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Thorgrim103

Is id Software slowly dying off?

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Are you actually complaining about better AI in Q4? And how is that a flow breaker?

What do you mean better? Bowing down to avoid fire was "smart" too. I think by giving Guards dodge Raven simply compensated for smaller amount of enemies.

Anyway, it was wrong for me to blame all flow problems on dodging, ignoring other things like narrow corridors and rooms smaller than those in Doom 3, darkness and, well, small amount of enemies, even in tank and walker segments. No more double-jumping on a crate to circle the enemy using plenty of space, now it's only stepping back in a straight corridor pressing the fire button.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFb_LbHT-rg
Look at this, the game is darker than... you know what game.

Sure, I remember death animations in Q2. They were the best animations in the game, and really the only saving grace in the animation department, the other animations had a tendency to look clunky and mechanical by comparison

Yes, the animations that you will see most of the time are the best in Quake 2. Other animations? The mad marines crawling on the floor looked cool... aaaand that's the whole animation department in Quake 2.

Who fucking cares about concrete. Or having the levels look exactly like they did in Quake 2.

So you just don't care about Quake 2. You should've start with that, that would really saved a lot of time for everyone.

So according to you, it's lazier to compose new art styles for environments than to simply copy the ones from an older game?

New doesn't mean good, especially if it's a remake/sequel/prequel. Massive concrete details in environments and massive iron and steel details on enemies characterized Quake 2.

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Belial said:

That example doesn't help your point at all.

Q4: Alien dude in armor.
Q2: Hideous hybrid of flesh and metal.


I know, even though they have the same weapons in the same places, function essentially the same way, and are both called 'gladiators', nope, clearly this isn't an example of a new design inspired by an old one at all. 'Cause they didn't follow the original design to the letter.

kristus said:

I'm talking about design here, and you're talking about similarities.


Similarities in design.

kristus said:

Comparing some of the enemies from an FPS with borg like aliens to another with borg like aliens. You are bound to hit similarities, wether they are intentional or not. Granted there are similarities between the games, they do remember that Q2 existet, as is evident by them featuring a hologram of the Jorg in the briefing. But the references are very weak and usually far apart. As if Raven wished they were making another game.


You're simply brushing off the fact that I pointed out several clear-cut examples of enemies in Q4 who were obviously inspired by enemies in Q2. "Wether they are intentional or not"... give me a fucking break.

kristus said:

And regardless of what you say now, that comment you made about the polies WERE still stupid.


Ha ha, okay.

kristus said:

And how the fuck you can compare the Scientist to the Icarus and say they are similar are beyond me. Yeah, they both fly. Not very high requirements for similarity there.


Conceded.

kristus said:

Anyway, I didn't compare them because I thought it was so fucking obvious where they taken the inspiration for the designs from Quake2.


Oh, so apparently the Strogg in Q4 didn't look like the Strogg in Q2, but at the same time, it 'was so fucking obvious where they taken the inspiration for the designs from Quake2'? Make up your mind already.

kristus said:

The strogg got edgy and sharp dark rough metal designs with heavy armors. and a very specific color scheme with the orange details. (NOT to be confused with the hideous orange metal spandex jumpsuit of Quake4's foot soldiers)


Right, they should have stuck with the exact specific color scheme and outfit of an old enemy made for a game running on an outdated graphics engine. How dare they use a little creativity and take advantage of updated technology. Blasphemy.

kristus said:

But since you're one for comparing.


And I don't care about the similarities between ETQW and Q2, that was never part of my point.

Harmata said:

So you just don't care about Quake 2. You should've start with that, that would really saved a lot of time for everyone.


I said I don't care about having everything look EXACTLY THE SAME. Jesus Christ.

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Opinion ahead:

I really enjoyed Doom 3, even if it didn't have anywhere near the replayability of the first two entries. Rage was fun enough, and showed that id hadn't lost their chops completely. That is, they were still capable of making a fast-paced shooter.

Nothing would satisfy me more than a retro Doom 1/2 reboot, so I'm not going to judge them too harshly, because that just isn't going to happen. At least not from id, and this thread is about id.

As many have already said, I'm going to wait for Doom 4 to judge if id still has any of its 90s magic left. Doom 3 wasn't meant to be a true successor, and Rage is a completely different IP, so I'm not going by those. From what I've heard, Doom 4 is supposed to go back to id's roots a bit.

I really can't wait for the discussions on this forum (whether good or bad) when id starts releasing its first previews of Doom 4. Because no matter what, I know I'll get more fun from the WADs & mods you guys come up with. :)

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printz said:

What do TESO, SWOTR, DOA and P2P mean?

Well, to clarify, since apparently most of you don't keep up with modern gaming anymore, SWTOR (Star Wars: The Old Republic AKA TORtanic) was EA/Bioware's Star Wars MMO, meant as a sort of Sequel to KOTOR 1+2. They put a LOT of money and effort into it, making it on a huge budget and hiring many well-known voice actors to make the entire game fully voice acted. Well, the game came out early last year, and people liked it and it had a really story-and-character-driven style of gameplay compared to most MMOs, but had basically no end-game content which is a HUGE no-no for MMOs. They gave everyone who bought it a free month, and by the end of that month, everyone had already maxed at least one character and was bored with the game. Even after getting rid of half their servers, they STILL only had about a dozen people on per server. And that's not even going into their terrible customer service over the game (including people getting banned for complaining about the game or dancing in the wrong areas). As a result, EA's stocks plummeted, and not even making it free to play helped the game any.

Now here we are a year later, and Zenimax/Bethesda is making TESO (The Elder Scrolls Online), which they have put over $600k into and are planning to make fully voiced and character-driven. Yeah. Considering Zenimax is a MUCH smaller corporation (they put out maybe 2 games a year, opposed to a few dozen like EA) this could very well be the death of their company, and Id as well.

Aliotroph? said:

They started making RAGE before there were Fallout 3 and Borderlands. Besides, the fault in their games isn't the setting; it's the gameplay.

That's really the big problem with Rage. It was in production longer than Fallout 3 or Borderlands, but it came out after...within a year or two if I remember correctly. By that time, people had already had their fill of post-apocalyptic first person shooters. Granted, the games are all different gameplay-wise (FO3 is a RPG with FPS elements, Borderlands is an FPS with RPG elements, and Rage is an FPS with racing game elements), but people didn't see it that way. This combined with the fact that there was nothing innovative at all about the engine or gameplaymade it the disappointment it was. Granted, it wasn't a BAD game, but it wasn't GREAT either, and after over 5 years in production, that's the kind of game they needed to make.

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Caffeine Freak said:

Oh, so apparently the Strogg in Q4 didn't look like the Strogg in Q2, but at the same time, it 'was so fucking obvious where they taken the inspiration for the designs from Quake2'? Make up your mind already.

Don't confuse things. It was obvious how ETQW's interpetation of the Strogg design was based off of Q2. Not Q4. Q4 was not similar in design. The games were thematically similar and yeah, there are like I said, the odd tie in. But nothing meaningful that tells you the two games are in fact part of the same universe. Never in Q4 do you feel like you're fighting the Strogg. You feel like you're fighting generic borg clones. Q4 instead took the seminal design and characteristics of Q2 and threw it out the window in favor of a generic cromium design that lacked any creativity of which you claim it had.

Granted too that the Strogg is likely heavily inspired by the Borg to begin with, but the way it's represented in Q2 it has got it's own characteristics that separates it from just being a cheap knock off.

Try to see the difference between design of art and design of function. The gladiator may still have largely the same design of function. Though that alone simply makes it a bipedal creature with a melee attack and a railgun. But in the same way, a rail gun shares the design of function with a sniperrifle in games. In real life, they certainly represent two different methods of firing a projectile. But in a game, it's just a hitscan weapon.

The gladiator in Q4 doesn't have the artistic design of a Strogg gladiator. But if we're gonna talk design of function, then we would still not end up with a sequel to Q2 because I doubt anyone can honestly say they think the two games play very similar in their single player mode. (though a bit more similar in the multiplayer, even if that is more a sequel to Q3 at the time)

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What turned me off about Quake 4:

- the blatantly obvious Raven software music style. I felt like I was playing some Heretic 2, instead of goddamn Quake 2.
- the unlikeable comrades.

The monstrous enemies were fine and somewhat scary, but I didn't like the design of the humans, who looked too generic and inexpressive, and worse, I had to interact with them. Looking further at some Rage trailers, I already saw that video game humans can look and act better. Or Wolfenstein, for that matter.

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Caffeine Freak said:

To my recollection, the model pack (unless I'm thinking of a different one) is rather lacking in visual fidelity and animation.

The one that I'm using was downloaded from DukeRepository either 3 or 4 years ago. Suits my expectations so nicely.

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I felt that games after Doom were not really pushing it in terms of gameplay and design (multiplayer doesn't count). Both Quake 1 and 2 felt like cheap Doom clones despite the technological advancements. It took until Valve software came to truly advance FPS games, Half Life is in many places what Quake 1 and 2 should have been (which is probably why Doom 3 feels a lot like it). No wonder a lot of Id employees were against making Doom 3, they were practically rehashing the same game over and over with very little innovation, which is probably why Doom 3 went for a more horror vibe and honestly, although it could have been better, I see why they went this route and I don't really blame them. All over this forum I see shit thrown at Doom 3 but people also fail to see the flaws of games like Quake 1 and 2. Probably because it's a classic and who can say a classic is shit? I also dislike Quake 1 and 2 because of the very primitive models. I understand the need to drive technology further and that is a worthy goal but sprites were much superior to early 3D models.

Doom 1 still remains their best title imo.

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Eh, I'm just gonna say Dark Forces II was better than Half-Life. I thought it looked better, played better, and I didn't have to deal with annoying NPCs. But that's just me.

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Clonehunter said:

Eh, I'm just gonna say Dark Forces II was better than Half-Life. I thought it looked better, played better, and I didn't have to deal with annoying NPCs. But that's just me.

And the jumping puzzles didn't want to make you kill yourself.

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The first person / company to do anything well will always be successful. Once competition catches up with them no one will be seen as a superstar standout again.

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Clonehunter said:

Eh, I'm just gonna say Dark Forces II was better than Half-Life. I thought it looked better, played better, and I didn't have to deal with annoying NPCs. But that's just me.

I'm gonna say that both Dark Forces II and Heretic II are better than Half-Life.
The funny fact is that some people argue that the reason why Heretic II didn't sell too many copies is because of Half-Life, but yet I sold my copy of Half-Life to a classmate because I loved Heretic II so much more and I had that one first. HarrHarr. :p

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188DarkRevived said:

I'm gonna say that both Dark Forces II and Heretic II are better than Half-Life.
The funny fact is that some people argue that the reason why Heretic II didn't sell too many copies is because of Half-Life, but yet I sold my copy of Half-Life to a classmate because I loved Heretic II so much more and I had that one first. HarrHarr. :p


Half-Life had some food moments, but it's terribly boring. Blue Shift I found better than the actual Half Life game, of all things! Hah!

And I still need to get myself a copy of Heretic II, but I don't think neither Steam or GoG have it. Not last i checked anyways.

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Clonehunter said:

Half-Life had some food moments, but it's terribly boring.

Food moments? Sure you're not thinking of Blake Stone or some such thing? :)

I wouldn't say "dying off", but today's id Software, Inc. has precious little to do with the company that developed Doom 1 and II. Mostly because it has precious few of the people who developed Doom 1 and II. There's...what, John Carmack and Kevin Cloud, and that's about it, isn't it?

E: Grammar! And leaner quote block!

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All over this forum I see shit thrown at Doom 3 but people also fail to see the flaws of games like Quake 1 and 2. Probably because it's a classic and who can say a classic is shit?

Probably because "having flaws" doesn't equals to "it's shit". Well, maybe here and /idgames.

Both Quake 1 and 2 felt like cheap Doom clones despite the technological advancements.

Doom-clone? What is this, 1994? Cheap? What is this, a gaming magazine?

(multiplayer doesn't count)

Oh now that's just not nice. Again, reads like "quality gaming journalism".

It took until Valve software came to truly advance FPS games

One word: Strife.
Two words: System Shock.

2/10 post, would not read again.

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Some other words: Ultima Underworld. Yeah, it's an RPG. But it's the first RPG in continuous first person perspective where you control only one character; so it's the first FPS/RPG hybrid. (And it predates Doom. Heck, it predates Wolfenstein 3D.)

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Captain Ventris said:

I'm relatively sure that something has to actually be known in order to advance the genre.

Even if a game isn't very popular it's still somewhat known (of), especially to game developers. Strife may not have been a commercial success, but it was one of the games that proved that mechanically-speaking, a first-person, action-heavy, RPG could work. (Hyphens-are-great.)

Maybe I'm giving game devs a little too much credit, and they certainly would've been influenced more by more popular games, but even niche titles have an impact on the market. If nothing else, they prove that an idea will float, gameplay-wise.

With regards to System Shock and Quake 1 & 2, those were both commercial and critical successes. Sure, they weren't as well loved, on-the-whole, as Doom 1 & 2, but they were broadly recognized as good, or at least very significant games. (Commas, are, great.)

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Don't forget the midwinter games. Which are free roaming spy games in an Open world. With destructible terrain in true 3d With vehicles and dynamic quests. Also before wolf3d.

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I'm relatively sure that something has to actually be known in order to advance the genre.

"Advancing the genre" is a pointless, useless, meaningless phrase that originated from game journalism, alongside with "clones", "kings of genres", rating systems and other crap. There is no single entity called "genre", there are separate games. If every game would be like Half-Life there would be no other games, only HL. If one game has NPCs does this makes it better than other games in the genre? There are no "better", more "advance" or "modern" games, there are only games. With their gameplay. That you can play. Anytime.

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You know what's needed? DF2 multiplayer matches. Or at least Mysteries of the Sith as I heard it wasn't as buggy.

Like, it needs to be done.

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kristus said:

Don't forget the midwinter games. Which are free roaming spy games in an Open world. With destructible terrain in true 3d With vehicles and dynamic quests. Also before wolf3d.

Looks like Carrier Command.

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Certainly got similarities between the two. But the game play is pretty different, where Midwinter is more about being free roaming FPS exploration and questing. While Carrier Command seem to be more about strategy warfare.

Midwinter one I would liken to Skyrim in a way. Open world. FPS. You need to quest around and gather resources to further the story. Though in Midwinter it's about building an army/front.

If I would compare Midwinter 2 to anything, it would probably be Grand Theft Auto, even if the theme of the games are vastly different. They got a fair bit of the game mechanics in common. Like hijacking vehicles. Granted Midwinter 2's vehicle hijacking is a bit absurd. By the press of a button you can hijack anything. Even a submarine or an aircraft in flight. But it's fun to do, so it doesn't matter. :p

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