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hardcore_gamer

Does the game feel too "low-tech"?

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Is it just me or do the levels in the game actually look fairly low-tech compared to the original Dooms and Doom 3? The levels in the gameplay so far look more industrial and concrete rather than super high-tech like in Doom 3. I don't know if I like it, since I felt Doom 3's super high-tech and highly detailed levels were one of it's strongest points. The game barely looks like it's even taking place far in the future. If you told me that the game was taking place only a few decades from now and wasn't on Mars I would have no problems believing it looking at the gameplay footage.

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The single player footage we've been shown that is set on UAC grounds has only covered the steel mill and the OUTSIDES of labs. Do you really think that's going to give you a fair representation of the tech?

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The original Doom levels were a combination of industrial and techy parts within the same level while the original Doom 2 had whole levels that looked more industrial than techy: The Underhalls, The Gauntlet, The Waste Tunnels, The Crusher, Dead Simple, The pit, The Refueling base, Circle of Death, The Factory, Industrial Zone and the Suburbs then the rest are divided into tech and hell levels. I expect the same from any Doom game.

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Heck, the Abandoned Mines looks like pretty much what the level name would suggest, just some basic metallic support structures and nuclear waste because I guess it was a dumping site or something.

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GoatLord said:

Expecting a game to look like one that came out 23 years ago is silly.

The original Mega Man was released in 1987, and the latest one, Mega Man 10, was released in 2010 and they look the exact same :P

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wheresthebeef said:

The original Mega Man was released in 1987, and the latest one, Mega Man 10, was released in 2010 and they look the exact same :P


I agree with your general notion, then again Mega Man 10 was not released as an AAA-Title, but for the console-specific stores and IIRC it was around 10 dollars.

While I am one of the biggest fans of old school stuff - both "reborn" as a fresh indy title or as a continuation or even remake of an original title - it wouldn't fit a release of this magnitude.

Then again imagine if they would have made a Doom 3 (edit: sorry, I meant a Doom 3 based on classic Doom/2), with some of the original level designers, couple of new enemies plus all the original assets, based on either the original code or a very close source port, for something like 10 dollars...I am sure it would have been successfull, at least with the original fans and many "indy"-fans. But it is not what we want from them :)

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Tech in new Doom looks used just like in originals. It was intentional back in 1993 and it is so now! Doom 3 looks too sterile and clean exept for may be recycling sector. Invironmental art direction in new Doom is amasing, it fits Doom perfectly !

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tuo said:

I agree with your general notion, then again Mega Man 10 was not released as an AAA-Title, but for the console-specific stores and IIRC it was around 10 dollars.

While I am one of the biggest fans of old school stuff - both "reborn" as a fresh indy title or as a continuation or even remake of an original title - it wouldn't fit a release of this magnitude.

Then again imagine if they would have made a Doom 3 (edit: sorry, I meant a Doom 3 based on classic Doom/2), with some of the original level designers, couple of new enemies plus all the original assets, based on either the original code or a very close source port, for something like 10 dollars...I am sure it would have been successfull, at least with the original fans and many "indy"-fans. But it is not what we want from them :)


I was completely joking; Mega Man 10 used a lot of the same exact assets as the original game, hence why it looks the same..
Now if an actual new Doom 1/2 style game was made by some of the original guys (really just the artists and level design, John Carmack isn't exactly needed) in the same way Mega Man 10 was done, I'd be all about that shit.
Romero still has it, as was proven recently.

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As much as I like tech bases I'd also like to see places like Toxic waste facilities, electric power plants, storage facilities, sewage systems and such, the game environments haven't been focused only in the technology, so you shouldn't expect to see high-tech filled environments all the time everywhere.

Remember we haven't really seen much of the UAC labs yet.

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wheresthebeef said:

I was completely joking; Mega Man 10 used a lot of the same exact assets as the original game, hence why it looks the same..
Now if an actual new Doom 1/2 style game was made by some of the original guys (really just the artists and level design, John Carmack isn't exactly needed) in the same way Mega Man 10 was done, I'd be all about that shit.
Romero still has it, as was proven recently.


I sorta feel Doom the way Id did sorta accomplished a similar feeling, albeit there were no new weapons or new enemies or anything like that, still a very fun megawad IMHO.

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Ok, OP clearly has different standards of what's considered "high tech" and what's considered "low tech" than I do, because to my eye, all the tech base stuff shown so far looks pretty high tech to me; some of it is industrial high tech, whilst other is science lab, spiffy high tech. And I love it!

I also really like the way metal is rendered in this game - it has a vague hint of being a future tech alloy that we don't have today, which is right at home with how I always pictured the techbase environments in the original Doom.
Most of Doom 3's metal surfaces just kinda looked like regular ol' gunmetal steel to me and I wasn't as fond of that.

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Not every part of it has to look high tech, even a neon future still needs some industrial components to keep it going and the original Doom had those too.


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It doesn't feel too low tech to me. I think they completely nailed the setting of the game. These more industrial settings are cool, because you can have all sorts of traps like acid pools or lava in foundries.

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"New games can't look like old games" is just the designers excuse to go creative and make new stuff (most of the time). You can remake the old maps and make them look great https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okPLF9Ad9ns . Hope they are as faithful in all the remaining maps. (And funny enough the "it'll never look semi-decent falls apart with a game with an awkward choice of textures)

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Pegg said:

"New games can't look like old games" is just the designers excuse to go creative and make new stuff (most of the time).


You are right, the worst part is that some of them are so full of themselves that they think their ideas are genius even if they derail a whole concept.

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GoatLord said:

Expecting a game to look like one that came out 23 years ago is silly.


More or less silly than expecting a game to play like one that came out 23 years ago?

ATP2555 said:

Still better than the primitive bullshit you see in Halo.


Funny you say that, I thought the pic from Vortex and the 4th pic from DoomUK at the beginning of this thread reminded me of Halo (minus the blood and UAC logos of course).

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Face23785 said:

More or less silly than expecting a game to play like one that came out 23 years ago?


Well, there's no reason the game can't be fast, action-heavy, exploratory and minimally plot-driven...

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Face23785 said:

More or less silly than expecting a game to play like one that came out 23 years ago?


Probably more.

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GoatLord said:

Well, there's no reason the game can't be fast, action-heavy, exploratory and minimally plot-driven...


I think a mistake people make is thinking that game stories have to be cutscenes or otherwise invasive to the gameplay. There are many ways to inject plot depth in unique ways that only a video game can manage such as optional audio logs or just detailing in the environment itself that show how the invasion panned out. I like the Metroid Prime style where you're not force fed the story, where you have to want to investigate to get the full picture, but you can always just rush your way through guns blazing if you want.

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MetroidJunkie said:

I think a mistake people make is thinking that game stories have to be cutscenes or otherwise invasive to the gameplay. There are many ways to inject plot depth in unique ways that only a video game can manage such as optional audio logs or just detailing in the environment itself that show how the invasion panned out. I like the Metroid Prime style where you're not force fed the story, where you have to want to investigate to get the full picture, but you can always just rush your way through guns blazing if you want.


There were cutscenes in Doom 3, but the majority of the backstory was in the audio logs and emails. And the cut scenes were all skippable if I remember right. That's how to do it in my opinion.

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Face23785 said:

There were cutscenes in Doom 3, but the majority of the backstory was in the audio logs and emails. And the cut scenes were all skippable if I remember right. That's how to do it in my opinion.

a lot of people were unhappy about those monster cutscenes though, can't say I blame them.

You are, however, right to an extent - if you absolutely have to have cutscenes in your game, they should always be skippable.

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I believe they were unskippable in the BFG version, and if that's true, what an unnecessarily self-indulgent alteration to make to D3! I'm looking forward to the cutscenes in Doom '16, I feel like they're going to be pretty entertaining and not get in the way.

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GoatLord said:

I believe they were unskippable in the BFG version, and if that's true, what an unnecessarily self-indulgent alteration to make to D3!

Indeed! I'd love to hear their rationale for wasting the effort to go back into the code and specifically remove the funtionality to skip a cutscene, thus making an inferior product.

Heh, maybe they were busy updating the code for the new functions and accidentally removed the "skip cutscene" function, then decided not to edit it back in because 'fuck it!'. Wouldn't surprise me.

I'm looking forward to the cutscenes in Doom '16, I feel like they're going to be pretty entertaining and not get in the way.

I'm hoping they'll be used sparingly and to great effect. And they'd damned well better be skippable, even if they're the best fraggin' cutscenes we could ever hope for in a Doom game.

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