A Huge Overhaul for Return to Castle Wolfenstein is Coming Soon

I have something of a confession to make, dear reader. I’ve never played any of the games released throughout the mid-1990s by the venerable development studio known as id Software. That is to say, I’ve never played the original Doom, its sequel, or any of the early titles in the Wolfenstein franchise. I blame that on two factors, namely pure laziness and my relatively young age. In my defense, when the original Doom hit store shelves, I wouldn’t exist for another two years. Beyond that, I wouldn’t truly become a PC gamer until my early teen years.

At any rate, I’m not here today to attempt to reminisce about what older people tell me were “the good old days” of PC gaming. Nor am I here to lament the fact that I haven’t played any of these titles despite owning every single one of them on Steam. Rather, I’m here today to tell you all that I can about a particularly interesting overhaul mod for 2001’s Return to Castle Wolfenstein.

For the uninitiated among our audience such as myself, it’s worth noting that Return to Castle Wolfenstein wasn’t actually developed or published by the aforementioned id Software. Many of id’s senior staff did oversee the game’s development and were subsequently credited as executive producers, though. As you might expect given the game’s age, many features that gamers have come to demand from modern games are missing from Return to Castle Wolfenstein. To name two examples, the game lacks support for widescreen displays, and its textures look absolutely ancient in comparison.

That’s precisely where the mod I want to tell you about comes in. Known as “RealRTCW,” it’s a community-developed overhaul mod for the game that adds such things as high-resolution textures, the missing widescreen support, and quite a lot more. It’ll be coming to Steam and ModDB on Thursday, October 15th, 2020. Thankfully, this mod will be available as a free update for everyone who owns Return to Castle Wolfenstein on Valve’s venerable digital distribution platform.

According to the mod’s Steam store page, RealRTCW doesn’t stop at just adding widescreen support and high-resolution textures for certain objects. To name a few examples of what else it brings to the metaphorical table, its developers state that the mod includes several new weapons, including a revolver, a Mosin-Nagant, an M97 trench gun, and many more. Additionally, the mod will overhaul and improve the textures for every existing weapon in the game.

You know, folks, writing this article made me realize that I don’t have a very strong excuse for still not having played any of the early PC games I’m often told I ought to play. As I alluded to earlier, I own virtually all of these games on Steam and, as such, have near-immediate on-demand access to them. To that end, I think I’m going to make a few additions to my “Retro Rewind” series of articles so that I can finally experience all these games. In the meantime, while I work on all those articles, you can add the RealRTCW mod to your Steam wishlist here. By doing so, you can be sure you’re notified as soon as the mod is out.