17 things you may not know about Doom 3

[NiGHTMARE]

The latest issue of PC Zone UK have done yet another Doom 3 preview (I think this is something like this particular magazine's fifth ;) ), and there's actually some new info contained in the six pages. Or at least I've never seen it anywhere before.

1) The invasion begins not because the UAC accidentally create a gateway into hell as in the original Doom, but because their top secret teleportation experiments accidentally destroy an existing gateway (presumably between Hell and another dimension). So they gave the Hellspawn an excuse to invade, rather than actually allow them to.

2) The UAC Mars complex Doom 3 takes place in is called the Delta Labs, which logically suggests that there are Alpha, Beta and Gamma Labs too. Whether these will be part of the story or not is another matter, but even if they don't we're bound to see fan-made levels set in them.

3) It seems the UAC have been experimenting on dead Hellspawn, because in one level you come across a room full of glowing tanks filled with dead Demons. You have to make your way through them, with only the light provide by the tanks to guide you.

4) You'll definitely go to Hell at one point but it sounds like you return back to the Mars base afterwards, because you deliberately travel there to retrieve a certain item. Or perhaps you end up going to Hell more than once?

5) Willits "when you get to hell, you'll find your stamina is hugely affected. The environemt will be totally different and a ffects your movement around this world. We're leaning more towards crazy interactive puzzles, which will turn you in all sorts of different directions in order to make hell a really unsettling place - you never know what's going to happen next. The world is very dynamic and fluid, unlike the man-made areas on the base". Oh dear. This all sounds extremely worringly like Xen :| Lets just hope ID know better than Valve...

6) Hollenshead: "We don't have level music per se, like in Return to Castle Wolfenstein where you had independent audio tracks. We're going for more ambient sounds. There will be elements of music, but there's no soundtrack."

7) Trent Reznor's departure has FINALLY been officially confirmed. Hollenshead: "At one point, we thought we'd have a collaboration with him, but it ended up not working out for us."

8) Enemy AI won't be as basic as we've previously been lead to believe, with creatures acting dynamically according to both the environemt and your actions. Willits: "The Archvile can now call in monsters. If you walk into a room and there's a lot of overhead room, the Archvile may call in some flying creatures. But if you try and hide in the ducts, he'll try to call in some smaller maggot-like creatures to get you. Basically, he'll summon the type of creatures he needs to find or kill you."

9) All Hellspawn can see in the dark, "because they're from the depths of Hell. They can smell your fear."

10) As with switches, your gun disappears when you walk up to computer terminals. In this case though, a mouse cursor appears; the UAC computer GUI basically looks and acts like a webpage.

11) One new (i.e. not a remake of an original Doom (2) creature) enemy is the Vagary, a spider queen. She has the body of a spider and the torso of a female, and is equipped with a web and claw attack.

12) Judging by a screenshot included in the preview, not only can Trites crawl down walls, but they can also dangle from spider-like threads that emerge from their mouths.

13) Willits: "The UAC has always been very paranoid about their security. They were very concerned about their employees stealing technology, so they've hidden things within the base's infrastructure." In other words, original Doom style secret areas!

14) The BFG will far more closely resemble the one in the original Doom than the one in Quake 3.

15) You can knock down rockets with the plasma gun.

16) The Berserk pack is a cross between the one in the original Doom and Quake 3's Haste power-up.

17) Willits: "The Soul Cube is an ancient weapon, one created millions of years ago to stop the forces of hell. It was used in an epic battle of good versus evil long before earth was anything like we know it today."

[dsm]

NiGHTMARE said:
1) The invasion begins not because the UAC accidentally create a gateway into hell as in the original Doom, but because their top secret teleportation experiments accidentally destroy an existing gateway (presumably between Hell and another dimension). So they gave the Hellspawn an excuse to invade, rather than actually allow them to.

Mixed feelings about this plot aspect - but I'll wait and see.

2) The UAC Mars complex Doom 3 takes place in is called the Delta Labs, which logically suggests that there are Alpha, Beta and Gamma Labs too. Whether these will be part of the story or not is another matter, but even if they don't we're bound to see fan-made levels set in them.

Cool.

3) It seems the UAC have been experimenting on dead Hellspawn, because in one level you come across a room full of glowing tanks filled with dead Demons. You have to make your way through them, with only the light provide by the tanks to guide you.

I don't like the idea of humans experimenting on demons, but once again, I'll wait and see...

4) You'll definitely go to Hell at one point but it sounds like you return back to the Mars base afterwards, because you deliberately travel there to retrieve a certain item. Or perhaps you end up going to Hell more than once?

This is very confusing - last I heard, Hell was supposedly the last 1/4 of the game.

5) Willits "when you get to hell, you'll find your stamina is hugely affected. The environemt will be totally different and a ffects your movement around this world. We're leaning more towards crazy interactive puzzles, which will turn you in all sorts of different directions in order to make hell a really unsettling place - you never know what's going to happen next. The world is very dynamic and fluid, unlike the man-made areas on the base". Oh dear. This all sounds extremely worringly like Xen :| Lets just hope ID know better than Valve...

Id hasn't let me down yet, I doubt they'll fuck up Hell for us. I could of course be wrong, but I like to see this piece of news in a positive light - making Hell all weird and unsettling is exactly what fans have wanted them to do, so when viewing it from that angle it promises well.

7) Trent Reznor's departure has FINALLY been officially confirmed. Hollenshead: "At one point, we thought we'd have a collaboration with him, but it ended up not working out for us."

Odd. What do they mean? "It ended up not working" for them?

8) Enemy AI won't be as basic as we've previously been lead to believe, with creatures acting dynamically according to both the environemt and your actions. Willits: "The Archvile can now call in monsters. If you walk into a room and there's a lot of overhead room, the Archvile may call in some flying creatures. But if you try and hide in the ducts, he'll try to call in some smaller maggot-like creatures to get you. Basically, he'll summon the type of creatures he needs to find or kill you."

Sounds cool and all, but let's just wait and see. I personally, won't believe that the D3 monster AI is "superb" until I've seen it in action for myself.

11) One new (i.e. not a remake of an original Doom (2) creature) enemy is the Vagary, a spider queen. She has the body of a spider and the torso of a female, and is equipped with a web and claw attack.

Hmm, seems they don't come up with the same level of originality as they did in earlier titles, as far as monster design goes that is - this is pretty much the same as Quake 1's Vore (already pointed out by somebody else in another thread btw). Also, I hope they do come up with something less spidery for a change - spiders are cool, but if they make too many spider creatures, it gets tiresome. The web attack sounds cool though.

12) Judging by a screenshot included in the preview, not only can Trites crawl down walls, but they can also dangle from spider-like threads that emerge from their mouths.

Pardon me, but I think we're already well aware of this (the thread thing - the climb-on-wall, however, seems like news, but hardly surprising) - there's at least one screenshot showing a trite hanging from a thread.

[Shockwav3]

this seems to become very, very interesting.

[Shaviro]

Awesome. Especially the arch-vile thing.

[Jonathan]

NiGHTMARE said:

3) It seems the UAC have been experimenting on dead Hellspawn, because in one level you come across a room full of glowing tanks filled with dead Demons. You have to make your way through them, with only the light provide by the tanks to guide you.

Paging Scuba Steve to this thread, they're ripping off Action Doom!

[NiGHTMARE]

dsm said:

Pardon me, but I think we're already well aware of this (the thread thing - the climb-on-wall, however, seems like news, but hardly surprising) - there's at least one screenshot showing a trite hanging from a thread.

I did a quick search in this very forum and saw a couple of posts talk about them crawling down walls, but couldn't find any mention of the threads.

[Arioch]

NiGHTMARE said:

I did a quick search in this very forum and saw a couple of posts talk about them crawling down walls, but couldn't find any mention of the threads.

It's shown extremely well in the trailer from E3, so I figure it probably didn't really need any discussion.

[NiGHTMARE]

Ah well I haven't actually watched that trailer (my computer isn't exactly internet-capable at the moment - bizarelly, Skulltag is the only thing I can get to go on-line - and this computer is simply far too crappy to play movie files), so that would explain it :)

[Szymanski]

NiGHTMARE said:

8) Enemy AI won't be as basic as we've previously been lead to believe, with creatures acting dynamically according to both the environemt and your actions. Willits: "The Archvile can now call in monsters. If you walk into a room and there's a lot of overhead room, the Archvile may call in some flying creatures. But if you try and hide in the ducts, he'll try to call in some smaller maggot-like creatures to get you. Basically, he'll summon the type of creatures he needs to find or kill you."

Sounds pretty trivial to implement. There's a partially hell screenshot in PCzone (large spikes emerging from a pit) looks a bit Q3.

4 and 17 are likely linked

[Disorder]

I think the 'webattack' sounds quite lame. Makes me think of Spiderman. But I haven't seen it in action yet, so I'll wait and see.

[Amaster]

The trites sound like they'll be extremely annoying. Everything else sounds quite cool though. Thr ability to shoot down rockets is going to be very useful in multiplayer.

DSM pretty much said anything I would have said on the other points.

[Lengis]

16) The Berserk pack is a cross between the one in the original Doom and Quake 3's Haste power-up.

That sounds just like the steriods powerup from Duke Nukem 3D. :)

[Vile]

NiGHTMARE said:

11) One new (i.e. not a remake of an original Doom (2) creature) enemy is the Vagary, a spider queen. She has the body of a spider and the torso of a female, and is equipped with a web and claw attack.

Sounds just like the Arachne enemies from certain Castlevania games (the GBA ones in particular) who also had a web attack to slow down the hero of the day. The Soul Cube sorta sounds fruity, but otherwise this raised my anticipation level.

[Shadow Wolf]

i dont think i will like doom 3, it wont feel doomish enough

[dsm]

NiGHTMARE said:

I did a quick search in this very forum and saw a couple of posts talk about them crawling down walls, but couldn't find any mention of the threads.

This is the screenshot I was talking about : http://www.doomworld.com/php/screenie.php?dir=/doom3_092203/&number=1

If you look at the background, you can quite clearly see a trite lowering itself from the facility in a thread - the thread itself is even visible.

But relax, I didn't mean to criticize you - I appreciate what you posted about the Trites climbing walls and whatnot - but I just felt like pointing out that it didn't seem all that new.

Shadow Wolf: I understand your sentiments - sometime I too get worried about Doom 3 straying too far from what I think Doom was - but the truth is that none of us have tried the actual game yet (some of us have tried the leaked Alpha, but it doesn't really count as "the actual game"), so we can't make a proper judgement about Doom 3 until it's out.

Wait and see, maybe you'll get pleasantly surprised in the end :-)

[Scabbed Angel]

Arch-ville, I will hate thee!

[The Flange Peddler]

NiGHTMARE said:

9) All Hellspawn can see in the dark, "because they're from the depths of Hell. They can smell your fear."

Arse :( I thought the enemies were going to be sensitive to the shadows, allowing the player to hide and such... but obviously not. 'they can smell your fear' my arse, sounds like they couldn't get it to work properly.

[NiGHTMARE]

If the programmers of the engine for the original Thief: The Dark Project could do it, methinks JC and co could if they wanted ;)

[Disorder]

I wonder if the Berserk power up will be available in SP too. If so, how was it brought inside base? What function would it have? Is it a 'testsample' from one of the Demon's gone bad? Is it something else? Or is it simply going to be there because it's oldschool? If the latter would be the case, it would be lame. If they're aiming for realism, it would need some sort of a purpose.

[Use]

Jonathan said:

Paging Scuba Steve to this thread, they're ripping off Action Doom!

That's a theme in my current project too. The marine discovers the UAC knew about the demons the whole time and were experimenting on them in secret labs on Earth.

[Naked Snake]

Sounds pretty sweet, this makes me want Doom 3 even more.

[dsm]

Disorder said:

I wonder if the Berserk power up will be available in SP too. If so, how was it brought inside base? What function would it have? Is it a 'testsample' from one of the Demon's gone bad? Is it something else? Or is it simply going to be there because it's oldschool? If the latter would be the case, it would be lame. If they're aiming for realism, it would need some sort of a purpose.

I think an E3 article (this year) about the Doom 3 MP demo, described the berserk powerup as giving the impression that the player was possessed by powers of Hell (He goes insane, screaming on top of his lungs as if possessed by the forces of Hell itself - I think that's more or less what the journalist wrote).

As such, it could easily turn out to be a Hell artifact (having entered the reality of the Mars base in the interdimensional chaos ensued from the gate to Hell having been opened up) containing hellish, spiritual essence or some shit like that. That's the way I normally explain the original Doom powerups anyway :-P

Personally, I'd have preferred the good ol' notion of the berserk pack being some kind of experimental drug that causes the player to go berserk, but if the new powerup is explained well enough, it'll do for me.

[Arioch]

Yeah, what did you figure the soul sphere was? :P

I don't care either way how they explain away the Berserk Pack, but Taylor's interpretation is probably more valid in respect to the Old Doom though.

[Arno]

NiGHTMARE said:

17) Willits: "The Soul Cube is an ancient weapon, one created millions of years ago to stop the forces of hell. It was used in an epic battle of good versus evil long before earth was anything like we know it today."

This reminds me of the first scene in Lord of the Rings. :)

[insertwackynamehere]

Whoa! This game keeps getting better.

[GS-1719]

I don't like the idea of going to Hell just to get some ancient alien artifact to stop an invasion. It's too contrived in my opinion. I'm not sure making the player dizzy with these puzzles and movements will achieve anything more than irritating the player.

I think the idea of enemies closing in on the player in a dark room (mentioned in the same article) is a very cool idea.

[TwiNCannoN]

Well, the berserk pack being a drug definately would've fit more with the originals - I doubt the hellspawn would've packaged it into a medkit :P unless, of course, they were trying to be sneaky like bowser and pull a "poison mushroom" on mario... bastard hellspawn! anyway, it's already been described indepth: when you take it/use it/activate it, your vision is red/blurred, you scream like a freakin' madman (like, everyone in a map online can hear you), and your speed/melee damage is greatly increased. Sounds really cool. Just hope it's turned into something useful, and perhaps also cranks up the players ability to take hits or something (thus allowing him to get into melee better).

Plasma stopping rockets = awesome. However I'm thinking it'll be more of a single player thing, unless MP levels get pretty vertical - rockets shot at your feet probably won't do much good stopping if doom3 is as cramped as the screens are looking...

Anyway, plot sounds good. Only two things I'm wondering are: why didn't hell just invade earlier if they always had the potential to? Also, how did the humans ever discover about the soul cube anyway? I really hope it's not the standard gi-joe "we will win, because you will never get into our well-defended (except on tuesdays) secret lair, where the weapon that can cause the destruction of our entire lair is kept!". I hate those plots.

[Livo]

Therre's another powerup (dunno if it's MP only or not) that is a mix of IR and invisibility mentioned somewhere in that article.

[Scuba Steve]

Jonathan said:

Paging Scuba Steve to this thread, they're ripping off Action Doom!

I was thinking the exact same thing. Scuba Steve's: Action Doom > DooM3

id Should hire me.

[Ichor]

Sure. Someone has to clean the bathrooms, change the lightbulbs, and make them coffee.