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glenzinho

The UAC, the military & the wardrobe

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I was browsing around some old stuff on the forums and came across this thread discussing if the UAC is bad.

After reading through it, it seems to me that no one has addressed this key phrase from the original Doom readme file:

For the last four years the military, UAC's biggest supplier, has used the remote facilities on Phobos and Deimos to conduct various secret projects, including research on inter-dimensional space travel. So far they have been able to open gateways between Phobos and Deimos, throwing a few gadgets into one and watching them come out the other.


I have highlighted the word supplier as it seems to me that no one has picked up on this. This sentence would seem to clear the UAC of any wrongdoing in the matter and put the blame squarely on the military.

This could explain why you find no dead scientists or bureaucrats or the like in the game, being a strictly military operation. Have the UAC been the scapegoats for the Phobos/Deimos incidents for the last 18 and a half years? Am I crazy? Let me know! Please, disregard the Doom 3 version of events and just consider the events of the original game. If you need to familarize yourself with the orginal story again see here.

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It would certainly explain the absence of any suits, however I would imagine that the military would still require the assistance of more than a few boffins to get the portals up and running, not to mention any other experiments they may be working on.

Besides, the likelihood is that the UAC still had a hand in the events on Phobos and Deimos, and even if their own motives were entirely wholesome (which I doubt), the military would most likely wish to exploit any findings for their own ends.

IMO the UAC are as guilty as the military here. That fact that the UAC are the military's biggest supplier implies that the UAC specialize in (among other things) weapons research and space exploration, thus the military is most likely in their pocket. Those two facilities are the property of the UAC and they themselves are employing the military for security purposes, hence Doomguy's initial transfer up there.

In short, the military may have been overseeing the experiments on Phobos and Deimos, but I'd be surprised if the UAC weren't overseeing them.

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Aah, but there it is: the military are the UAC's biggest supplier, not the other way around. This is what people seem to be missing. In the original text it states that UAC have a base on Mars, and on Phobos and Deimos they have radioactive waste facilities which the military are using for "experiments." The military are the biggest supplier of the UAC, whether that's for technology or human resources or whatever.

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glenzinho said:

This could explain why you find no dead scientists or bureaucrats or the like in the game, being a strictly military operation.

Scientists don't normally wear body armour (not since the Gordon Freeman incident), so most of them were probably reduced to puddles of gore. Those that survived were zombified and are refining the demon's technology at an undisclosed location. As for the bureaucrats, few would want to be seen dead in a remote backwater base like Phobos.

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Always figured those were just dudes in leather jackets. Pretty cool dress code for the UAC.

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Glad people still read the manual :)

Even though Doom practically has no story and does not really need one, there is still a back story and some background info - yay

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bcwood16 said:

Glad people still read the manual :)

Who could possibly forget gems like "Stupides. Dures. En flammes. Assez dit."

That's provided you have the multilingual manual. ;-)

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I never noticed it before, but those sprites are eerily reminiscent of the photo of Mussolini et al being strung up.

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There was a sprite of a guy in a white lab coat with white hair and was hanging in a Y pose.

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I think it sounds awesome to have UAC as bad forces as well.

Just being the guy in the wrong place at the wrong time.

DOOM4 should have human forces as well demons.

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They eerily have the same palette as the Cyberdemon, especially the twitching hanging one.

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Okay, so I read it wrong (again). Oops! :P

Thing is though, even if the military is supplying the UAC with resources, it's likely because the UAC is the one laying down the paper. That's got to carry some weight, and it still stands up that since the experiments are taking place on the UAC's property, it's a safe bet they have a vested interest in what is going on.

Unless, of course, the UAC are unaware of the experiments, but this is never explicitly stated. Personally I think this is unlikely, because even in the face of the universal misinterpretation at foot here, it's highly probable that the UAC were at least supplying the brains for the military brawn.

"Half unfeeling machine, half raging horned devil, this walking nightmare has a rocket launcher for an arm and will definitely reach out and touch you. Make sure you're loaded for bear before you get to this guy."
- From the PSX Doom manual(s)

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Not to hand, unfortunately, as I took that passage from my real copy. The write-ups are different for a lot of the monsters, but that one always stood out. The story is exactly the same, though.

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glenzinho said:

I was browsing around some old stuff on the forums and came across this thread discussing if the UAC is bad.

After reading through it, it seems to me that no one has addressed this key phrase from the original Doom readme file:



I have highlighted the word supplier as it seems to me that no one has picked up on this. This sentence would seem to clear the UAC of any wrongdoing in the matter and put the blame squarely on the military.

This could explain why you find no dead scientists or bureaucrats or the like in the game, being a strictly military operation. Have the UAC been the scapegoats for the Phobos/Deimos incidents for the last 18 and a half years? Am I crazy? Let me know! Please, disregard the Doom 3 version of events and just consider the events of the original game. If you need to familarize yourself with the orginal story again see here.


Considering that real life is full of "contractor gets big job from the military - proceeds to do shady stuff" stories, UAC probably would have been as dirty as anyone else was. There's also the fact that the original Doom backstory mentioned that the gateways became dangerously unstable before shit hit the fan for real but they kept using them anyway.

Assuming that this story actually happened, it probably would play out like "UAC develops gateway technology for the military, rushes the job and doesn't test it fully because they're under a time crunch on a megabillion defense contract, military gets what they're assured is stable technology, some guys get fucked up, military covers up the deaths for a while, then all hell breaks loose beyond any hopes of a cover-up."

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The word "supplier" here is probably a common case of "whoops, that's not the word I meant." Substituting "client" restores the status quo of things.

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yellowmadness54 said:

I think it sounds awesome to have UAC as bad forces as well.

Just being the guy in the wrong place at the wrong time.

DOOM4 should have human forces as well demons.


Human forces like the old novels, where the military was helping the demonss and such?

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yellowmadness54 said:

DOOM4 should have human forces as well demons.

I've heard that id has already planned this for Doom 4.

Clonehunter said:

Human forces like the old novels, where the military was helping the demonss and such?

I think that the military would actually be against the demons, like they were in Doom 3 (not counting Sarge).

Scypek2 said:

That one always seemed to be a woman for me.

You really think that they'd put boobs in Doom?

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Yes, they'd fight the demons, but not quite good guys themselves.

But to avoid the cliche "Oh you fight two bad peopls now cuz of plot twist" thing, you still have to work with the "bad guys"

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I always thought that those hanging bodies didn't really fit into Doom. They just look too realistic. It's also interesting to see the big difference between them and the hanging bodies introduced in Doom 2 (which look more cartoonish).

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The new Doom 2 hanging bodies seem to be drawn in much the same style as the Archvile, no?

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boris said:

I always thought that those hanging bodies didn't really fit into Doom. They just look too realistic.

Yet they seem to have been made from pictures of toys, like the weapons:

; Bloody, twitching G.I.Joe
S_BLOODYTWITCH	GOR1	A	10	NULL	S_BLOODYTWITCH2
S_BLOODYTWITCH2	GOR1	B	15	NULL	S_BLOODYTWITCH3
S_BLOODYTWITCH3	GOR1	C	8	NULL	S_BLOODYTWITCH4
S_BLOODYTWITCH4	GOR1	B	6	NULL	S_BLOODYTWITCH

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Gez said:

Yet they seem to have been made from pictures of toys, like the weapons:

; Bloody, twitching G.I.Joe
S_BLOODYTWITCH	GOR1	A	10	NULL	S_BLOODYTWITCH2
S_BLOODYTWITCH2	GOR1	B	15	NULL	S_BLOODYTWITCH3
S_BLOODYTWITCH3	GOR1	C	8	NULL	S_BLOODYTWITCH4
S_BLOODYTWITCH4	GOR1	B	6	NULL	S_BLOODYTWITCH


That's got to be one toy that provides hours of entertainment for the whole family.

"Now with life-like twitching action!"

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PRIMEVAL said:

Always figured those were just dudes in leather jackets. Pretty cool dress code for the UAC.

Keep in mind all those corpses are located in Deimos and especially Inferno. Maybe they were explorers, not UAC base clerks.

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printz said:

Keep in mind all those corpses are located in Deimos and especially Inferno. Maybe they were explorers, not UAC base clerks.


So they're the guys that disappeared during the testing of the gateways with human volunteers? Maybe they ended up in Hell on the other side.

This could sort of explain why Hell has ammo and health scattered around. It could have been dropped by guys who went through or the possessed humans could have brought it back with them since presumably they need ammunition for their weapons (although why they would need health in Hell is beyond me). I kind of played with this idea when I made my last map - I had a few player corpses scattered around with backpacks and items nearby as though they had died while exploring the level.

I like to think that the Cyberdemon/Spiderdemon and the Mancubus/Revenant/Arachnotron didn't exist until Hell broke through the gateways in the original game. They could have discovered the military technology on the other side and proceeded to graft it on demons and re-animated corpses. Either that or UAC has a lot of 'splaining to do about trading with the enemy.

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