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Megamur
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I thought I'd create a thread where people can offer their thoughts on some of the more perplexing, unexplained elements of DOOM.

This came about from me wondering exactly how regular firearms can kill supernatural (immortal?) beings like demons, and it made me think...maybe they don't. At least, maybe they don't "die" in the way we know it. Perhaps the demons are merely "disabled," their bodies riddled with so many holes that they just shut down. There's no real "death," but they can't pursue you further until Arch-Viles can reassemble their flesh into working order.

There's some flaws to this theory, of course, most significantly enemies that explode and leave nothing behind, like Pain Elementals and Lost Souls. Revenants also complicate the matter, with the game manuals specifically referring to them as dead demons that have been wired new combat gear and sent back into battle (or maybe that enforces my theory...).

I also felt this "not-death" concept helped explain how you can "die" in Hell. It's a place of eternal torment, after all--the demons wouldn't want to release you from suffering--so perhaps, when your health counter reaches 0, you just collapse, not quite dead but unable to go on. This is an especially awful (and Hell-appropriate) fate if you're taken out via being gibbed, with your body splattered into bits and strewn across the ground, not "dead" but too broken and mangled to continue moving....


Yes, I know I'm over-thinking this. It's what you do when you get really involved in a series. :)
Old Post 12-19-11 03:55 #
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Technician
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No, the demons are not really super natural. They are creatures created by aliens to destroy humanity in an inter-galactic war.

This is common knowledge.
Old Post 12-19-11 04:48 #
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PRIMEVAL
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Perhaps the demons really do die, but are just expendable creations that constantly get recreated into another body. Soulless, nearly mindless drones.

And you can die in Hell, you just start over with a pistol to increase your torment ;)

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Old Post 12-19-11 07:40 #
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DoomUK
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ITT: We attempt to make sense of stuff that was never meant to be thought about too hard.

While we're at it, how can Doomguy carry 8 weapons simultaneously, where does he store all his ammo and how does his chainsaw never run out of fuel?
Old Post 12-19-11 09:31 #
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Maes
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DoomUK said:
While we're at it, how can Doomguy carry 8 weapons simultaneously, where does he store all his ammo and how does his chainsaw never run out of fuel?


Hammerscape. Oh and he runs at 25 MPH. All the time.
Old Post 12-19-11 11:46 #
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Vermil
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I've always found it interesting that Doom's demons are and can be portrayed as both simple minded and intelligent at the same time, both in character and also in maps.
Old Post 12-19-11 12:27 #
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DuckReconMajor
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Where do demons go when they die?

Play Episode 3 on Nightmare!
Old Post 12-19-11 13:59 #
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Megamur
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Technician said:
No, the demons are not really super natural. They are creatures created by aliens to destroy humanity in an inter-galactic war.

This is common knowledge.


This is part of the reason I tried to come up with a theory, just to spite those stupid books. :)



PRIMEVAL said:
And you can die in Hell, you just start over with a pistol to increase your torment ;)


Cute, I like that. :)



Vermil said:
I've always found it interesting that Doom's demons are and can be portrayed as both simple minded and intelligent at the same time, both in character and also in maps.


Very true. They're apparently intelligent enough to build cybernetic monsters and set traps for you, yet also just seem like animals when they attack. I always guessed the demons you encounter are merely dumb soldiers and the intelligent ones that pull the strings remain behind the scenes.
Old Post 12-20-11 02:33 #
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DarkJedi188
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As an atheist I perceive all of the enemies in the game as invading extra-terrestrials who can be just as susceptible to death as us Earthlings, regardless of technological advancements.
Old Post 12-20-11 03:40 #
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Megamur
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But it's a fictional game. Hell and demons can't even exist in fiction?
Old Post 12-20-11 04:54 #
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lupinx-Kassman
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I like absurd threads like these. It is always more fun to over-analyze stuff than be boring and just say "it's a game", so here is a puzzler to wrap your head around:

Zombies of all types have infinite ammo until you kill them and take their weapon. Okay, maybe the stars aligned and they all happened to have a specific amount of ammo left after you had killed them. Figure this out then:

You kill a shotgun guy and take his shotgun afterward. An arch-vile comes and revives the shotgun guy, so you kill him again and take his...duplicate shotgun?
Old Post 12-20-11 05:25 #
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kmxexii
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Demons are quite supernatural in Doom and Doom II. The concept of them as space-faring (or aliens) didn't really take off until add-ons, particularly TNT-Evilution, which is canon as Final Doom. Both Perdition's Gate and Hell to Pay played with this concept as well.

Here is an attempt at rationalizing the supernatural aspect, which cribs a bit from Terry Pratchett's "Dungeon Dimensions" concept (itself a take on H.P. Wuvcraft's eldritch abominations, among other things). The place demons come from (Hell) is a chaotic state of existence that lacks the rigidity of our own reality. Entering out dimension causes them to become subject to its laws. Furthermore, Doomguy as an emissary to Hell is able to inflict our reality upon them, much in the same way that the demons brought their own reality to Earth and Deimos (well, Deimos being in Hell and becoming corrupted).

This ability for the marine to bring our reality to Hell is why he can locate such bizarre things as ammo and armor in a dimension that would otherwise lack them. The marine desires ammo, and the chaos of Hell alters itself to his expectations, as Doomguy is more "real" than the pandemonium that surrounds him. His own dogged determination allows him to return to life, refusing to accept his own death when slain, though he returns to life with equipment that feels second-nature to him (his aidearm). Even the slightest taint (demonic presence in Phobos) allows him to exercise this advantage.

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Last edited by kmxexii on 12-20-11 at 05:39
Old Post 12-20-11 05:29 #
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Phobus
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I quite liie kmxexii's theory, as that would also answer why zombies that look one specific way all have the same weapon and how, when resurrected, they get back up holding a gun again - they expect it to be there and so it is. Much like Orkz in Warhammer 40k.
Old Post 12-20-11 08:51 #
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Avoozl
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lupinx-Kassman said:
An arch-vile comes and revives the shotgun guy, so you kill him again and take his...duplicate shotgun?
Maybe they used their dark magic to give them a new one. :P
Old Post 12-20-11 09:24 #
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Mr. T
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Nightmare is the real DOOM. The demons don't die, you can only delay their progress - until you destroy Satan and Hell at the same time (ROFL)
Old Post 12-20-11 10:42 #
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DuckReconMajor
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Mr. T said:
Nightmare is the real DOOM. The demons don't die, you can only delay their progress - until you destroy Satan and Hell at the same time (ROFL)
:|
Megamur said:
But it's a fictional game. Hell and demons can't even exist in fiction?
If this were the answer, there would be no need for this thread now would there?
Old Post 12-20-11 11:45 #
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DoomUK
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lupinx-Kassman said:
Figure this out then:

You kill a shotgun guy and take his shotgun afterward. An arch-vile comes and revives the shotgun guy, so you kill him again and take his...duplicate shotgun?

Simple: all of the events in Doom are a Plato's Cave/The Matrix-esque illusion that Doomguy is subjected to. Non-organic matter such as shotguns get respawned in the same manner as flesh and blood because that's how the artificial reality was designed.
Old Post 12-20-11 12:26 #
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Sergeant_Mark_IV
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I totally disagree. Why everyone thinks that Demons and Hell are exactly like you hear about in the bible?

I don't see the Demons in Doom as something supernatural. They are living beasts, with blood flowing in their veins (if your theory is right, and they are immortal, why they need blood?) they need to eat to live, etc.

The Hell in Doom has nothing to do with the christian hell, or any hell equivalent of any other religion. It's just a different planet in other dimension (Maybe, it's just another planet the same dimension as ours, just so far away, and the teleports are not interdimensional gates, just worm holes), and I think that all the pentagrams and crosses that you see, are just something familiar.
Old Post 12-20-11 13:38 #
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kmxexii
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Sergeant_Mark_IV said:
I totally disagree. Why everyone thinks that Demons and Hell are exactly like you hear about in the bible?

I don't see the Demons in Doom as something supernatural. They are living beasts, with blood flowing in their veins (if your theory is right, and they are immortal, why they need blood?) they need to eat to live, etc.

The Hell in Doom has nothing to do with the christian hell, or any hell equivalent of any other religion. It's just a different planet in other dimension (Maybe, it's just another planet the same dimension as ours, just so far away, and the teleports are not interdimensional gates, just worm holes), and I think that all the pentagrams and crosses that you see, are just something familiar.


The Perdition's Gate story takes the Stargate approach and describes demons as an alien race that invaded the Earth at some point in time in the past, with the experience entering the folklore of the descendants of the survivors, which is a decent justification for their resemblance to classical notions of hellspawn and satanic iconography.

I mean, it doesn't really explain what the scientific basis for burning, flying skulls that bleed is, or how some floating one-eyed monstrosity can birth an infinitude of these things. Or Revenants, which are clearly human skeletons in appearance.

I'm gonna side with the supernatural explanation if I side with any explanation at all.

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Old Post 12-20-11 13:54 #
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GoatLord
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DarkJedi188 said:
As an atheist I perceive all of the enemies in the game as invading extra-terrestrials who can be just as susceptible to death as us Earthlings, regardless of technological advancements.


This is something I struggled with for a long time. When I first started playing Doom, it was easy to imagine them as literal demons from Hell, but by the time I decided on Atheism, I had to rework that. These days I think of them as low-intellect defense mechanisms created by an unseen race of cruel, planet-conquering aliens. Not dissimilar to the book, actually, as silly as they were. I don't like to see the demons as the invaders themselves, because they're so primitive and and bestial. They're like the pieces of the most barbaric game of chess ever made. Once that became part of my personal Doom philosophy, I began to see the maps as just another game created by these aliens; a deadly maze in which humans are mice but the cheese is just another trap. So I guess the aliens are really just bored, sadistic star travelers who torture the residents of other worlds for their own amusement. While it's not all that likely to happen, I really hope this will be the basis for the new Doom movie, if it even gets produced, because that's a much more compelling storyline than fucking mutants.
Old Post 12-20-11 19:16 #
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purist
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I don't see why you have to re-write fiction to align it with your theological leanings. I consider myself agnostic but I can accept Hell and Demons in a videogame without having to justify their existence in the absence of scientific evidence. It's called a suspension of belief and the same goes for horror literature, surrealist paintings and science fiction movies for example.
Old Post 12-20-11 19:23 #
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Mr. Freeze
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GoatLord said:
I MUST REIMAGINE SETTINGS THAT CLASH WITH MY PERSONAL WORLDVIEW BECAUSE I DO NOT HAVE AN IMAGINATION


I can't wait until the day you start playing D&D.
Old Post 12-21-11 02:01 #
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Technician
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GoatLord said:


This is something I struggled with for a long time. When I first started playing Doom, it was easy to imagine them as literal demons from Hell, but by the time I decided on Atheism, I had to rework that. These days I think of them as low-intellect defense mechanisms created by an unseen race of cruel, planet-conquering aliens. Not dissimilar to the book, actually, as silly as they were. I don't like to see the demons as the invaders themselves, because they're so primitive and and bestial. They're like the pieces of the most barbaric game of chess ever made. Once that became part of my personal Doom philosophy, I began to see the maps as just another game created by these aliens; a deadly maze in which humans are mice but the cheese is just another trap. So I guess the aliens are really just bored, sadistic star travelers who torture the residents of other worlds for their own amusement. While it's not all that likely to happen, I really hope this will be the basis for the new Doom movie, if it even gets produced, because that's a much more compelling storyline than fucking mutants.
I'm not big on faith, but I can still suspend my disbelief when playing a video game.
Old Post 12-21-11 02:38 #
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DarkJedi188
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Megamur said:
But it's a fictional game. Hell and demons can't even exist in fiction?

Well, in the original storyline it was told that the UAC discovered that "Hell" exists in the region of our planet Mars, but in a different universe. Rather than saying that it exists deep underground beneath the earth that we walk on, contrary to what the Greek mythology or the Christian Bible teaches people.
So in order to get to "Hell", humans have opened up something like a "wormhole" or "black hole" to get to a mirrored version of our solar system on some other side of the universe.

And my explanation for the ammunition and weaponry being present inside "Hell" is that the monsters have looted it during their invasions out of curiosity, and also because they needed some kind of prizes for their battles to have a sense of pride.
Old Post 12-21-11 03:45 #
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40oz
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Mr. T said:
Nightmare is the real DOOM.


I agree. I've used this theory to explain why there are so many dead players left lying around in Knee-Deep in the Dead. Imps and zombie men are NOT that hard. But once fast and respawning monsters are on, shit gets real. I assume that's most likely what the UAC staff had to deal with at the peak of the alien invasion.
Old Post 12-21-11 08:21 #
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Gez
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I'm atheist. I don't believe people have "souls", the body is the sole receptacle for the mind. There's no afterlife for the mind. Gods and demons are all fictional concepts meant to give ourselves an inflated sense of importance and a measure of comfort in the face of bereavement.

I can still accept that the monsters in Doom are demons, possessed soldiers, and that these burning skulls are exactly what it says on the tin: the lost souls of the damned.

Why? Because it's a work of fiction. I can play D&D without believing that elves and dwarves exist for real. I can read about ancient mythologies without having to sperg out Stargate-like explanation making Odin, Jupiter and Osiris into visitors from Tau Ceti. I can enjoy sci-fi full of faster-than-light travel even if it doesn't make sense. In short, I don't need to rationalize stories into possibly taking place in real life.

Why do zombies have infinite ammo? Devil magic. Why do arch-viles equip them with new guns? Devil magic. They'd hardly be useful little zombies if they couldn't fire, would they?
Old Post 12-21-11 08:58 #
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DuckReconMajor
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I don't see the big problem with people wanting to rework their understanding of a work of fiction to better fit their worldview. In the end you're going to enjoy a work of fiction more if somehow it "could" be real. So if that takes some extra explaining, so be it. That's what this thread is about.

The other thing that annoys me is that people will say "it's fiction what's wrong with that" but then when CSI or something comes on and someone does some "bad science" everyone is quick to criticize.
Old Post 12-21-11 22:52 #
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PRIMEVAL
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Being a Christian, I can accept that Doom doesn't portray the Christian Hell (not that the Bible goes into great detail about it). While it has similar aspects here and there, Hell, according to the Bible, has no power over the mortal world. But the whole concept about Hell taking over the world, blood and guts just form out of walls, fire, smoke, and brimstone erupt from the ground, and just all around distortion of our reality is a really cool concept.

Then, if something like this does come to life, I guess we'd be thoroughly screwed! All of our theories (science and religious) will be completely shattered.

Seeing the Doom monsters as outer space aliens is just...silly to me, a real buzz kill. Seeing the story as monsters from Hell is a lot scarier than aliens with high-end technology. With Hell, there is no hope for mankind, the way their reality works is much different than ours, and they can do what they please. With 'aliens,' they can only do what our reality allows them to do, we can figure out things for ourselves and battle them. Similar to a discussion I've had with some friends about zombies: Act of God vs Disease/Virus.

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Old Post 12-21-11 23:35 #
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kristus
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I have a theory that the Heresiarch in Hexen actually was meant to be Korax, and the creature that ended up being Korax was going to be his steed.
Old Post 12-21-11 23:47 #
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DarkJedi188
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kristus said:
I have a theory that the Heresiarch in Hexen actually was meant to be Korax, and the creature that ended up being Korax was going to be his steed.

YES! I remember this exact theory being mentioned somewhere on this board around a year or 2 ago, and I fully agree with it by 100%.
I mean, from every single angle, the Korax sprites look more like an actual serpent rather than the one who is supposed to ride a serpent. While the Heresiarch and D'Sparil sprites are almost of the same height and both dressed in very similar robes.

Anyways, going back to DOOM...
I keep assuming that the zombiemen and former sergeants are being controlled by some kind of injected nanoprobes or microchips. Sort of like The Borg from the Star Trek series.
I like to think that they communicate with each other telepathically and/or via some kind of non-verbal psychic link, just like The Borg do.
While my explanation for their silly grunting noises is that that's how they breathe and how they try to intimidate their prey (i.e. the unassimilated human victims).

And the only real reason why I named my first publicly released WAD as "Demon Abundance" is because I needed something that starts with a "D" and conveniently replaces the title logo at the top of the mainmenu without appearing too long or larger than the original sprite.

That is all for now.
Old Post 12-22-11 03:20 #
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