An Explanation of the making of the DOOM Monsters

I'm kind of curious as to what motivated ID Software to choose the monsters they did.

For example, why did they make their best monsters cyborg/demons as supposed to being pure demons? Why make a monster that is exactly like a baron only with half the hp and a color change? etc.

Pure Hellspawn said:
For example, why did they make their best monsters cyborg/demons as supposed to being pure demons?

I'm guessing because it made the bosses look cool and brutal, and gave an excuse for simplifying development by using weapons (rockets and hitscan attacks) that worked very well, instead of devising new attack modes or redundant variations of what already existed. After that, and from that, they liked the idea of integrating the hellish influence with technology to show how the monsters warped it to their benefit. From that came some of the DOOM II monsters (mancubus, revenant, arachnotron).

Why make a monster that is exactly like a baron only with half the hp and a color change? etc.

This is simple; they did it for playability reasons. The baron of hell is emblematic, but slow to die for common encounters. In order to avoid modifying it, they added a very similar weaker one to use more regularly in places.

Tom Hall's Doom Bible mentions "tech demons" so the decision to have cybernetized fiends was taken long before the game was finalized.

On Romeros image gallery, he shows a picture by Julie Bell with the Cyberdemon appearing more like a psycho bull on steroids than a "Cyberdemon".



Perhaps they just wanted to give DOOM its' creative look instead of the usual "red guy with horns" cliche appearence.

They just asked Julie Bell for a cover but didn't like the result very much (Romero stated this at one point in his forums) and thus got another artist to make one. The pic is similar to the final one, so Brom may have seen a copy of Bell's art before making his version, which is more consistent with the style used in the games.

Gez said:
Tom Hall's Doom Bible mentions "tech demons" so the decision to have cybernetized fiends was taken long before the game was finalized.

The idea, yeah, but not necessarily the decision. Once Tom was gone, they could have ignored the idea as they did with various things in the DOOM bible, had they not liked its implementation.

In the late 1980s /early 1990s cyborgs were the hype. Just think of movies like Robocop, Terminator (who isn´t technically a cyborg, but also has this merging flesh and machine imagery), and other action movies from that time.

I find most Doom 1 & 2 monsters very much like standard demons. It's little coincidence that the simply named demons, except for being pink, look like typical devils. Not very far away, barons are again meat-coloured, satyr-like, but with a different head. Cacodemons are actually rip-offs, but still they look like grim cyclops masks. Specters are the closest things they got to "demonic spirits". Lost souls are flaming skulls, and I'd swear I've seen this design in many places.

The Doom 3 monsters look more like human-like inhuman destroyers. For example if you see an imp from far away, on a modest machine, you can almost tell it's a UAC worker... only until you hear a weird shreek coming that direction, and you see a ball of fire coming to you, then that same thing right in your stomach, ripping and tearing.

FBI said:

On Romeros image gallery, he shows a picture by Julie Bell with the Cyberdemon appearing more like a psycho bull on steroids than a "Cyberdemon".

Curiously, he looks like a breed of pinky demons (hunched and with bull head). Interesting DECORATE idea: a nightmare speed demon crossbreeded with a cyberboss.

printz said:
I find most Doom 1 & 2 monsters very much like standard demons. It's little coincidence that the simply named demons, except for being pink, look like typical devils. Not very far away, barons are again meat-coloured, satyr-like, but with a different head.

Actually, barons of hell clearly look more like classic devils or demons than demons do. This is because demons and devils usually look like satyrs or similar hybrids with animals, being often based on pagan monsters and creatures. It's like a satyr in that it combines animal legs and a human torso, but otherwise it's more like a minotaur.

The demon doesn't look that much like a classic demon, but it does look somewhat like the baron of hell because of the color, its arms and the bull-like horns. It's got legs that look more like a dinosaur's, which gives it a more modern look.

myk said:

Actually, barons of hell clearly look more like classic devils or demons than demons do. This is because demons and devils usually look like satyrs or similar hybrids with animals, being often based on pagan monsters and creatures. It's like a satyr in that it combines animal legs and a human torso, but otherwise it's more like a minotaur.

The demon doesn't look that much like a classic demon, but it does look somewhat like the baron of hell because of the color, its arms and the bull-like horns. It's got legs that look more like a dinosaur's, which gives it a more modern look.

I agree. A baron does look very demonic in a way. I think it's due to the fact that it's not cybernetic (demons came way before cyborgs in human fiction), and because of it's huge, evil appearance.

myk said:

The demon doesn't look that much like a classic demon, but it does look somewhat like the baron of hell because of the color, its arms and the bull-like horns. It's got legs that look more like a dinosaur's, which gives it a more modern look.

Well, then it's not the pagan devil I compare them to, but the mischievous type often materializing on someone's left shoulder. The differences are that they're pink (not red) and hunched.

Steel looks stronger than flesh, even if it is demonic flesh. Maybe it was there way of saying even when the cyberdemon gets killed, they replace the flesh with metal. As for the spider mastermind, it probably just looked better to have mechano legs than spider legs. Spider legs would not show as easily.