fire, but a mysterious force prevents you. Nazi magic? No, something much more sinister. You hear a voice: “Is it really OK to deny fascism a platform?” “Oh no,” you whisper. Then you die.

That’s the basic setup of Dialogue 3D, a gag game made by Ramsey Nasser from the open source version of Wolfenstein. Any time you try to fight a nazi, dialogue boxes with some variation on, “Is punching nazis really alright?” pop up. If you hit “yes” or “no” in time, you shoot. If not, you die. Even if you do manage to fire your gun before dying, you’ll take a lot of damage while struggling against wishy-washy Discourse Demons.

It’s almost like the game is trying to say that when Good Liberals spend their time infighting over whether it’s OK to slug somebody who’s in favor of ethnic fucking cleansing (a historically effective tactic for preventing racist dickheads from overtaking communities), they’re standing still. Naturally, people playing by a completely different set of rules will take advantage of this, and you’ll suffer.

Dialogue 3D is not exactly subtle! Nor is it entirely novel, given the number of memes going around about characters like Captain America and Indiana Jones punching nazis. Still, it’s a funny take on an exasperating subject, and goddamn could we all use a laugh right about now.