Posted January 28, 2023
Shadow Man: From what I can gather, one is the Bethesda repackage and the other is the original without Spear Of Destiny but whose release is inextricably linked to the standalone Spear Of Destiny because they were sold together as a bundle.
I just reinstalled both versions and this does seem to be the case. The smaller one (12MB) is just Wolf3D without the expansion. The larger one (18MB) is Wolf3D + Spear, but without the mission packs. The game and expansion are installed to the same folder and there's a launcher which allows you to select which you want to play. I didn't do a checksum between them, but at least the file sizes between the two sets of wolf3d.exe and *.wl6 files are the same - so it doesn't appear that the Bethesda release changed anything in the game itself. The standalone Spear of Destiny installer does include both mission packs, as before. It installs to a separate folder and does not require Wolf3D to be installed. Just for kicks, I tried copying the "M2" and "M3" mission pack folders into the Bethesda Wolf3D + Spear version. The new combined launcher does not recognize the mission packs (it looks to be a hard coded .exe file with no way to add entries to it).
I also noticed the game page (https://www.gog.com/en/game/wolfenstein_3d) does not mention the mission packs. So I'm not sure whether someone who buys the game now will still get them. I seem to remember they were made by a third-party, so Bethesda may not be able to distribute them due to the original contract terms.
Post edited January 28, 2023 by Ryan333