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Foebane72

Who decided that Doom needed such a complex "lore"?

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I remember when Doom first came out, and how there was a brief blurb setting out the situation and location, and how you simply "blew demons back to hell", and Doom 2 was the demons invading Earth. I mean, everything was explained, neatly and with the id wit of the time, with screens of text that you could skip through in both games, and the story could be omitted neatly.

 

Then Doom 3 took inspiration from Half-Life and simply adapted the storyline into one requiring extra characters and a situation with experiments taking place with teleportation, and an investigation being launched because troublesome things were happening. Then all hell is let loose, the characters are mostly killed off, and again (at least with the non-BFG version of the game) you could skip that stuff.

 

Then things changed with Doom 2016: It's like someone set out to start creating a complicated storyline with the beginnings of "lore" and "codexes" concerning every little aspect of the game, yet it was really just the Doom Slayer, Olivia Pierce and Samuel Hayden, as well as a computer system named Vega. Also, unlike older games, there were specific names for things, like Argent energy and even locations. A change of direction in the storytelling, but still close to Doom 3 with keeping it simple, although it can't really be skipped this time.

 

But now, with Doom Eternal, the stuff I've heard about the sheer number of extra species and characters has gone through the roof, and I have no idea what's going on! I've heard explanations for character motivations and betrayals and so forth, and it sounds like something out of Game of Thrones, and I wonder who wrote this complicated stuff in the first place. The worst aspect of it is, there are elaborate character designs and mythical objects to go with them that really doesn't bode well for trying to skip the resulting talky cutscenes, as you will have no idea what's going on if you do. If the original, simple premise of Doom is being inflated like this, whose idea is it to try to create some kind of EPIC off of the franchise? Is it Hugo Martin? He seems to be solely responsible for the whole thing.

 

This is why I've gone off gaming for most of the last decade, as so much of it is waffly plot and extended cutscenes, instead of the purer combat of the Noughties and especially the Nineties. Why they're trying to turn games into movies is beyond me. I was glad that Doom had mostly escaped this, but now it too is succumbing.

 

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From what I have heard so far there are not that many lengthy cutscenes, and also you can skip them with a button press at any time. So if you do not care for them, just skip them, problem solved.

 

As far as not being able to tell what is going on, just shoot whatever stands in your way and get through the levels and you should be fine. I doubt there will be mission briefings inside those cutscenes.

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The story is optional completely and even less intrusive than it was in 2016. The purpose of it is to set the game's biblical scale and take the player to cool places and fight cool badguys. It also adds to the power fantasy of a marine so angry that Hell can't even kill him, and even fear him. All the nerds (including me) are into this shit, it probably doesn't matter if something in the game has a backstory or not, but for some people it adds more value to the game compared to it not existing. It helps grab the people who do like games for story as well. When it comes down to it, all the juicy stuff is tucked away in a separate panel. You can read it, or just not read it, but if you want to know about something the info is there and reading it is about all you need to do to know what's going on. Otherwise, all you do is just skip the cutscenes and ignore the lore you pick up, because when you break it down Doom is still just about a really angry guy moving fast and systematically erasing Hell. You may or may not care why or how but some do.

 

It's not like it's 1993 anymore where the technology of the game was too early to even bother with a large-scale story. Adding a story is valuable so long as it does not intrude with Doom's fast-paced nature; which so far it does not. 

Edited by oCrapaCreeper

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Oh ain't this another original foebane thread bashing eternal for being 'different'.

 

Jokes aside, I think the result of devs dabbling into lore and backstory and leaving loose ends in doom 2016 generated major hype these past 4 years and is a selling point of eternal for the community. It also kicked off some youtubers' careers because of it's popularity who just speculated and copied stuff from here and reddit IMO. This sort of 'figure your own story out' by minimal tidbits also worked in dark souls and bloodbourne, a series the devs are fan of.

 

So the plot you're seeing was already set in motion in 2016 and the devs are just more confident that they can show what they want and not be burned at the stake.

Edited by dewmguy : no hablas ingles

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The plot is there for the people that care about it, if you don't care about it just ignore it, doom is still about killing demons, the only difference is that now there is a backstory to it.

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3 hours ago, Foebane72 said:

I remember when Doom first came out...

Yep, it's a foebane thread alright.

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Quote

Who decided that doom needed such a complex lore


Sorry guys, i was me who decided. Hope you love the story <3

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1 hour ago, jamondemarnatural said:


Sorry guys, i was me who decided. Hope you love the story <3

No it was me :)

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The devs (no doubt led by Hugo Martin) decided that a top-tier Doom game made in the modern day needed a suitably epic story and setting to go with all the fancy graphics and expanded gameplay. They're literally spending millions to make this thing, why shouldn't they use what will be a relatively small part of that budget on the writing?

I like ambitious settings that mash up science fiction and fantasy elements, such as Warhammer 40,000. So I approve of the lore expansion that's been going on. Except that since the writing is in service of an FPS power fantasy rather than a tabletop SF wargame with many playable factions, the Doom universe isn't relentlessly grimdark, which makes a refreshing change.

I don't know what's going on either, but then none of us who aren't on Doom Eternal's writing team know, because the game hasn't been released yet.

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Those text screens telling you the story after every episode in classic Doom really PISSED ME OFF, personally. I want there to be zero context for my digital adventures, dammit!

 

Ok ok, let me stop being ridiculous for a second. I get that having a lot of lore in a Doom game seems kind of out of place, but it’s basically an entirely optional side dish. You can just breeze through every cutscene or bit of dialog pretty damn fast from what I understand. Any gameplay that is “story contingent” is still going to be primarily about providing enjoyable gameplay. If the context for why you’re doing what you’re doing doesn’t matter to you or bores you, simply ignore it and focus on the gameplay.

 

At least, everything I’ve seen and heard seems to suggest you’ll be able to approach the game in that way if you wish. No one will force you to be invested in, or even acknowledge the story elements. Maybe I’m wrong, but it doesn’t look like it.

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Writing 5 paragraphs only to ultimately complain about Doom Eternal like it always was... And this time it's about entirely optional content that isn't all that important -unless you want it to be important- because the game has "objective markers" which tell you where you need to be going and what you need to be doing. And if you don't like those, you can just turn them off. 0/10 troll thread.

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Have we, or have we not, as a community, been sat there making no end of theories, observations and timelines of the Doom games (and by extension Id games in general) for the last 20 odd years?

 

How long have we sat, uhming and ahing over Doom 64's plot or who/what Doomguy is and how he may be insane, a janitor on a hover bike, like 10 dudes in a line quickly swapping place (depending on weapon)... How much have we sat there breaking down the very details in abstract maps just to make sense of Doom's world? This was before even Doom 3, let alone 2016!

 

And you, Foebane72, dare to speak for us all and say we *don't* want more plot? How dare ye.

 

Spoiler

Yes I am hamming it up a fair bit but the point still stands.

 

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4 hours ago, Gothic said:

Yep, it's a foebane thread alright.

 

7 hours ago, Foebane72 said:

This is why I've gone off gaming for most of the last decade

 

Yup.

 

Topic:

 

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8 minutes ago, BBQgiraffe said:

you can just skip the cutscenes you egg

 

Could you in Doom 2016? I don't recall being able to do so. I just sat through the Doom Slayer smashing all of those Argent things (for example) whilst Hayden complained. I didn't know I could skip it.

 

Take my threads as "trollish" and "bait" if you like, but I'm not going to change my ways. I'm called Foebane for a reason.

 

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Just now, Foebane72 said:

 

Could you in Doom 2016? I don't recall being able to do so. I just sat through the Doom Slayer smashing all of those Argent things (for example) whilst Hayden complained. I didn't know I could skip it.


The cutscenes in Eternal can be skipped.

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3 minutes ago, Foebane72 said:

 

Could you in Doom 2016? I don't recall being able to do so. I just sat through the Doom Slayer smashing all of those Argent things (for example) whilst Hayden complained. I didn't know I could skip it.

 

Take my threads as "trollish" and "bait" if you like, but I'm not going to change my ways. I'm called Foebane for a reason.

 

those are literally 3 seconds

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6 minutes ago, BBQgiraffe said:

those are literally 3 seconds

 

I did say they were examples. I'm sure there were longer ones, but I haven't played the game for so long I can't remember them.

 

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4 hours ago, Foebane72 said:

I'm called Foebane for a reason.

 

I'm called dewmguy because i'm literally mountain dew below the neck

Edited by dewmguy

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1 hour ago, mrthejoshmon said:

like 10 dudes in a line quickly swapping place (depending on weapon)

I love this so much that this is officially my head cannon now.

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16 minutes ago, BBQgiraffe said:

those are literally 3 seconds

Second level, vega introduces itself for half a minute.

Second level, at the end, hayden talks like 3 minutes and you can't leave. Worst one.

Third level, vega talks about upgrades for half a minute.

Third level, olivia does something I don't even care about, 1 more minute of unskippable cutscenes.

It gets better after that, but replaybility got significantly worse because of that.

 

Thankfully eternal has third person view skippable cutscenes as far as I know.

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1 hour ago, Foebane72 said:

I'm called Foebane for a reason.

 

rofl

 

You forgot to tell us your pronouns.

 

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28 minutes ago, Megalyth said:

rofl

 

Actually, it's cos I was quite the multiplayer gamer back in the day, so I used that name as my handle. But the gaming declined, and I've used it as my nickname since.

 

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22 minutes ago, MrDeAD1313 said:

Foebane, a bastard sword with life drain.. hmmm...

 

I came up with that name independently, before I knew it existed for some RPG sword.

 

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I remember seeing a couple youtubers who watched or reacted to Doom Eternal and 2016 and immediately complained about it being a mindless shooter or being just shooting. One such reactor ended up watching the story trailer and explains that it by itself hyped her up more because it gave her a legitimate REASON to play the game other than cathartic shooting. 

 

So you see, story in a videogame can be important in a lot of ways and one of them is generating appeal. John Carmack was a revolutionary when it came to tech but his opinions were way off when it came to story in a video game.

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