Little disappointed with the martian alien shit...

Is anyone else disappointed with the whole story arc of us (humans) being descended from martians? And the martians were, in greatest cliche fashion, a super advanced race that was just so uber and high tech and all that shit? Smells like a Stargate-SG1 or any other sci-fi universe rip off to me. After I learned that it pretty much ruined the feel of the game for me. I no longer felt I was fighting against hell, hell as religous hell with all the connotations of God and everything, but more like I was figthing some dimensional alien creatures with no religous undertones at all.

Part of what made doom so creepy was all the pentagrams and inverted crosses and satanic imagery that sort of tickles that part of the human psyche that says "satan is the worst bad ever man, watch that shit".

The "we are martians" story arc just broke the whole franchise for me.

I had hoped that the writer would make it more biblical, even though that would have been cliche it still would have been cool

Wait-- you mean the martian buddy logo is actualy a headshot of Jesus?

You should just go, kill the cyberdemon and then Betruger and then the Martian Buddy guy comes out of your head and kills everyone except you and then we all happily go back to earth only to find out that the martian buddy martian is the last surviving guy of his race and that he was part of the race that we decended from.

Making it biblical would have been alot more interesting than aliens. In the expansion I think it needs to make it more clear that the hell in the game is the hell referred to in human religous beliefs.

The original Doom/Doom2 also mixed up the terms "demons" and "aliens" all the time. It´s actually a blend of both and everybody´s got to make his / her own decision, whether it´s more hellish or more alien what you encounter.

Concerning the martian ancestors: I like to imagine that these ancestors were the population of earth at the time of Doom/Doom2. They alread had set foot on mars and then the demonic invasion came and they sent the original Doomguy to repel them. Earth was destroyed, then rebuilt and then a new human civilization was erected - the one that you find in Doom3. History repeated itself: The UAC was built up again and the demonic invasion was unleashed upon mankind again. The ancient stone tablet already shows the original Doom cover, which kinda supports this theory. Then again, Doom1/2 didn´t feature the Soulcube but maybe there was some other Doomguy fighting off the demonic hordes on mars with the soul cube, bla bla bla... I like the idea, anyways :-)

A mixture of Aliens and Demons you say? Quite interesting. It reminds me of Fallout 2 where "monsters" game under the categories of : accidental mutants, purposely mutated creatures, aliens etc.

If I were to guess at Doom 2, the only monsters I could guess that would be aliens would be the arachnotron and spider mastermind, with the cyberdemon being an alien-modified demon. If there's any literature about this I wouldn't mind seeing it.

Actually i think they where all Demons in the biblical sense, Except the Mancubus, which was a member of an alien race which had also opened a gate to hell, and they had been taken over (i think one of the ID guys made that story, no links though). The 'Cyber' monsters are simply the result of the demons using thier magic to subvert stolen human technology (they also could have gotten possesed human engineers to build it), note that the first cyber monster doesnt show up till the end of episode 2

deathbringer said:
Except the Mancubus, which was a member of an alien race which had also opened a gate to hell, and they had been taken over (i think one of the ID guys made that story, no links though).

Yeah, whatever. Fortunately the "story" in DOOM and DOOM II is very game dependent, and drawing conclusions beyond the game materials is secondary. DOOM 3 tries to have a story there, though.

If someone could find that quote deathbringer is talking about concernin the mancubus id like to see it.

And also we dont know for sure that the martians were our ancestors, the game never totally confirmed it so perhaps in the expansion we will see different.

In the shower one moring (you all know the shower is where the greatest works of literature were thought up right??) i thought up a story arc where hell somehow found a way to open a portal to mars and had planned on taking over earth when we were still primitive but god sent an army of angels to stop it(or something like that, its been a few days ago). The army of angels were serioulsy beaten down by the demons and the only way to stop them was to sacrifice the souls of a bunch of the angels to create the soulcube, which was then taken to the portal by one uber bad arse angel to be used as sort of a lock on the portal. it worked but evil was still a little bit present on mars and when the UAC got there it needed someone like betruger to possess to start with the digging and looking for it/and or building another portal.

Wish I could remember all the details. It was brilliant, of course ;)

IF you read any of the Doom novels, the Demons are actually shapeshifting aliens called F.R.E.D.S . Hopefully they won't take this route in the game.

The martian thing is playing on two things actually, a: that there was once life on mars. And b: the missing link in our evolution. Doom 3 was not by any means the only thing to play on this. Ice Pirates the movie, and Hitchhikers guide to the Galaxie. Are the two things I can think of right now.

I disagree with makeing Hell match the christain beliefs, I'd rather they just showed that hell exist without validateing any existing creed. The concept of Hell actually spawns from many differant creeds anyway.

Deathmatcher said:

a new human civilization was erected

heh you said erected.

ps it never claimed the demons are martians :P Just that they are why there is no longer life on mars. The game never confirmed that we came from mars. Though most of us know Men came from Mars and Women came from Venus ;) I think the scientist who mentioned the possibility just drew a hopefully conclusion based on what they found so far. BTW there is a Martian Zombie Movie. BUt I forgot what it was called ( must left a good impression me :D )

I wish they had made a secret level where you fought off the Martian buddy martians at Martian Buddy HQ.

Why couldn't they keep it as demons/humans. They could have included the martian stuff. BUT keep it on its own ground. Kinda of a back story that hell tryed this already on an earlyer date with the martions before they all died of. And now that the portal is open they can take over humanity. I like the biblical portion myself because the original doom made so many referances to this and thats what we all know and love. I my self believe the manc is a natural born demon.

I for one prefer not to think of this hell as any sort of biblical hell, or rather, any sort of divine hell, but instead what the biblical hell was written after. Demons come from fire ripping things apart, yah you'll probably make a mythology where people get sent their when they die. It scares the kids and some of the adults (cue Ned Flanders).
I don't see any reason these demons can't both be aliens and yet be the biblical kind at the same time. It's just the biblical view is from a different and more narrow perception.

Actually, there's practically no description of Hell in the Bible... people here may be referring to Dante's Hell; he did describe it, and DOOM does have references to it in the names and the graphic textures.

I'm fairly convinced they are biblical demons. The inverse crucifixion kinda confirmed it for me.

destx said:
I'm fairly convinced they are biblical demons. The inverse crucifixion kinda confirmed it for me.

maybe they're aliens that hate the letter "t".

Epistax said:

Wait-- you mean the martian buddy logo is actualy a headshot of Jesus?

yep, infact it is well known that jesus was a martian! so there for hevean must be hidden on mars

to be honest the game felt like alien, event horizon and total recall had a 3-some. Not that its a bad thing, but those seemed to be big influences (mainly alien)

I, for one, liked the ancient, advanced civilization stuff. For the first Dooms, I felt like it had no point. It was like "Okay, Hell overflowed and now they need to take over Earth and so on." and went from room to room blasting them back to Hell.

But this actually gave Doom a storyline and plot, and made more sense, especially for the athiests. This also explained the cyber-implants for the Cyberdemon, arachnotrons, mancubus, and revenents in the first Dooms, and for the Demons and Lost Souls in Doom 3.

Epistax said:

I for one prefer not to think of this hell as any sort of biblical hell, or rather, any sort of divine hell, but instead what the biblical hell was written after. Demons come from fire ripping things apart, yah you'll probably make a mythology where people get sent their when they die. It scares the kids and some of the adults (cue Ned Flanders).
I don't see any reason these demons can't both be aliens and yet be the biblical kind at the same time. It's just the biblical view is from a different and more narrow perception.

Agreed. Whats in a word. Does a Demon stink anyless by any other name?

Things are what we make of them, even the scientist were jumping to conclusions, oh and on the tablet it shows a doomguy with the UAC armor.

Time/Space are being played with in the teleporter experiements how does anyone know that perhaps in the first 2 episodes the whole complex wasnt warped back in time or vice versa, it left very open ended so that the fans can make or percieve more than just a linear story line. I think it was done exceptionally well, even if not a new idea, but what is anymore hahah.

I loved the martian plotline and how it was speculated they were our ancestors (remember, this was just a theory from one scientist). I thought it was a good bit of writing. Something not found in any id game before this (and I say that as a huge fan of id games).

Epistax, I like that point of view.

Think of it this way: suppose the Martians were the ancestors of our race on earth...and the demons, yes I said demons, drove them near to utter decimation before they sent an envoy or two to earth. The demons are led, in theory, by Satan/Lucifer/Beezelbub/etc and it is the duty of that leader to fulfill their part in God's plan to make the lives of humans difficult. So their obligation began on Mars and continued after the martians emigrated to earth. When humans came back to Mars, the demons took an affront to this and decided to finish the job they began (possibly millennia ago) and also take a chance to go to earth and finish off the human race there, or at least fulfill a prophecy of Hell on earth.

When you think about that little tweak in the story, it bears a great biblical implication when you consider the whole generation of humanity on earth in seven days aspect.