I think Doom should have taken a more Quake direction

[MeetyourUnmaker]

I am to be honest with you. The direction that PSX Doom, Doom 64, and Doom 3 is more interesting aesthetically than the original 2 Dooms. So which direction do you think is superior? The classic cartoony cheesy art style of the originals? Or the more "bigger picture" gothic artstyle that started with Doom 2's abstractness?

[A Nobody]

All games are great.

[Redwind]

In terms of the art style, I'd prefer more serious and dark approach, like Quake and Doom 64 did.

In terms of level design, I personally don't think Doom I's tech bases or Hell were worse than Quake's gothic levels. I like both. Doom II's abstract and city-like levels aren't bad either.

[Catpho]

Doom's level design was more colorful and interesting than Quake's imo. Doom 2 is a bit boring with the brown "realistic" (enough) theme, but it would still be a close race.

Doom 3 is just brooding dark colored metal, only the hell segments looked good. PSX doom maps looks even more bland than doom 2's tbh. Doom64's art direction is alright, wouldnt mind seeing more :P

Conclusion: Original direction rocks!

[Deleted_Account]

I began playing the original Doom games back in '93 when they were first released. I was blown away by the style of the games, and I even found them scary! Seeing the two Barons for the first time and hearing their mighty roars put me on edge. I really like the distinct overall look of Doom, everything just meshed well together. A little bit later Doom would be released on the Playstation and I would fall in love with it all over again. The strange and creepy lighting, the moody ambient music and the new sound work won me over. Doom 64 would take a similar approach, but adopted a more Quakeish/Occult appearance. Nowadays my preference for Doom leans to PSX/64. Although I still love the original Doom games, especially Ultimate Doom.

 

And about Doom 3, despite the flak it gets I think it's a solid game. I like to think of it as a slow burning Doom. I still play it to this day, even with Doom 2016 out and about. So yeah, I'm a Doom fanboy.

 

In regards to Quake, I really dig it. I adore the Lovecraftian vibes that exist and the intense in your face action that it's known for. Sadly none of my friends liked Quake because it was too brown, and when Quake II came along, it was too orange.

[[McD] James]

Neither art direction is superior to the other. It's purely a matter of personal preference. 

[Deleted_Account]

7 minutes ago, Ajora said:

Neither art direction is superior to the other. It's purely a matter of personal preference. 

Which is what it ultimately boils down to. Doom is such a dynamic series where there's something for everyone.

[Grain of Salt]

They're both pretty silly.

[wheresthebeef]

I prefer more cartoony and stylized looks than gritty brown.

I do like how Doom 64 looks, but I wouldn't want the whole series to look like that; there's enough games that do that already.

[GarrettChan]

39 minutes ago, Grain of Salt said:

They're both pretty silly.

I thought you wrote $h!tty for some reason XD  Anyway, serious stuff is not fun, so I prefer to be silly 8)

[Cruduxy Pegg]

I prefer the originals. Doom 3 looks nice but holy mother of grey (and brown for a change of scenery in the last levels). At least a couple of areas were orange\red I guess.

[riderr3]

I prefer techbases which have been seen at Evilution, and some abstract setpieces from Plutonia. Doom 3 way too dark and linear for my tastes.

[Remilia Scarlet]

Aesthetically, I would have preferred more of a Quake approach since I like the dark, oppressive, gothic atmosphere it had.  But that's just personal preference, and it's one reason I love Doom 64 so much (and why my own levels look the way they do).  My tastes have also changed with time, and if you would have asked me the same question when I was in high school, I'd have chosen Doom's original aesthetics instead.

 

As far as level design goes, I don't think that Doom could have gone the same direction that Quake did simply because it came first.  Quake's levels seem like an outgrowth and distillation of the best parts of Doom's gameplay, rather than more of the same.  If Quake's level designs came first and were in Doom's, they still would have felt less polished.  Hopefully that makes sense XD

[Memfis]

Hell no!

 

 

 

[seed]

2 hours ago, The-Heretic-Assassin said:

All games are great.

 

1 hour ago, Ajora said:

Neither art direction is superior to the other. It's purely a matter of personal preference. 

 

^ Superior is subjective.

 

Indeed, they're great as they are, but at the same time if I am to choose what take I would've liked it to take after playing Doom 64 and the PSX Doom TC I would've preferred the latter's darker and more serious approach since, in the case of Doom 64 at least, it plays much more freely with sacrifices and other infernal stuff, just enough to satisfy my thirst for macabre beauty.

 

I would've also liked to see more "natural" levels a la Plutonia too, but they might've been beyond the scope of the games, so maybe more varied techbases, maybe even another planet but yeah, I suppose this is would be too much as well. If not, just give me Doom 64 inspired grotesque, morbid, sacrificial, sacrilegious, and menacing environment with great use of lightning and I'll probably be satisfied, if they also play very well of course. I wouldn't have minded a few (fun) waves of enemies in a few levels either.

 

Despite my preferences, I would've liked only a few games in the series like this, not every single one of them, bring variety and more unique and interesting ideas rather than endlessly recycling just a few of them, so I guess at the end of the day it's good the series is the way it is. 

 

TL;DR: In just a short sentence, Doom 64 atmosphere + the fun gameplay of the originals.

Edited April 7, 2018 by Agent6

[mrthejoshmon]

I personally cannot stand the original Quake's gameplay and its design (I much prefer Quake 2 in every way) and by extension I wouldn't want Doom to be "more Quake" in terms of design and gameplay.

 

I think they should remain separate entities, Quake is a very different design philosophy.

[Nine Inch Heels]

23 hours ago, MeetyourUnmaker said:

The classic cartoony cheesy art style of the originals?

I'm pretty confident that back when "OG Doom" came out, not many people thought of that as entirely cheesy or cartoony. It was the dawn of "killer-games™" after all. The cartoony aspect is a perception we have today, because the tolerable level of violence and gore in games, as well as the means to display it accurately, have increased/improved over time. Looking back and being like "oh, look how cheesy that stuff is", is both right and wrong at the same time... -Ish...

 

As for visual style, well it sure is a matter of preference to begin with. But there surely is something to be said about the colourful approach in classic doom, especially since back when it was made, the resolution options we have today were not available, which is why a variety of "strong" colours and contrasts of colours was an important asset to have.

 

Doom64 also had quite a lot of colours going for it, even though it was leaning a lot more towards ambience than OG Doom could at the time that was made.

 

Quake on the other hand, in spite of being very colourful, is a game I remember as feeling very same-y in terms of colours for each individual map. To me personally maps in quake seemed to be mostly about a certain colour-theme with lots of lighting gradients and the occasional highlight instead of using a variety of colours over the course of one map to set areas apart from one another. But then again, I don't remember much about quake anyway,  because I felt it was inferior to OG doom's gameplay in terms of "player versus enemy". Stuff just felt too bulky overall, killing things was not really satisfying as a result, which is why the quad damage is so popular in quake ;p

Edited April 8, 2018 by Nine Inch Heels

[[McD] James]

For the longest time I disliked Quake's art direction, but now it's probably my single favourite thing about the game, along with it being one of my favourite games overall. I never tire of getting completely absorbed into its bleak, gothic atmosphere. 

[StalkerZHS]

Quake is the most atmospheric ID game of the 90's and probably has the sexiest sound design in ALL OF VIDEOGAMES

 

that shotgun man

oh my goodness that quake shotgun

 

[WH-Wilou84]

I prefer Quake's dark and gothic looks to Doom's.
Monsters like Revenants, Mancubi, Arachnotrons, and Spider Masterminds never gave me that "Hell" vibe, as opposed to Quake's enemies. Thankfully, the author of Demon Eclipse / Hell-Forged has made new monster sprite sets for most of Doom II's roster, which have been used here and there already (in Ancient Aliens for instance). These sprites look much creepier and hellish than their classic counterparts.

Doom's gameplay is still far superior than Quake's, though, and that's why I stick to Doom.

 

7 hours ago, StalkerZHS said:

Quake is the most atmospheric ID game of the 90's and probably has the sexiest sound design in ALL OF VIDEOGAMES

 

that Super Nailgun man

oh my goodness that quake Super Nailgun

 

FTFY
Quake's Shotgun always sounded like some kind of repellent spray to me.
 

[belandino]

Nothing beats Knee-Deep In the Dead techbase art style, in my humble opinion.

[Soundblock]

Sprites > Polygons for me.

 

Probably a residual impression left on my visual tastebuds from growing up adoring the arcade machine genesis and the magic display they projected, so full of promise and wonder of an exciting future yet to come. I still dig some of the new games being made, but I'm more easily excited by meticuolously pieced together retro titles, which there are an increasing abundance of, thank god. There's always a level of uncanny valley with polies for me, while I more easily accept the unreality of sprites for what they are, if crafted well.

Edited April 10, 2018 by Soundblock : typo

[Pegleg]

On 4/7/2018 at 6:25 PM, Nine Inch Heels said:

I'm pretty confident that back when "OG Doom" came out, not many people thought of that as entirely cheesy or cartoony.

...

The cartoony aspect is a perception we have today, because the tolerable level of violence and gore in games, as well as the means to display it accurately, have increased/improved over time. Looking back and being like "oh, look how cheesy that stuff is", is both right and wrong at the same time... -Ish...

I can only speak for myself, but when I played it in mid-1994, I didn't find the graphics as cheesy or cartoonish. I had played Wolfenstein 3D a couple times, but Doom was a (giant) step up.

 

Looking back and re-evaluating seems to be a normal byproduct of growth (whether this re-evaluation is right or not is a different matter). The original Rainbow Six was ground-breaking when it came out. Compare it to later Rainbow Six or Call of Duty titles and you may find yourself scratching your head as to why you were so blown away by it.

 

On 4/7/2018 at 6:25 PM, Nine Inch Heels said:

Quake on the other hand, in spite of being very colourful, is a game I remember as feeling very same-y in terms of colours for each individual map.

 

On 4/7/2018 at 7:41 PM, Ajora said:

For the longest time I disliked Quake's art direction, but now it's probably my single favourite thing about the game, along with it being one of my favourite games overall. I never tire of getting completely absorbed into its bleak, gothic atmosphere. 

Personally, I liked the art in Quake 2 better than the art in Quake 1. Perhaps that was enhancements in technology, but I still remember liking the look of Quake 2 better than Quake 1.

 

42 minutes ago, Soundblock said:

Sprites > Polygons for me.

I also preferred the look of the monsters in Doom 1 and 2 (as sprites) as compared to the monsters in Quake 1 (polygons).

[Nine Inch Heels]

4 hours ago, Pegleg said:

Looking back and re-evaluating seems to be a normal byproduct of growth (whether this re-evaluation is right or not is a different matter)

Fair enough. All things considered, I'm pretty sure most people don't look back with "ill-intent", but when a small subset of people look back and dump criticism on these old works (innovations at the time without which we wouldn't be here today) without putting things into perspective at all, that I have mixed feelings about is all I'm saying.

[GarrettChan]

9 minutes ago, Nine Inch Heels said:

when a small subset of people look back and dump criticism on these old works (innovations at the time without which we wouldn't be here today) without putting things into perspective at all

Besides this, probably players from a new generation sometimes "accidentally" criticize old games. Most of the time, they may say something like the graphics are bad. Judging a thing on an environment that they haven't been in may be difficult, I guess.

 

If talking about the answer to the OP, I think I play a lot Doom more than Quake tells my opinions towards this. Yeah, indeed Doom looks cartoonish now as I said before, but you can't compare Doom and Quake when Doom came out since Quake didn't even exist back then.

[Pegleg]

15 minutes ago, Nine Inch Heels said:

Fair enough. All things considered, I'm pretty sure most people don't look back with "ill-intent", but when a small subset of people look back and dump criticism on these old works (innovations at the time without which we wouldn't be here today) without putting things into perspective at all, that I have mixed feelings about is all I'm saying.

I agree with your statement entirely. Anyone who does judge old work without perspective and with ill intent are just being silly and doing themselves an injustice.

 

As @GarrettChan said, newer players may criticize an aspect of an older game. That being said, to criticize an aspect of an older technological achievement (an early text parser in graphical adventures, early VGA graphics, the first polygon-based games, full-motion video, etc.), while ignoring that achievement in its context, is usually a bad thing, in my opinion.

[Fonze]

I find the thought funny that doom should have taken the direction of something not yet made at the time. Also, I'm pretty sure quake took its inspiration from the dull browns of doom 2 and we all know how pretty we consider those maps to be. Don't be mad that The Chasm was quake's prototype.

[Nine Inch Heels]

8 minutes ago, Fonze said:

 Also, I'm pretty sure quake took its inspiration from the dull browns of doom 2 and we all know how pretty we consider those maps to be.

It's not the size of the colour, it's what you do with it. (Screenie is a WIP shot by the way) ;-)

 

EDIT: also stock Doom II textures only

[GarrettChan]

43 minutes ago, Nine Inch Heels said:

(WIP picture)

I don't know why as soon as I saw those small "platforms", there's a mini doomguy in my mind traversing them in a much smaller scale. You polluted my mind ;-P

[Fonze]

1 hour ago, Nine Inch Heels said:

It's not the size of the colour, it's what you do with it. (Screenie is a WIP shot by the way) ;-)

 

EDIT: also stock Doom II textures only

 

Too much green; throws off the delicate feng shui balance created by smearing brown shitdirt all over the walls 0/10

 

Looks nice tho ;D