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Technician

Doom 3 novel. Update.

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That´s interesting, never heard of it! And it´s by Matthew Costello, who worked on the story script of Doom3. I have to get this.

dsm said that the original Doom3 story was more complex, but it was dumbed down for whatever stupid reason. Maybe this book contains some of the original ideas?

edit: yes it does, there is a mention of General Hayden.

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Yeah. In the "the making of Doom3" book, several very frightening decisions are talking about. Tim Willits really dumbed down the story a lot. For some reason everything has to be obvious, so they changed Betruger to this comic-book like villain and removed anyone who could have made the plot a little more interesting and less obvious.

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Keep in mind there are some things that wouldn't be practical putting into a game from a written story. It's the same when making a movie based on a book.

And I'd just thought I'd throw in this little tidbit about Doom 3: IMO, anybody who dogs on it hasn't played it on the higher difficulty levels. I'm just now starting to play the full game on Veteran, and I'm already starting to have a hard time, and I'm only on the Alpha labs! Attacks to more damage, there are more enemies in places there never were before (I actually noticed this when I played ROE on Marine for the first time), items a little more sparse...you get the idea.

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Texas Libra said:

Keep in mind there are some things that wouldn't be practical putting into a game from a written story. It's the same when making a movie based on a book.


Matthew Costello wrote the story script for the game first, and then later took his ideas to write a book. Not the other way round. It´s not that Doom3 is a game that was based on some book that was already there.

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Wow. I'm sixty pages in and this book goes in to great detail. It involves the birth of Mars City and a few cast members that were written out of the game (read Making of Doom 3). This also goes into back-story of a post apocalyptic earth and why our friendly Marine was sent to Mars.

I hope this novel is as good as the first six chapters projects.

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Thanks for the heads up. I was sure I would be able to find this at amazon.co.jp, but they had it, and for so cheap I had to buy something else to qualify for free shipping.

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Just discovered this novel today, can't wait to pick it up, sounds way better than the 90's novels.

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Does the book say anything about Dr.Betruger? I found it frusturating when i finished Doom 3 and i just remembered that i knew next to nothing about the main bad guy after all this time :(

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Read the book over a trip. I liked the book a lot, much better than the old Doom ones. It doesn't contradict and follows the Doom 3 experience and adds more characters in separate plot lines. It starts off with the bigwigs agenda (UAC's projects) and the Doom3guy's marine background. It trades off 2 or 3 plotlines over the chapters, with a few more characters not in Doom3; it ends around the alpha labs levels (apparently 1 book in a trilogy/series).

hardcore_gamer said:
Does the book say anything about Dr.Betruger?

Yep, along with Swann/Campbell, whose concepts are kept from Doom3.

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Q- Does the book have Sargent Kelly?

I think it's really cool that the guy who scripted Doom3 wrote this book, and will hopefully write the future iterations.

It means instead of getting a weird spin off of Doom like the 90's novelizations, this is the real deal.

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I found the book far more professionally written than the old novels, and the story was a lot more exciting to read.

I personally like the way Costello wrote the Doom guy. Made me picture the D3 marine carrying out these actions in my head.
More ominous details about the teleportation project and how it's slowly starting to result in...disturbing things. Nice.

There are, however, minor aspects that deviate from the game in a manner that I find rather distracting..........Incoming spoiler!

The marine blasts an imp no less than three times at point blank range before it goes down - instantly made me feel that this wasn't Doom). Zombies also described as blackskinned and with tar for blood, which seems completely upside-downsie of what they're like in the game./spoiler!

hardcore_gamer said:

Does the book say anything about Dr.Betruger? I found it frusturating when i finished Doom 3 and i just remembered that i knew next to nothing about the main bad guy after all this time :(

Yup, there's more details about Betruger this time around, although they're still a little superficial (we don't know enough about his personal motives, but later novels may shed more light on this).

Q- Does the book have Sargent Kelly?

Yes but.....
Spoilerific fun comin' up!

In the book, he's a real dick and stupid too. Far worse than he is in the game, where he's merely bossy and demanding albeit in a professional manner. Acts like a dumbarse school bully in the novel and not like a professional you'd be willing to sacrifice your own will for, let alone entrust with your life. I guess some Sergeants are like that in reality, ugh./Spoilerific.

All in all, the novel is quite enjoyable and a very, very inspiring read. Especially for us Doom 3 afficionados.

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Finished reading this recently and it was a fun read.

I don't recall the Black skin reference. What I do remember is Kane noting those guys being referred to as Zombies in Mars City.

It was really cool to read the first part of the fleshed out Doom3 story. My fav part was towards the end when Kane first met the Pinkie..
'Nice Doggie' heheheh. Can't wait to see how the boss encounters are written in the next part.

I think it will be really fun to read through parts of the story that were in the final game. What do ya reckon- RoE as the third book?

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Danger said:

What do ya reckon- RoE as the third book?


*AHEM*

Hellish Godzilla said:

Amazon has the release date for the second book listed as March 31, 2009, just in case you're wondering.

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Danger said:

I think it will be really fun to read through parts of the story that were in the final game. What do ya reckon- RoE as the third book?

Considering the pace of the first book and the large number of as of yet unanswered questions, I'd venture a guess that this trilogy deals exclusively with Doom 3 vanilla. Another reason I think this, is because of the pace of storytelling. It would strike me as anti-climatic if the second book ended with Kane defeating the Cyberdemon and closing the gate and then book three would jump three years and rush the storyline of RoE through a single book.

But I've been known to be wrong before and should you turn out be right, I'll give you a cookie and a recommendation (unless you're being an asshole towards me, in which case you can lick your own ass and wave goodbye to cookies and recommendations).

Yeah, I don't know Texas Libra's point either, might as well ignore it till he gives an elaboration on it, rather than waste time thinking too much about it.

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Yeah, I read the book as well, I enjoyed it slightly more than the original Doom books. I also agree with others that the book was well written.

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I bought and finished it few days ago. Costello is a very good writer from what I see. Whenever the fire seems to be dying out or the action seem to be slowing down, he gives it some edge and replaces it with something new and refreshing. Whenever a character doesn't seem to be making sense, another comes in and elaborates things for everyone to make things clear.

I just started to read Henry 'David the hug's books too and although there are some very interesting ideas in them and Daffyd seem to know how to mix flashbacks, tell some jokes and visualize the surrounding very well, it just sounds and looks older compared to Costello's novel . There are some areas that Costello could work a little more, but that didn't mean he failed to make the novel exciting. It certainly wasn't Stephen King, but it did the trick as a sci-fi novel.

Guess I'm gonna be keeping this in my shelves for now.

Oh, yeah. Mine had a special misprint which reminded me of that Peter Chimera fan-fic.
"but now - We gets targets."

Both books have Custer references, by the way.

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I thought changing scenes every 5 pages was way too soap opera-ish. Just when you start to get into a scene, it changes to somewhere else. If he had just done that at the end, for dramatic effect, it would've worked fine. Doing the whole book like that was just annoying.

Edit *** Not to mention my copy had a typo on every page, sometimes several, for the first half of the book. The second half was fine; not sure how that happened. Anybody hear of proof-reading?

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Just got finished reading the 2nd book and I was pretty disappointed, The way the books was pacing I thought(*more liked HOPED) The books were gonna stretch into 3 maybe 4 books. The writing was good and pacing nice. Giving alot of deep rooted backstory on the UAC. But past halve of the 2nd book everything just kinda sped up and just finished real quick.

I found myself refering back the older novels, books "Knee deep in the dead" and "Hell on earth" books ONLY, of course. A least THOSE cater to the classic DOOM games.

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Just received 'Maelstrom' Book Two of Matthew Costello's Doom3 adaptation in the post today.

I'm saving it to read on the plane when I go on holiday at the end of the month, woo!

Will post opinions post holiday.

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