DooM: Games and Novels (IMHO)

[MatrixmaN]

I played the original DooM, played the second and the final version. Now I await the 3rd and most anticipated installment of the series.
The Doom games had a plot thinner than the hair on my back but great gameplay and depth. Regardless of the Doom games lack of storyline it had enough story to give the player a sense of being and a sense of fighting for something. Through it's mindless massacre of blood and guts a story was waiting to be told.

The one thing that gave Doom a new light in my eyes was the novels. These books for me filled in the gaps that I felt playing the game. The books portrayed great detail and filled the vague work of the game with atmosphere, feelings and depth.

If you havn't read them and you plan on getting Doom 3 than you should look into reading the first novel "Hell on Earth". It's like the introduction to the Saga. It made me want to play the game more, to take the role of Corporal Flynn Taggart. The lone marine who in his attempt just to live brings him to figure out what the hell has happened and overall try to stop the armageddon of hell from flooding onto Earth and killing everybody on it. Demons, ghouls, zombies, mixes of flesh and machine, with their own dark and sadistic goals which you never quite know, pulls you into the dark, dingy, scary world that the singular marine has to go through be it survival, saving the human race or both you travel along with Flynn into the darkness of hell.

These books engrossed my young mind for hours on end years ago. It gave this flat, mindless game so much more depth and plot I never thought it could have had. They turned a game into a story, now they are turning a story into a game.

Doom 3 may not be based off the books but from what I can tell the guy who is directing the plot and design of the game had to have read them because they are so eerily familiar to the situations and characters in the book. The Spidermind looks in the concept art exactly like it was decribed in the book.

A few small cool things about the books was the fact that it followed you thru the levels of the games themselves, even using the same powerups that he had in the game but gave them a realistic sense and didn't seem fake at all.

Looking at these screenshots I printed up in front of me on my jobs high-quality printing systems I see the detail put into this game, and I remember the detail that was put into the story in the trilogy of novels. I await this game like nobodys business and I seriously cannot wait until it comes out.

Before Doom 3 comes out I'm going to read the first 2 novels 1 more time so their depth is fresh in my mind. Then I am going to play the game, not as a blatant comparison but to take the journey as Flynn Taggart. The scared, cold, bloodied and hardened marine trying to save his ass from a demonic armageddon from sciences mistake of openening the technological gates of hell by messing with things they should never have tried to figure out.
---------------

Whether you liked the novels or not this is my opinion on it. Because of the novels it made me think of doom as more than a floating shotgun and guts.

**goes to local library**

[MatrixmaN]

Also,

I apologize sincerely if this is the wrong forum, I just applied, hit the general forum and read a bit then posted. You can move it if you desire.

[NiGHTMARE]

Do a search on the novels. Reading the various posts that have already been made on the subject, you'll probably notice that they're not especially well liked here (and that's an extreme understatement) :)

[MatrixmaN]

Ok, well after reading about 15 posts I can tell the DooM books were not highly regarded.

The one thing it seems that wasn't realized is that it's just a story, it may not be the game (not like the game had much plot to stand on) but somebody took this hollow shell and filled in the gaps to tell a story that the author interpreted the game to be.

It's just somebodys retelling of what they percieved the game to be, nothing more. It filled in the gaps for my 13yr old mind at the time and I loved it, kept waiting for the next. The first one rocked and got me hooked, the second was good too, the third sucked ass and it all went downhill from there.

Thats my opinion.
Personally I could care less whether anybody else agrees with me, or whether they are stuck in their own mindset of how the story should be. Doom 3 is a re-interpretation of the original game just like the books were. It's the base story that sets people imaginations in motion. You shouldn't hate a series of books because they don't live up to the standards you set for the story yourself.

I liked how he depicted the environment to be and how he stuck to how the game played out almost level by level. Was cool. It was after the seconds book I didn't think there should be a sequel. Once he went to Earth the series went to Hell (haha, I made a funny).

[MatrixmaN]

Also, If hell on earth wasn't the first I really meant to name the first one, knee deep in the dead?

Hell on Earth just popped into my head and the cover of the book with the hellknight cought my mind.

[Ichor]

There are much better stories about Doom in the Fan Fics/Fan Pics forum anyway.

[NiGHTMARE]

For me it isn't just the fact the Doom novels turn the hellspawn into aliens and takes other liberties, it's also the fact that the author, Dafydd ab Hugh isn't exactly a great one.

Go read some of his other works (which include numerous Deep Space Nine novels) and you'll see what I mean.

[MatrixmaN]

No thanks,

I'll pass on comparing his other works to the ones i like. Thats like comparing all Koontz or King novels. Some just suck serious ass but others stay in your mind forever.

And yeah, the Alien thing kinda killed it but he was trying to keep some kinda consistency in his version between stories

[NiGHTMARE]

Truly great authors never make a crappy book. Terry Pratchett for example :)

[sargebaldy]

MatrixmaN said:

The one thing it seems that wasn't realized is that it's just a story, it may not be the game (not like the game had much plot to stand on) but somebody took this hollow shell and filled in the gaps to tell a story that the author interpreted the game to be.

yeah. you nailed that right on the nose. that's one of my complaints about doom III as well, it tries to do the same thing. i don't like the idea of someone new modifying something after the fact, even if it was hollow to begin with.

[Never_Again]

NiGHTMARE said:

Do a search on the novels. Reading the various posts that have already been made on the subject, you'll probably notice that they're not especially well liked here (and that's an extreme understatement) :)

"Knee Deep In The Dead" was great, IMO.

[CyRaptor]

There are four novels, not three. Knee Deep in the Dead, Hell on Earth, Infernal Sky and Endgame; so you're apparently missing one. I myself thought the first one and first half of the second were decent, but as the series went on it really started to suck. Still, I seem to to hold them in higher regards than most here.

[Naked Snake]

Personally, I didn't care for the books. I felt that the author strayed too far from the storyline. First off, they're demons, not aliens, and certainly not aliens called the Freds. I also don't like the name Flynn Taggart for the Doomguy. Should he have some name? Yes, but not Flynn Taggart. The writing style was pretty nice though, like, early in the story, he's fearful and likes to stroll down memory lane to get rid of some of the fear. Later on, he's less afraid. Once you hit the 3rd and 4th book however, any semblence of the original Doom is totally gone. First off, they meet up with a new race called the Klave, which are set up in binary pairs (meaning there are two bodies for pretty much one entity. If one were to die, the other would die). In the 4th, they meet an alien race called the Newbies, which is, IMO, a terrible name for an alien species.

All in all, I could enjoy the first 2 a little, but the 3rd and 4th are insanely wretched.

[Python_Junkie]

BBG said:

I also don't like the name Flynn Taggart for the Doomguy. Should he have some name? Yes, but not Flynn Taggart.

I suppose you could come up with a better one?

I don't know if it was any spur of originality, on the other hand: anybody who's paid attention to the details of Major Payne will know that there was a school in the Military Games with the name "Taggart" in it (that's a real last name, BTW). The picture for the school included a Gunnery-Sgt-Harman-looking marine on with with his finger pointing to you and his mouth open as if he were yelling.

Just a theory...

[Grazza]

Python_Junkie said:

I suppose you could come up with a better one?

Pfft. Viscount Quentin Fartleberry IV would be a better name.

[Python_Junkie]

You're right, Flynn Taggart just sounds too dry now that I think of it.

[icemann]

Joe Dever (author of the Lone Wolf and Grey Star the Wizard gamebooks + numerous other fantasy books) is another great author also. Hes been my favorite book author ever since I was a kid back in the 80s. I highly recommend checking out his work.

[Darkhaven3]

"A dead private and a scientist lay in eternal embrace."

If anyone can post single chapters of any novel (preferrably KDNTD) please do so, that would be fucking cool.

[fraggle]

Darkhaven3 said:

If anyone can post single chapters of any novel (preferrably KDNTD) please do so, that would be fucking cool.

Terrible as the Doom Novels are, they are copyrighted material. Anyone else posting or requesting copies of them from now on is liable to be banned. If you really want copies, I suggest you order them from your local bookstore.

[Lvangundy]

Gawwwddd...

The doom novels. I think I was walking around in my local wal mart when I was..let's see - 15 or 16 and seeing a book that looked like the doom box. I paused and went to look then got so god damn excited I convinced my mom to buy it. Later, I saw the other 3 and grabbed those also.

These books were very badly written. Although the story was somewhat interesting and did get you involved but it was quite far off from the original story. Many times I was confused to exactly what the hell a chapter was trying to describe but I'm sure it made all good sense to Dafydd who had probably played through the original doom and made his own conclusions about the characters.

I lost interest around the 3rd or 4th book because as mentioned, the story went off into some other unintelligible babble. None of the chapters connected well enough to continuously describe events.

I really do wonder what JR or Carmack thought about these novels. Yes yes, they're just stories and somewhat entertaining but I feel they cold have followed the story better. To give some kind of credit to the author, I'm sure if they were written today possibly his writing skills have improved enough to clarify things more.

[MatrixmaN]

The first one follows along very well.

The first one was like playing thru the game in narrative mode.

The second one started the stray but it was still ok.

[Melfice]

I liked them until they got to the part where they tried to claim that the demons were all scientifically bred. That pissed me off. Well, I just ignored that part and read on, lol.

[Use]

Lvangundy said:

I really do wonder what JR or Carmack thought about these novels.

They hate them IIRC.

[Ralphis]

Endgame is my favorite book in the world

[dsm]

Aaaah! The Doom Novels!!! Why won't they die!?

Ok, the doom novels, the doom novels, the doom novels, where do I start?
All in all, my opinion on the novels is this: They're completely blasphemizing everything that I regard the Doom storyline as. I've been mere steps from writing a something awful'esque review of the novels for then to send it to Lowtax and suggest that he posts it on his site for the amusement of something awful fans - trouble is just that 1) it'd be way too long and still be way too insufficient to cover all necessary details and 2) I'm not good enough at coming up with humorous ways of making fun of the novels, so the review would suck.
Let's go into detail shall we?

Knee-Deep in the Dead: This is the one book that sticks the closest to the game, it also happens to be the most boring of all the books, Gawd. I almost slept my way through it. Trust me on this, I've seen Doom fanfics that were less imaginative that still managed to cater to my interest and keep me reading. Even so, there are loads of story possibilities in the Doom maps that the novel authors (and most other people) completely ignored - lots of imaginative plot twists that could've been thrown into the novel that never were. Add to this that the authors degenerated what story already was available in the game, by stating that the gateways are artifacts left by some ancient alien race - boring, dull, uninteresting and overdone. The possibilities for story developments that you could make with a secret project to create teleportation gates seem almost endless in comparison. And don't get me started on this whole lameass "the demons are really aliens" issue, because that never ceases to piss me off, no matter how many "convincing" arguments for this thing you can present.

Hell on Earth: While I don't mind that the plot branches off in a different direction than what it was in the game, I find it totally unforgivable that the plot is changed into something even more lame than the game story. The game featured humanity desperately fighting together against the demonic hordes, but they're losing, so their last chance is to evacuate, so a star port has to be retaken so the survivors can evacuate.
The novel featured none of this, instead it had the retarded notion that half of humanity betrays their own kind and our heroes get to fight with a bunch of retarded religious fundamentalists - now I'm saying retarded, because I just can't take people serious if they go about constantly spouting lines from the bible or using biblical language and saying patriotic crap like "God is with us!". Seriously, the first half of that novel almost immediately convinced me that the book was worse than the first - fortunately, the second half makes up with that by at least being far less vomit-stained than the first half and way more exciting to read than the entire first novel - so in the end, it DOES end up better than the first despite the disaster that is the first half, though I'll never forgive the author his retarded idea to give the revenant boxer shorts - he must've been on drugs.

Infernal Sky: This novel actually had a decent prologue and I had just started thinking that maybe I would even like this one better than the other two, but then disaster struck! Our heroes are vacationing as if all is fine and well completely ignoring that the rest of the Earth is going to Hell.
The rest of this novel is...ok for a sci-fi story, but considering that it completely butchers the Doom franchise, it makes me hate it even more than the first two novels just for this - the same goes for the fourth book.

Endgame: Nothing to do with the game whatsoever - at least that's the impression it gives - still, it's a decent sci-fi story.
Of course, this book just had to give the Doom franchise one more unforgivable blow: In the end it's revealed that the few damn rebels that our heroes left behind managed to fucking defeat the damn demon hordes on their own. This just seem to fundamentally go against the notions of the game, it's also the same reason why I often say loud and clear that the demons in the Doom novels seem considerably less dangerous than what they're essentially characterized to be in the game. In the game, humanity is freakin' Hell on the verge of becoming instinct - had they stayed on Earth, the demons woulda wiped out all of humanity for Christ's sake! They only won because the doomguy shut down the damn gate to Hell.
But the novel authors decided that the demons are pussies, so that an endless army of them can be defeated by a few, ragged survivors - way to go!

In essence, I could propably write an entire novel on how the Doom novels fail utterly on all points, but I've got better stuff to waste my time on - like writing Doom fanfics that would make the Doom novels seem like a ten-year old's written school assignment :-P

[MatrixmaN]

I still like them for making me like doom...

[auxois]

Well, I like the novels. People like to say they're poorly written, and, well - I've read more science-fiction than most people have read, period, and I just don't see it. They're well-written, and I've liked a few other of the author's works.

I think the main problems most people had (supported by this thread) were the swapping of demons for aliens, and the lack of faithfulness to the game. However, if you really take the time to analyze the books (I wrote three papers on them in highschool, for English, heh), you realize just how nonexistent both of these gripes are. Regarding accuracy, the books are almost perfectly accurate to the game's virtually nonexistent plotline and setting. If a person has an issue with the "accuracy" of the books, it can almost certainly be attributed to the fact that the books likely do not line up with the complainant's "vision" of the game.

The fact that the invading creatures are aliens posing as demons is well-explained in the first book, and I really appreciate that - demons simply don't exist, and it makes more logical sense for them to be extraterrestrials. I used the same sort of set-up for the story I'm (still) writing. Aliens at least could exist - but really, what differentiates an alien from a demon? Both are otherworldly - the only real difference is that an alien might have morals or a sense of ethics where demons, traditionally, do not. And obviously, the invading aliens as portrayed in the books, do not have a sense of morals or ethics, at least with respect to their victims.

Overall I thought the books a good series overall (especially for books based on a not-particularly-outstanding game with next-to-zero plot and very little in the way of setting), with a few flaws, and like the Hitchhiker's Guide series, they wane in quality towards the end. All four are certainly worth reading, however, whether you are a fan of the game or simply one who enjoys science fiction.

[Use]

When the books came out I was in the VERY early stages of designing my megawad. I was very excited over them at the time. Since it's a remake of Doom2 I based its story loosely off Doom: Hell on Earth the novel. Complete with the Mormons and the great Fly Taggart. So sue me.
Personally I like the books too, the first two are the best. The last ones, well... I coulda done better.

[NiGHTMARE]

The real Doom guy would seriously own Tynn Faggart's arse =P

[Fletcher`]

Disorder's title is going to need changed. :)