Doom's style vs Quake 2 / 4

Avoozl said:

a lot of the weapon feel like doubles with slight differences

Two nailguns in Quake are roughly comparable to pistol/chaingun in Doom, because one is clearly better than the other. The SG/SSG pair is typical for id. Grenade launcher is too unique to be superceded by the rocket launcher.

I can't see much difference between those two types of tech bases to be honest. It seems the biggest difference truly is the sky color. So Doom equals "tech bases with grey sky around" and Quake 2 equals "tech bases with orange sky around" (assuming we're talking about the non-infected tech bases).

The more I think about it, the more I'm inclined towards the opinion that ID decided to put the game within the Quake franchise because it was "the thing" at that particular time period. People were sort of bored with a wave of "yet another Doom title / conversion" so ID wanted to make things fresh. I remember a Polish gaming magazine commenting on Doom 64 along the lines of: "Dear people at ID, please spare us the ULTRA DOOM 2000 which probably comes next". It had nothing to do with Doom 64 being a bad game, it's just that it was too much. At least that's the impression I got from the reviews.

In other words, if Quake 2 had appeared a little earlier or later, it might as well have been another Doom title (and a good one too! :D). It was a matter of changing a few lines in the plot synopsis and adding a pentagram texture here or there.

printz said:

No it's not, especially between Doom 2 and Quake 2. Seriously, I felt at times like I was fighting Cacodemons and Revenants with the SSG in Quake 2. Often I feel like Quake 2 is a rip-off of Doom 2.

Okay then, Half-Life is also a Doom game. Actually, Half-Life feels more like Doom than Quake 2 does, at least it has monsters that go down quick, versus everything from a lowly zombie up tanking damage.

Patrol1985 said:

The more I think about it, the more I'm inclined towards the opinion that ID decided to put the game within the Quake franchise because it was "the thing" at that particular time period.

Well, sort of. But only because the names they originally thought of for Quake II were already taken by something else, or some shit like that, so they just fell back on the Quake name out of necessity. In other words, Quake II was supposed to be the start of something else entirely, unrelated to Doom or Quake. And guess what?

The style shows this in several ways.

Avoozl said:

Quake 2's techbases are more alien I guess one could say.

How can the player in Quake2 read all signs and enemy speech in English when they are alien? I never understood that. At least Quake4 had the cybernetic implants to explain that. But the player in Quake2 was not stroggified.

See this screenshot to illustrate my question: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-faXrHI2URvQ/UhA38UI3zzI/AAAAAAAAiRE/99bNwH1ZPIs/s1600/Quake_II_%28PC%29_24.jpg

neubejiita said:

How can the player in Quake2 read all signs and enemy speech in English when they are alien? I never understood that. At least Quake4 had the cybernetic implants to explain that. But the player in Quake2 was not stroggified.

See this screenshot to illustrate my question: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-faXrHI2URvQ/UhA38UI3zzI/AAAAAAAAiRE/99bNwH1ZPIs/s1600/Quake_II_%28PC%29_24.jpg

I'd still say that looks undeniably alien. I always thought it was an attempt to show that the words were in a language other than Earthican, but that the player could somehow make them out.

This was probably aided by the fact that, when I was a kid, I didn't notice that they were legible, and only slowly realized that they were real words - it kind of felt like learning a language.

Also, the configuration of the techbases in Q2 makes it clear that they aren't for human use at all, whereas in Doom the computers are mostly a backdrop. I.e. they were there when the demons came, and were either shoved to the sides, or ignored completely.

I always assumed it was because they're not alien, at least not by the time you reach them. Most of them are Stroggified humans and presumably the Strogg hadn't perfected the translator implant yet so they had to accommodate them by putting up signs in English.

neubejiita said:

How can the player in Quake2 read all signs and enemy speech in English when they are alien? I never understood that. At least Quake4 had the cybernetic implants to explain that. But the player in Quake2 was not stroggified.

See this screenshot to illustrate my question: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-faXrHI2URvQ/UhA38UI3zzI/AAAAAAAAiRE/99bNwH1ZPIs/s1600/Quake_II_%28PC%29_24.jpg

i'm not sure i get your point? the sign clearly reads Control, does it not?

Doomhuntress said:

i'm not sure i get your point? the sign clearly reads Control, does it not?

The point is that the sign was made by aliens, for their own benefit, on their own planet. While there are semi-plausible reasons for the aliens to be speaking English on their own planet, at no point in the game is this oddity actually explained or even referred to.

neubejiita said:

How can the player in Quake2 read all signs and enemy speech in English when they are alien?

I hope you're not trying to prove that techbases in Quake 2 are not alien techbases.

Da Werecat said:

I hope you're not trying to prove that techbases in Quake 2 are not alien techbases.

Obviously they're not, but ask yourself this question: if you didn't know the general premise of Quake 2, and had to guess on your own, based only on what you see in the game, would you consider those installations human or alien? ;)

I didn't know the premise when I played Quake 2 for the first time. Didn't seem too earthly to me, although I didn't care that much.

Quake 2 has an interesting architectural style. Lots of non-orthogonal shapes, but still rather mundane.