Are the iwads in Doom 3: BFG Edition Modified?

Maes said:

After all, their uniforms look nothing like any actual SS or Wehrmacht uniforms. They always reminded me of RAF airmen or even the Philadelphia SWAT guys from Dawn Of The Dead

I always thought this myself. If someone just showed me the sprites without telling me what they were supposed to be, 'Nazi SS' wouldn't be one of my first answers. I'd probably say 'police'.

As for the offending textures, here's what I've just thrown together in the space of about 25 minutes:


There really is no excuse for what we got.

BaronOfStuff said:

There really is no excuse for what we got.

Perhaps censorship and P.C. requirements moved up the ante so much since the 1990s that they needed something not even remotely recognizable? After all, that imperial eagle and brown shirt are dead giveaways, and there's always the risk of clashing with some other nation's symbols (e.g. a plain white cross in various versions is used on many official Greek state symbols and ofc. in the army).

Sodaholic said:

Who seriously cares about the first two Dooms in the BFG edition beyond the excuse to whine about the changes, when most (likely all) people here already have the superior originals. The main focus of development was on Doom 3, that's what we should be focusing on when providing "critical analysis" (bitching and whining) of Doom 3 BFG Edition.

This will sound silly, but it undermines the artistic integrity of the original games. Sounds silly :) but it's how I feel about it.

I'm not upset or surprised though, but it bothers me that political correctness waters down so many things on the periphery of genuine issues.

Maes said:

Perhaps censorship and P.C. requirements moved up the ante so much since the 1990s that they needed something not even remotely recognizable? After all, that imperial eagle and brown shirt are dead giveaways, and there's always the risk of clashing with some other nation's symbols (e.g. a plain white cross in various versions is used on many official Greek state symbols and ofc. in the army).

Well, they could have used this logo then:

I wrote my review on Amazon here. Already got a semi-ignorant reply to it, heh.

Critical review != trolling.

Maes said:

After all, that imperial eagle and brown shirt are dead giveaways

The eagle predates the Nazis and I think it even continues use after the defeat of Nazi Germany. I don't particularly associate the eagle alone with Nazis, but maybe that's just me.

OK. Likewise, the swastika predates Nazis and isn't (alone) specific to them either, so I'll shut up now. :)

Mr. Chris said:

I wrote my review on Amazon here. Already got a semi-ignorant reply to it, heh.

Critical review != trolling.

Behehehe you were asking for it. Interesting that they removed Doom 3 from Steam and only have the BFG edition. I bought Doom 3 and Doom 1&2 individually on a old Steam account, should check and see if it got BFG'd.

Gez said:

Well, they could have used this logo then:

The Great Dictator would be proud. :D

I don't see the reason for them to cop out like this unless it was Bethesda's call. ID has been fighting this fight with Germany since 1992. You can still buy and download Wolf3D of PSN completely uncut, with Nazi propaganda in EVERY level. Why the need to censor three levels in a Doom game?

SweatyGremlins said:

I bought Doom 3 and Doom 1&2 individually on a old Steam account, should check and see if it got BFG'd.

No it won't, they don't get converted.

Sodaholic said:

Who seriously cares about the first two Dooms in the BFG edition beyond the excuse to whine about the changes, when most (likely all) people here already have the superior originals. The main focus of development was on Doom 3, that's what we should be focusing on when providing "critical analysis" (bitching and whining) of Doom 3 BFG Edition.

I don't know about you, but I'd rather not have to worry about newcomers to the community getting stuck with an edited Doom2.wad that might be incompatible with mods or multiplayer. Particularly now that they have this updated and "enhanced" version released, they're probably unlikely to keep the 1.9 versions easily available forever.

@Essel: That is probably my #1 issue I have with this, especially newcomers who come and can't play X or Y mod because of borked/missing resources or not able to play with anyone that doesn't have the "BFG'd" IWAD.

Id Software and/or Bethesda need to be publicly denounced for this horrendous POS, and withdrawing the original Doom 3 from Steam.

Mr. Chris said:

...especially newcomers who come and can't play X or Y mod because of borked/missing resources or not able to play with anyone that doesn't have the "BFG'd" IWAD.

That does sound messed up; id, the censoring shouldn't be done worldwide! Also, that'd be dissapointing. One person buys BFG Edition, then they try to connect to Zandronum/ZDaemon to see it won't let them, and the censoring is just for some pointless "+" symbol (I mean, the Red Cross...is seriously dissapointing) and for nazi stuff that they should just deal with.

I don't actually mind the Red Cross pill thing. It's just a minor cosmetic detail. The Wolf3D censorship is more of a problem, though.

Maes said:

After all, their uniforms look nothing like any actual SS or Wehrmacht uniforms.

This is true. They did however, have blond hair and blue eyes. I believe this has some sort of connection, although it still doesn't really give a reason to change the sprites.

esselfortium said:

I don't know about you, but I'd rather not have to worry about newcomers to the community getting stuck with an edited Doom2.wad that might be incompatible with mods or multiplayer. Particularly now that they have this updated and "enhanced" version released, they're probably unlikely to keep the 1.9 versions easily available forever.

Especially since the original Doom 3's been beheaded and silently removed from Steam and such, save for the $99 iD super pack, which might change.

There's no guarantee the original 1.9 will be around much longer, outside of those of us who already have it. Thank god for that patch, though. That might become a necessity in the future for the community.

Personally, I don't see why they couldn't have replaced the Wolfenstein SS guys with the Mutants from Wolf3d, on top of texture edits to remove the blatant nazi references. They're not wearing any official uniforms, they'll still functionally act the same.

They were lazy.

Gez said:

I don't actually mind the Red Cross pill thing.

Is there a legal reason red crosses can't be represented by everyone? Did Red Cross trademark the symbol? Otherwise what are the grounds to sue you for using it? Military and antiterrorist security?

printz said:

Is there a legal reason red crosses can't be represented by everyone? Did Red Cross trademark the symbol? Otherwise what are the grounds to sue you for using it? Military and antiterrorist security?

See their official reasoning here.

The unofficial reason probably has to do with this.

Will this not cause issues with ZDoom, Doomday, Zandronum modding, especially Wolfenstein TCs (IE WildWeasel's ww-nazis)?

Does Id not think of the consequences it will cause for the modding community? I doubt they will because they know it doesn't make them a profit.

This will cause issues. It's why some of us are concerned about it.

and, yeah, iD doesn't care. Kind of ironic since Bethesda supports modding, but they don't care either. Probably because they never released a multiplayer anything and thus it doesn't even occur to their minds.

Mr. Chris said:

Does Id not think of the consequences it will cause for the modding community? I doubt they will because they know it doesn't make them a profit.

It's not their concern, nor what the fuss is about. The kick in the teeth most of us are fucked off with is the blatant incompatibility with the 1.9 versions, and the generally lazy & shit attitude they seem to have displayed in rushing it through without thinking of this first.

Laziness. Pure fucking laziness.

I will hold on to the original versions until I let off my last breath..

I am angry enough that I will give the bird to them (Id and Bethesda) because of this.

Mr. Chris said:

I will hold on to the original versions until I let off my last breath..

I am angry enough that I will give the bird to them (Id and Bethesda) because of this.

You don't like this version, we get it.

Maes said:

(censored)

Should have gone with trollface and lolcat symbols...

I don't really get the anger really. I mean, these are old games now, I doubt there will be a huge influx of new players, anybody know how well it sold on PC?

Besides, Doom survived without digital copies until now, most people can find the proper WADS in five minutes. Doom 3 is different yeah, but again digital storage\purchase of games is relatively new, so many old games are completely out of print. id don't really have an obligation to sell the original Doom 3 indefinitely; it's up to the community to preserve these games imho.

People just like to whine. We already have patches to convert to and from 1.9 and the censored version, so it's a complete non-issue at this point. Yeah, id was a bit lazy when it came to how they did things. We still got an official PC release of No Rest for the Living out of it, that seems worth it to me.

BaronOfStuff said:

As for the offending textures, here's what I've just thrown together in the space of about 25 minutes:

Why bother throwing anything together? It seems to me that the objective here was to expunge anything that could be potentially be mistaken as "Nazi related" in any way, and that's exactly what they've done.

Quite honestly I don't begrudge Id in the slightest for doing this. It's not their fault that Germany has laws against depicting Nazi symbols. Neither is it their fault that the red cross is a protected emblem. They've made these changes to comply with the laws of the countries where they operate. If you want to hate anyone, hate these laws and the bureaucracy they cause, not Id.

The Wolfenstein levels are a silly joke from 18 years ago, and frankly it's no big loss. The fact that they've gone to any effort at all to preserve them shows the respect Id have for the fans of their games. Other companies would have just stripped the levels out completely (like the German release of Doom 2), as it doesn't have any real detrimental effect on the game.

The myopia and complete lack of perspective by some people on this thread is incredible. Without these changes they probably wouldn't have been able to do any new release. If the choice is between giving new players the opportunity to play Doom and having to change the textures in some joke levels that aren't even part of the main game, I know what I'd rather see.

Just posted about the updated IWAD Patcher here.
ZDaemon will treat doom.wad and doom2.wad BFG editions like outdated IWADs and patch them to 1.9ud and 1.9, respectively. The users original files remain unchanged in that process of course. So BFG edition users will be able to play ZDaemon without problems when we release the update shortly.

Well I for one am not angry about this, and it's not like buying this Doom 3 release was ever on my mind to begin with (didn't like any of the FPS that came after Quake 1). And I never like Wolf3D either, it just didn't impress me at the time of its heyday, so for me the secret DOOM II levels were always pretty lame. But some of the textures were cool, like the banners, eagles and stuff that looked nice on some castle-themed PWADs. Even those blue wall textures were used to good effect in some maps. But they didn't have to be nazi-related, any cool designs would have done the trick. And that's the thing about nazis, they knew how to make cool designs, even if what they represented was bad. In fact, the cross itself is an ancient symbol that the nazis borrowed and modified slightly. But used in the context with adolf-looking portraits and german-speaking soldiers it definitely invokes the idea of nazi regime.

Modifiying the symbols, portraits and enemies slightly appears to remove some of the "sting" of nazi for those who want to bury such things, even though as Sodaholic pointed out burying things doesn't make them go away. But the truth is it's not even buried deep, it's a pretense in every way, shape and form. Everyone who reads about and plays this game is going to realize what those symbols actually represent, as it's no big secret the original game had nazi stuff in it, and the people who haven't heard of DOOM (all five of 'em) will read about it in game reviews and through word of mouth, especially those that start playing online. Ultimately it accomplishes nothing, because people will still think about nazis in the end.

At some point you have to wonder though how far all this censorship goes. Does germany also ban books, games and other mdia that merely mention nazis, even if no symbology is involved? And what about history books, or related stuff like WWII historical wargames (Squad Leader, Panzer Leader, etc.) It seems like it would get silly after a while, all this pretense and wink-wink-nudge-nudge erasing of serial numbers.

hex11 said:

Does germany also ban books, games and other mdia that merely mention nazis, even if no symbology is involved?

No. That "Hitler reacts to" meme is from a German film.

Don't forget that Wolfenstein 3D is also racially stereotyping. Except Hitler, zombies (who could be foreigners) and maybe 2 other guys, all enemies are blond and blue-eyed, to look like parodies of the so-called superior race. Nevermind over-buff bosses like Grosse.

I have no idea what this is about. I had to google this "hitler react to" string, and it appears to be a series of youtube videos. For the record, I don't use flash plugins or go to those popular sites like facebook, youtube, 4chan, etc. Actually the browsers I use cannot even accomodate those. It's just basic HTML, not even javascript. Helps cut down on the ads and crap, saves time, RAM and bandwith. :-)