A Flash in the Dark

The Penny-Arcade Report has a brief chat with Tim Willits on the subject of Doom 3 BFG Edition, covering the console version's performance, the return of the original Doom 3 team for the Lost Mission, and the shocking(?) truth behind the original, duct-tapeless flashlight.

Personally, I agree with the reporter here. I never found Doom 3 excessively dark, and the flashlight was never really an issue to me. I know I'm out on my own here, but at no point in Doom 3 are you being attacked in pitch darkness. Even if you're crap at it and let that guy with the lamp die before you reach the ladder at that one bit, you can still follow the glow from the Imp fireballs.

The onboard flashlight should be togglable in the options menu. Now I know console games don't have options, but this would satisfy both types of players.

Though it was an interesting design decision to take the player's light away under certain conditions, there are other ways to play with that. You can require the player to recharge the flashlight at power stations, or have enemies attracted to light. I didn't really have a problem with the way they implemented it, though.

scalliano said:

I never found Doom 3 excessively dark, and the flashlight was never really an issue to me.

Same here.

The internet is a bunch of thoughtless bandwagonners. It's the same reason why people don't like 3D castlevanias after the first.

Epyo said:

The internet is a bunch of thoughtless bandwagonners. It's the same reason why people don't like 3D castlevanias after the first.

Nah, we didn't like those because they sucked.

I dunno if this has to do with me only playing the XBox version, but I remember various places where walls were pitch black even when shining the flashlight directly on it. I'd disagree with the contention that Doom 3 wasn't too dark, but I don't remember it bothering me too much, because monsters were pretty rare and didnt do much damage, ammo was a plenty, and imp fireballs were easy to dodge.

The PA Report said:
"The flashlight is mounted to your body armor in Doom 3: BFG, so you can finally use it while a gun is in your hands, although the battery life is limited."

Heh - first encountered that game mechanism in the old Zork text adventures.

40oz said:

I dunno if this has to do with me only playing the XBox version, but I remember various places where walls were pitch black even when shining the flashlight directly on it. I'd disagree with the contention that Doom 3 wasn't too dark, but I don't remember it bothering me too much, because monsters were pretty rare and didnt do much damage, ammo was a plenty, and imp fireballs were easy to dodge.

The Xbox version wasn't the same, a lot of the levels were modified to better suit the limitations of the hardware. It was pretty good considering, though. I got a kick out of the co-op mode that it had.

It was a technology limitation that we designed into the game.

Well i'll be... God. Damn. All this years i thought that it was bold design decision, and now THIS!? Another "technology limitation"?



Me sad ;_;