Fresh Sandy Petersen interview... about Doom!

Really interesting viewpoints from one of the guys that made the game.

Interview.

Huh, never knew he named all the monsters and levels. Interesting. I'd recommend posting this in the News Submissions forum.

Oh my god, that voice. THAT VOICE!

Memfis said:

Oh my god, that voice. THAT VOICE!

Probably Italian ;-)

Seeing that the interview took place at an Italian convention, almost certainly Italian, yeah. (Oddly enough, despite being half Italian myself, with a very extensive Italian side of the family, I didn't place the accent until that was noted).

That is not at all what I expected Sandy Petersen to look like. It's funny though, as much as we deride some of his maps he really did have a huge influence on the game as a whole. I do wish American McGee would've handled a few more maps though, I like his style.

Sandy had to make the most maps and some of the biggest so of course in some of them quality suffered because of lack of time and interesting ideas.

Awesome, I didn't know he did all that.

Jaxxoon R said:

That is not at all what I expected Sandy Petersen to look like.

He's worn that same getup for years.

Of all the maps in the id-made IWADs, Sandy's are easily the ones which have remained the most evergreen for me, especially his work in Doom II versus that of the other authors. In the neighborhood of two decades after the game's release, I can still screw around in Sandy's maps and find myself in strange/interesting situations I've never been in before (that he has always offered by far the most interesting pistol-starts in his maps is no doubt a factor in this), something I can't really say for Romero's more thematically unified presentations, and certainly not for McGee's terse, matter-of-fact style.

I've often seen folks express curiosity about what a Doom map made today by Romero would be like--how it would look, play, feel. I certainly share that curiosity, mind you, but I'm even more intrigued by the notion of a modern Sandymap. How would one of those turn out without the man operating under a heavy time constraint? Is his madness really as full of method as I like to think it is, or is a lot of the Sandy magic something of a happy accident of circumstance? I wonder.

I love the way the guy said Countless Limitation". It was just so melty.

It's great to see all the old id staff coming out and talking more about their time with the development of the game. First Romero and now this - good stuff.

Also, Sandy Petersen = Santa Claus?

Sandy is such a boss. All of his work toward balancing the game cannot be overstated. I think he probably made the most nonlinear and fun maps in the whole game. Playing some of his later maps from a pistol start can be a real challenge, even to an experienced FPS player.

"I had the pleasure to meet the Sandy Pe-ter-sen asldhaldha;slkfjaklfas;lkdghas'fj'kjasjdf;laskdjf comic con"

And here I thought he was just brought on to do maps. Aside from Romero obviously putting more of his design influence into the game post-Hall, I really wonder how much Petersen influenced the core design.

His influence seems neglected in any kind of documentation of Doom's development. It's either all about Hall's original vision that laid the foundation or Romero's direction that took more hold later, but very little out there about Petersen than "he did some last-minute maps".

I'd really like to see Petersen talk some more about how he influenced the game, I'm starting to feel like I don't give him nearly enough credit.

Memfis said:

Oh my god, that voice. THAT VOICE!

Grezzo 2 guy.

PSTrooper said:

Grezzo 2 guy.

Is this guy really the author of Grezzo 2? Speaking of Grezzo, was there ever a Grezzo 1?

I don't know, but the narrator sounds like the GrezzoGuy. He should dub an English version of him.

I wasn't aware of how much Sandy contributed to Doom, I have much more appreciation for him now.

Fascinating interview, now I'm a little bit wiser considering Doom

I love how he calls them "bunk".

So cute.