Developers like iD Software and 3D Realms are remembered very fondly by many for the popular first person titles they put out at the time such asWolfenstein 3D, Doom, andRise of the Triad. It turns out thatWolfenstein 3DandRise of the Triadhave a much closer connection than just 3D Realms (known then as Apogee Software), as 3D Realm’s Scott Miller has revealed thatRise of the Triadactually started out as a sequel to the trailblazing World War II FPS.
According to Scott Miller onIGN Unfiltered, Apogee Software originally brought together a team of modders to work on aWolfenstein 3Dexpansion pack. After work on that was complete and Tom Hall left iD Software, Apogee brought on Tom Hall, and had him lead that team in designing aWolfenstein 3Dsequel.
This initially resulted inWolfenstein: Rise of the Triad,which revealed that the Triad were the real villains behind Hitler and had players take them down. Unfortunately, iD Software pulled out of the agreement for Apogee to use theWolfensteinIP on that game eight months into development, so the game was reworked into theRise of the Triadwe know today:
“The game was going to be calledWolfenstein: Rise of the Triad.It was going to be this continuation to where Hitler was just the puppet all along, but there was this triad, a sort of cult of background leaders who were involved with all these things. id Software was like, ‘Boom, we’re in on this.’ We had an agreement, it was going along, and about eight months into it, they decided to cancel the agreement.
They had the rights to do that. I think they felt like our game was going to maybe butt heads withDooma little too much and they didn’t want that. That’s why if you look at theRise of the Triadwe came out with, there’s a lot ofWolfensteinelements in there because we basically had to use all those assets we had already made.”
Fortunately, both theWolfensteinandRise of the Triadproved to be successful in their own rights later on. TheWolfensteinseries is going strong under MachineGames and Bethesda today, with the latest title beingWolfenstein II: The New Colossus. Meanwhile,Rise of the Triadreceived a remake on PCcourtesy of Interceptor Entertainment in 2013.
You can check out the part of IGN Unfiltered where Scott Miller reveals this information below. The latestRise of the Triadtitle is currenlty available on PC, whileWolfenstein II: The New Colossusis available on PC, PS4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch.
