Uhg. Respect the Doom novels would ya?

Anything Doom related should be respected, including Doom 64.

So Dafydd completely changed the Doom story around, but look at it in a different way; Its only a freaking novel, dont see it as hell spawn, look at it as if you never heard of Doom before. They are really good books. Damn good story, and very realistic.
Why, exactly, do you people hate the novels so much? Yeah, I was a *little* dissapointed when I found out it wasnt hellspawn related, but when I read onward, it got better and better.
BTW, what was so bad about Doom64? It was hellspawn, had some cool levels and cool music {loved the crying babies} Had an awsome ass sky, sweet looking remakes of EVERY monster weapon and texture. It was cool, just skippedo ut on a lot of monsters, but that didnt bother me.

Trying my damndest to bring this around to a Doom3 theme :), Apart from all that, everyone who has played Doom knows the game would not transfer to a movie theme without major surgery,which is probably the reason there has never been a Doom movie
What the guys at ID should be thinking is " There was so much support for a Doom based movie, but... we and they know it would never see the light of day because the game just wouldn't support a movie plot, what we need to do now with Doom3 is 1)make a great game, 2) make it believeable and c) set its plot so the theme WILL support a movie plot :)

The Novels novels will get no respect from me. But now that you've started spelling properly, you might. Just don't say anything good about the books in the future.

S./

*sigh*

I've already gone through what I've thought is wrong with them, but I suppose I'll do it again.

The most important reason: ID don't like them. 'Nuff said? Oh, okay...

Second most important reason: Flynn Taggart is one of the most stupid, gayest names I've ever heard in my life, and even worse it's caused mass confusion with hundreds of completely un-original Doomers calling themselves "Flynn", "FlynnT", "FTaggart", "Taggart", or some variation on them, and expecting people to be able to tell them apart. Especially as most of them used to work on DoomHQ...

Still not satisfied? Um... err... okay, but prepare for a fairly lengthy post.

BTW If you've read the same author's Star Trek novels, you can generally apply the following criticisms to them too.

(speaking of Star Trek, if the author had altered the Star Trek background in the same way he did for the Doom background, he would have been demonised - see the outcry over Judith and Garfield Reeve-Steven's "Federation" which went against things that have been said and done in dozens of episodes)

Anyway, asides from the god awful plot of the novels... What I really hate is the terrible characterisation. Most characters are completely two dimensional and unbelievable. What's call about the games is that the Doom guy doesn't actually HAVE a character; he's basically you.

I'm quite sure that the Doom series wouldn't have done so well if they'd had some action movie style guy yelling out stupid punchlines every five minutes. Oh wait... Duke Nukem 3D. Forget everything I just said.

A lot of the writing in the novels is also terribly long winded. Pointless blabbing on and on about stuff the reader probably doesn't care about. One of the golden rules of writing non-academic stuff: "prefer the short to the long", aka "enough already!".

A lot of the stuff that happens in the novels (especially in the later novels, when the author REALLY gets into all that alien crap) is so completely removed from the games, that if the author had changed a few things (mostly names) he could have gotten away with calling these novels something other than Doom and no-one would have guessed his "inspiration".

(suddenly, alarm bells go off in everyone's heads) "Quick cash-in?" Yeah baby!

A question to ask yourself: Did the author actually play the games for more than five minutes, if at all? My personal feeling is that someone at the novels' publishers gave him a rough outline of the Doom 1 and 2 stories and backgrounds (at which point he probably said "Doom? Isn't that some Amiga game?"), and a couple of days later he thought "I can't work with this, I want to get back to my Star Trek stories... wait, I know... aliens! Yeah!"

Two of the most vital aspects of Doom: 1) All you basically do is kill everything that moves, and occassionally have to solve a puzzle (probably involving at least one keycard), and 2) except for the enemy, you're alone at all times.

Both of these would make for a really boring novel, so therefore the author had to alter it. And so he's done away with two of the most vital aspects of Doom. Doom just doesn't work in novel form, it's an interative, visual experience.

fodders said:

Trying my damndest to bring this around to a Doom3 theme :), Apart from all that, everyone who has played Doom knows the game would not transfer to a movie theme without major surgery,which is probably the reason there has never been a Doom movie
What the guys at ID should be thinking is " There was so much support for a Doom based movie, but... we and they know it would never see the light of day because the game just wouldn't support a movie plot, what we need to do now with Doom3 is 1)make a great game, 2) make it believeable and c) set its plot so the theme WILL support a movie plot :)

Yes, your damned strait about that one, which I have thought myself before.

But the novels, see, if you dont look at them, like I said, as supposed to being part of the game, they are great.

NiGHTMARE said:

Even for foreign language people like me "Flynn Taggart" sounds very stupid. Like "Guybrush Threepwood" or something like that...

Jeremy said:

Yes, your damned strait about that one, which I have thought myself before.

But the novels, see, if you dont look at them, like I said, as supposed to being part of the game, they are great.

Strait? Like what, Dire Straits? Leave the pussy music aside, bucko, you tried to say, "Damned straight". You know, right, correct, head-on, nailed on the head, etc...

The second sentence would've been a lot easier on us English speakers written as:
"The novels should not be regarded as part of the official Doom story line, thus, bear little resemblance to their origin. However, held under a separate light they are great."

Unfortunately I disagree with you. The novels suck. I found better writing within the Bionic Commando novel for Christ's sake. It's also worth mentioning that nobody slammed Doom64 this time around. The only Doomers that don't like it are the fuckers that haven't played it, and that's the only reason. =)

I wonder if Jeremy likes the Doom comic too...

/me wipes away a tear.

Damn that was a good one.

NiGHTMARE said:

Yea dammn right man- those Doom Novels were made for peaple who have heard that a Doom is actually a kickass game, they never played it but they thought that it must be cool...

NiGHTMARE said:

I wonder if Jeremy likes the Doom comic too...

Does anybody even know where I could find the DOOM comic? I know that everybody said it was horrible but I'd like to see it anyway. BTW what was so bad about the first book? I mean, besides the awful characterizing,and the name "Flynn", it was pretty cool. At least until Fly and Arlene got off Diemos- from then until the end of the series was pretty gay.

NiGHTMARE said:

Actually if you read the first novel, he describes episode one and two quite accurately, as well as what little of episode three (e3m1, e3m2, e3m9, e3m8) was travelled. So, at least the author did play registered Doom.. or had a qualified advisor.

I don't think he played Doom II much (if at all), as the game plot and the novel plot seem fairly detached:
Game: free earth's population, go into hell to stop the invasion
Novel: Go to the controlling area (LA) and disable the force field for some reason, then go into space to meet the friendly aliens, etc.

And now for my two cents:

I don't hate the novels, nor do I stand up for them. The quality of them leaves much do be desired (I much prefer Stephen King's method of 1st person perspective, but that's just my opinion), and the plot differs too much from the actual game. Also, I didn't like switching between characters every chapter..
Some parts by themselves were good, but in the big picture, the books could have been much much better.

I wonder if the Resident Evil novels are any good?

Windowpain said:

Does anybody even know where I could find the DOOM comic? I know that everybody said it was horrible but I'd like to see it anyway. BTW what was so bad about the first book? I mean, besides the awful characterizing,and the name "Flynn", it was pretty cool. At least until Fly and Arlene got off Diemos- from then until the end of the series was pretty gay.

The only place you can still get it in a relatively easy way is by buying the ID Anthology.

NiGHTMARE said:

I wonder if Jeremy likes the Doom comic too...

No NiGHTMARE, I do not like the Doom Comic. No.

BTW, Im radioactive!

"Im stupid, and your stupid, and you gonna be dead and stupid." -Doom Comic

deadnail said:

Strait? Like what, Dire Straits? Leave the pussy music aside, bucko, you tried to say, "Damned straight". You know, right, correct, head-on, nailed on the head, etc...

The second sentence would've been a lot easier on us English speakers written as:
"The novels should not be regarded as part of the official Doom story line, thus, bear little resemblance to their origin. However, held under a separate light they are great."

Unfortunately I disagree with you. The novels suck. I found better writing within the Bionic Commando novel for Christ's sake. It's also worth mentioning that nobody slammed Doom64 this time around. The only Doomers that don't like it are the fuckers that haven't played it, and that's the only reason. =)

re:doom 64
i could not agree with you any more, doom 64 is a killer game, worhty of the doom legacy and deserves respect!

i couldn't even finish the first novel, much less the whole series, but at least i tried...as for doom 64, it rules! all the monsters makeover were great, particularly the cacodemon! all in all it was sweet!