My feelings on DOOM Eternal in London

[DoctorObviously]

22 hours ago, Zemini said:

The Mars Core demo is based on a build of Doom Eternal from March of this year.  So the items such as the secrets were just place holders.  The hub, items and demons have gone through significant polish since then.

 

I wouldn't worry about the weapon pick ups as well as they were placed to help drip feed all the new stuff in the game.  I do agree that the Demo was overwhelming with the new combat cycle.  But by the time I played it my 4th/5th session I pretty much had it mastered.  I was lucky to get about 3 1/2 hours of play time.

 

The full game will start you off with less abilities and weapons before throwing you into the lions den.

 

The notion that I was playing an older, less polished version of Eternal combined with me not being ready for all of the changes and not sitting very comfortably actually makes me a little hopeful for the end product because it means that these points will be non-existent in the release version. It's not the case of it being a bad game, rather a not-so-great demo. Perhaps a second playthrough would've eased me in much better.

 

See, this is exactly why I waited a bit before making the original post because I didn't want to be too hastily in my criticism. 

 

15 hours ago, StainlessSteel said:

 

But yes, to reiterate, there will be lots of different types of collectables.  I too do not like the big question mark but after seeing the Slayer Key that you can find, I assume the floating question mark is just a place holder.

 

I am excited for little toy demons.

 

EDIT: and here it is!  I time stamped it for you.  

 

 

Thank you very much sir! Great video by the way, even Marty got pretty beat up in his own game.

 

4 hours ago, deuce said:

Hey man. I was at Quakecon London too. I was playing at the same timeslot as yourself. Were you in the "hell" booth or the "cafe" booth? I was in the latter.

 

I not going to respond to each point you make and at the end of the day, we all have different tastes and ideas of what Doom should be.

 

I loved all the over-the-top floating objects (question marks, gold coins, etc) makes the whole experience very "video gamey" and not taking itself too seriously. Even Marty and Hugo have said this is the direction they are taking the franchise and I feel it's for the better. Helps it stand out from the ultra-serious AAA FPS games we get nowadays.

 

Hi! I saw the Hell area, those were some awesome looking props. I was in the middle of the area, the "café" booth. A shame we didn't meet. 

 

I already stated and restated my feelings on the aesthetics of Eternal many, many times both here and in the Slayer's Club forums but if Eternal would keep all of it's silliness I would absolutely hate, hate the game and the developers for reasons I've explained. It's not even about "different tastes" and making the game "video gamey", it's about screwing with the tone of a line of games. It's the "midichlorians" from Star Wars-effect. For example, if Marty or Hugo said "Eternal isn't the sequel of DOOM 2016 because we felt we wanted to try something new and the original vision didn't interest us anymore." then I wouldn't have a single problem with it because it's an entirely different universe and storyline.

 

I'm not trying to be a nit-picky a-hole here, I swear. I'm stuck on details. Really important details. The classic id Software horrifying monsters you fight, the immersive touch of notifications in your visor, an eviscerated half-eaten corpse to open the door to the BFG-room versus a "YELLOW GOOOORE KEY". These are aesthetic touches that are important which don't line up with our previous window into this world.

 

Again, please put yourself in my shoes as somebody who did take 2016 very seriously (from a context standpoint) and imagine that I'm a developer of a sequel for a game or a movie that you see as something holy, something that's touched you emotionally and is very important to you. Now imagine that I put something or several somethings in that sequel (which is canon, of course) that completely tears the believability of the previous game or movie apart. 

 

That just... hurts. It hurts because you feel like the director or lead designer (who is in control of the project and who's voice will affect the brand) doesn't understand what the previous game / movie was truly about - or worse, laughs with your fandom. Like you're being made fun of for thinking a certain way about what you love. And that's truly how I feel about Hugo Martin when he talks about Eternal.

 

And a big part of this is my own fault as well because when you love something very deeply you begin to feel a sense of ownership over it, even if it's not your property. The HUD I can live with. I hated it when I saw it on video but I didn't mind when I played it, which I found very suprising! I loved the music, the weapons sound FAR more meatier than in the E3 footage as well! But the question marks, 1UPs, coins, overall goofy demons...? 

Edited July 31, 2019 by DoctorObviously

[whatup876]

I mean, some people probably felt the same way you did with Doom 2016 because of the originals and even Doom 3 to some point.

I can see where you come from, even for a series that kind of already went through many identity shifts.

 

I think Eternal's art direction is more interesting in some ways than 2016, specially when how they handled the Slayer previously almost felt like a Zenimax exec told id Software to capture the Halo fanbase, along with a two weapon limit multiplayer and all.

 

I also thought 2016 had a really basic version of Hell and how they explained the demons' backgrounds (Either making them sound more "alien like" or being outright UAC creations) felt like the midichlorians of Doom to me.

It felt like they were trying to give "logic" to a dimension that literally existed to be evil and dangerous to mankind, one that in the original games looked varied with its amount of textures and sprites to help that.

 

I do wonder if in a next game or expansions, they could shoot for another art direction.

Because the problem with the goofyness is if we reach Borderlands 2 levels of that.

 

I also do think Doom needs a little bit more horror.

Doomguy being stronger is one thing but Hell needs to prove they're really that strong and scary, to make Doomguy's job even more impressive.

[DoctorObviously]

On 7/31/2019 at 7:31 PM, whatup876 said:

I mean, some people probably felt the same way you did with Doom 2016 because of the originals and even Doom 3 to some point.

I can see where you come from, even for a series that kind of already went through many identity shifts.

 

I think Eternal's art direction is more interesting in some ways than 2016, specially when how they handled the Slayer previously almost felt like a Zenimax exec told id Software to capture the Halo fanbase, along with a two weapon limit multiplayer and all.

 

I also thought 2016 had a really basic version of Hell and how they explained the demons' backgrounds (Either making them sound more "alien like" or being outright UAC creations) felt like the midichlorians of Doom to me.

It felt like they were trying to give "logic" to a dimension that literally existed to be evil and dangerous to mankind, one that in the original games looked varied with its amount of textures and sprites to help that.

 

I do wonder if in a next game or expansions, they could shoot for another art direction.

Because the problem with the goofyness is if we reach Borderlands 2 levels of that.

 

I also do think Doom needs a little bit more horror.

Doomguy being stronger is one thing but Hell needs to prove they're really that strong and scary, to make Doomguy's job even more impressive.

 

This is actually a really great comment. In hindsight it's rich for me to claim betrayal on Eternal when the DOOM franchise never had a consistent style (never longer than 2 games I think) but you at least see my point. 

 

A big thanks for mentioning the horror of DOOM, which I was trying to get to, and you properly explained what I mean. Does anybody remember Quake 4 and how dangerous the Strogg felt? I'm not saying it should be a horror game but I'm saying that I don't feel like the demons are much of a threat to the Slayer, which doesn't make what he does that impressive, and when you're collecting coins, doubly undermines everything.

[Linguica]

On 7/31/2019 at 9:04 AM, DoctorObviously said:

Again, please put yourself in my shoes as somebody who did take 2016 very seriously (from a context standpoint) and imagine that I'm a developer of a sequel for a game or a movie that you see as something holy, something that's touched you emotionally and is very important to you. Now imagine that I put something or several somethings in that sequel (which is canon, of course) that completely tears the believability of the previous game or movie apart. 

 

I can easily imagine this scenario and my response is that I trust the id Software team to know what they are doing. Doom 2016 gave them a great deal of credibility and now I am going to grant them that credibility until I have a chance to play the final product.

 

I played Doom Eternal at QuakeCon and I didn't enjoy myself very much. This was largely because of the setup and some problems with it, but also because I was being dropped into a game I had never played before. I was already rusty at Doom 2016, and so trying to play Doom Eternal like Doom 2016 doubled up the problems I had, since the game is not Doom 2016 and as the developers have noted, the enemy balance has been reworked. This is fundamentally different from the Doom 1 -> Doom 2 move, where all the Doom 1 monsters still acted precisely the same. So in that sense it seemed very strange and off putting that, say, a hell knight was not dying as easily as I expected. Then add onto that how the game is leaning more heavily into the meta with having to collect your own resources using the special attacks, and it was clear that I was not going to "get" this game until I had the chance to play it extensively for real.

[DoctorObviously]

45 minutes ago, Linguica said:

 

I can easily imagine this scenario and my response is that I trust the id Software team to know what they are doing. Doom 2016 gave them a great deal of credibility and now I am going to grant them that credibility until I have a chance to play the final product.

 

I played Doom Eternal at QuakeCon and I didn't enjoy myself very much. This was largely because of the setup and some problems with it, but also because I was being dropped into a game I had never played before. I was already rusty at Doom 2016, and so trying to play Doom Eternal like Doom 2016 doubled up the problems I had, since the game is not Doom 2016 and as the developers have noted, the enemy balance has been reworked. This is fundamentally different from the Doom 1 -> Doom 2 move, where all the Doom 1 monsters still acted precisely the same. So in that sense it seemed very strange and off putting that, say, a hell knight was not dying as easily as I expected. Then add onto that how the game is leaning more heavily into the meta with having to collect your own resources using the special attacks, and it was clear that I was not going to "get" this game until I had the chance to play it extensively for real.

 

Fair enough!