The untold story of The Dark Side of Phobos

Since no one can be bothered to read my long posts in my "Community Project Idea" thread and since I can't be bothered to edit all the info in that thread down into a readily readable amount, I'm proposing a new Doom project idea! This is inspired from playing classic_ep.wad. The idea is simple. Instead of retelling the stories of Knee Deep in the Dead or The Shores of Hell or Inferno which have all been 'told' over and over again, tell the untold story of what happened somewhere between defeating the Phobos moon base bosses and landing on the Shores of Hell. There is a lost episode of Doom that has never been seen before!

After battling hell on earth and returning home (End of Doom II), you were continually haunted by nightmares. The doctors assured you that this sort of thing was common after the experiences you had been through, but the nightmares were so real and terrifying and often with strange and perplexing events of which you had no recollection and of which you couldn't make sense that you had the feeling what you were going through was more than your typical Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Something horrific had happened to you that you had suppressed and was now trying to push its way to the surface. Something had happened that needed to be uncovered. Not being able to take it anymore, you finally broke down and made an appointment with a hypnosis specialist. This is the story of what she helped you uncover in the deep recesses of your mind....

After you defeated the two Barons of Hell bosses on Phobos Anomaly and you entered the teleport and "died" something nightmarish happened of which you have no recollection. All you know is that when you came to you were on Diemos: the shores of hell. It turns out there was a whole episode during those Doomed days that you had completely forgotten. Through hypnosis you begin to learn the truth. It turns out before you landed on "the shores of hell", you were first teleported to the dark side of Phobos where you discovered the demons had taken over secret military bases there as well where even stranger experiments were being carried out and that the demons, after killing all the personnel there, started messing with whatever top secret extragalactic technology UAC? (we assume) had been working on and you were the only one there to stop it. Somewhere during your nightmarish time battling the demons and trying to figure out what went wrong and what the demons were up to you suffered complete memory loss. You must have discovered something pretty important that the monsters teleporting in were so hellbent on killing you over. They didn't succeed, but they did somehow manage to erase from your memory all that had happened there and what you learned about what UAC? (we assume)and then the monsters, were up to. This is the lost story of what happened on the dark side of Phobos before you came to on "the shores of hell."

In a nutshell, think of this as the untold episode in Doom that is the dark twin of Knee Deep in the Dead. Texture restrictions would be similar to E1 (this also takes place on Phobos), but there would be more monsters and different types of monsters (so Cacodemons and Barons of Hell and maybe lost souls would have made it to the dark side of the moon.

A new intermission screen would show the new military installations on the dark side of the moon.

As stated, this episode in Doom was very similar to E1 but it was darker, scarier, more nightmarish, and there were probably more specters, anomalies and strange things happening so think more monster teleports--and the occasional regular teleport too) and less former humans and seargents than on E1 (especially in the second half of the episode.) The architecture was probably similar. Doom marine may have found a top secret prototype of a plasma rifles and maybe a BFG at the end of the episode, but mostly the standard E1 weapons would be found.

I was thinking for this project of perhaps having little messages throughout to help you along in uncovering the mystery and truth of what happened on the dark side of Phobos. Something along the lines of the messages in Commander Keen--thoughts inside your head--but this time you discover those thoughts are more than just idle intuitions... or unexplained, illogical figments of Billy Blaze's imagintion, but rather, their source is a key part to answering the mystery and anomalies of The Dark Side of Phobos. In addition to creating a richer Doom experience, adding these messages is a way to giving secret areas renewed purpose and mystery since the problem of powerups and items in secrets is that they make the game easier--but if you don't put cool items in secrets then they are a let down--so this could be a rewarding alternative. Instead of secrets containing only items and power ups, they could hold important messages as well. "You'll need a shotgun in the end, but not to kill the vorticon!" but something fitting to the Doom storyline of course.

Too bad id didn't think of this and make E4 The Dark Side of Phobos! "Thy Flesh Consumed" always seemed a bit out of place to me.

This is a cool idea.

Is this the same project as on the other thread? Like a revised version.

I do like the sound of this.

Kyka said:

This is a cool idea.

Is this the same project as on the other thread? Like a revised version.

I do like the sound of this.

I dunno, the later it gets the more ideas my mind starts getting (I wrote this at 4am right after completing Class_ep.wad) so I was just feeling inspired by all the Doomness I've been playing lately. And I read Doom's storyline which I hadn't read in a LONG time and I was definitely inspired by that. It wasn't really supposed to be the same idea. But I think it might be better to approach a project with a story in mind like id did with the original Dooms, rather than trying to build stuff around a set of restricting rules. Plus I like having the story interwoven into the episode while you're playing it--the unraveling of the mystery. It wouldn't bog down gameplay or interfere with Doom's simplicity. At various points in the game there could be recognizable computer panels or some kind of teleport device (teleport for ideas, not matter) like the big blue teleporters in Commander Keen's dark side of mars (and I think it's kinda cool that a lot of this would have reminiscence of CK) and whenever you find one of these teleporters text appears on the screen of a thought or premonition that comes to the Doomguy: either a cryptic message as how to complete the final confrontation or a hint as how to get to the secret level or just a clue for the map you're on--I envision most of the messages dealing directly with an aspect of uncovering of the plot. Lot of possibilities there. I don't want to go too much into detail with ideas as I don't want there to be any spoilers if this ever actually gets off the ground! But I have a few possible ideas. What I'd like to do is assemble a team of some talented peeps! This project would obviously take more time to complete since it involves a new intermission pic, a new storyline that needs to be fleshed out, and the new message system. Thanks for showing interest!