The general layout and look of the level was inspired by a photo of Noble and Maersk Drilling oil platform. I obviously took some artistic liberties, as I have never been to an oilrig and – as I can imagine the vast majority of people playing this map – have no clue about the functions of most of the structures on it. Below is a comparison of this photo with its re-imagination in the Build engine, taken from a similar perspective:
Maersk Innovator drilling platform (source: Splash247.com)
Build recreation of the oil drilling platform in "Der Zorn Gottes"
As for the gameplay itself, a huge credit is due to Sanek for his BattleDuke mod, which – despite a pretty simple concept – introduces a kind of new type of gameplay into Duke, more oppressive and requiring more strategic thinking from the player, often resorting to techniques such as luring the monsters around or lining them up to incite “infighting” between them.
BattleDuke 2, level 3: "Choking City", authored by Sanek
The level’s mood, which is mostly dictated by the type of the sky used and its palette, composed together with the strong white mist obstructing the view in the distance – and its sudden change at the culminating point of the map – was inspired by Werner Herzog movie Lektionen in Finsternis (1992), a document exploring the burning oil fields in post-Gulf war Kuwait (which I admittedly have not seen yet).
"Lektionen in Finsternis" by Werner Herzog movie poster
Accordingly, the map’s title was based on another Werner Herzog movie, Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes (1979) and translates to “The Wrath of God”. To complete this chain of German cultural references, the music for both the main menu and the level was picked as two well-known, classical pieces by German composers, both sounding very grandiose, epic and majestic:
- Ride of the Valkyries by Richard Wagner as the soundtrack for the map,
- Thus Spake Zarathustra by Richard Strauss for the main menu music.
The use of Ride of the Valkyries additionally brings the connection with its probably most well-known incorporation in popular culture, in the helicopter scene of Francis Ford Coppola Apocalypse Now (1979) – considering the fact that in this map you will also get to fly a helicopter. This was also re-used in a similar fashion in Duke Nukem Forever, during the chapter The Mighty Foot.
