So they hired a writer for this storyline?

[useless warrior]

No offense to ID but the story really could have used an extra kick in the ass. The logs and emails are just boring when compared to system shock 1 and 2, which were brimming with character and subplots. In doom you hear the about same character once maybe twice, in system shock you can piece together what happens to people and there is a concerte cast of characters.

Outside of the pda there is no mystery, its pretty much a straight forward path from demon invasion to cyberdemon. Half-Life had a simlar story line but spruced it up with twists and turns and the g-man. Probably one of the greatest characters in video game history, I remeber playing the game and going "who the hell is that guy?". Doom doesn't have anything that makes you stop and think. Its definatly a straight and narrow game with all the main characters defined in the first few minutes. Who couldn't tell that the good doctor with wierd eyes was evil?

Not trying to be a hater, because I enjoyed the game, I just thing Id still has alot to learn about storyline, and when they take concepts from other games they should also pay attention to how to pull them off effectivly. Good thing they make up for it with solid design and ambience.

[gatewatcher]

I think they did fine. And how you can say half-life is more "spiced up" is beyond me.

[prowler_in_the_yard]

if storyline is something that is a plus then doom 3 definitely kicks its predecessors asses. in keeping true to the doom franchise not much of a storyline is needed. doom should be about brutal evil and misery.

[Black Hand]

When I think of doom 1 I think of "Evil has invaded the human domain if you don’t stop them its all over" and you take a seemingly epic battle from Phobos to Deimos to the bowels of hell to earth and finally the darkest pit of hell were you fight the ultimate evil.

With doom 3 I think "Alien like creatures from the other side of the portal have invaded mars and slaughtered everyone within it, just like they did to our similar looking ancestors who originated on mars btw", "oh it turns out that these “aliens” are from "hell" but we aren’t really sure actually, cause we didn’t really think that we would ever reach hell with a shovel but we kind of did". "Its on mars who knew huh talk about bad luck, anyhow now its your job to stop the invasion before they find some way to invade earth somehow.”

My point is that doom 3 is too comical with Betrueger, I personally wish ID stuck with their first idea of a “mischievous scientist hearing voices commanding him to make alterations to the teleportation gate” and shortly thereafter being killed by the daemons he invited.

[Jomero]

Black Hand said:

With doom 3 I think "Alien like creatures from the other side of the portal have invaded mars and slaughtered everyone within it, just like they did to our similar looking ancestors who originated on mars btw", "oh it turns out that these “aliens” are from "hell" but we aren’t really sure actually, cause we didn’t really think that we would ever reach hell with a shovel but we kind of did". "Its on mars who knew huh talk about bad luck, anyhow now its your job to stop the invasion before they find some way to invade earth somehow.”

You either haven't played the game or you have Attention Defecit Disorder.

[Epistax]

Jomero said:

You either haven't played the game or you have Attention Defecit Disorder.

I think if you drew two cricles, one representing the population of people who have played the game, and one representing the population with A.D.D., the intersection would be near unity..

[Modu]

Epistax said:

I think if you drew two cricles, one representing the population of people who have played the game, and one representing the population with A.D.D., the intersection would be near unity..

Abseloutly tr......*starts playing with fingers*......uh, hey, what was i talking about?


no joke, tho. i do have ADD, so....

[Wobbo]

Mathew Costello sucks, thats why 11th hour was so bad

but actually, towards the end the story got better, a little bit

[Jomero]

Wobbo said:

Mathew Costello sucks, thats why 11th hour was so bad

but actually, towards the end the story got better, a little bit

But the 7th Guest rocked. Not everything a writer creates is perfect. For example, Joss Whedon wrote Alien Resurrection.

I think the story for DooM 3 was great. Loved the bit about the martian artifacts and how they may be human's ancestors.

[Spike]

Jomero said:

For example, Joss Whedon wrote Alien Resurrection.

Yeah, I wanna kiss him for 'Buffy...', then gut-punch him for 'Alien Resurrection'.

[incubusspawn]

I keep thinking event horizon.

[Sporku]

Well, at least the storyline one-up's Half-Life's story which was... less than stellar. I can barely remember its storyline besides "some scientists screwed up and bad stuff happened".

[Black Hand]

Jomero said:

You either haven't played the game or you have Attention Defecit Disorder.

Black Hand:


You either didn't read what I said or you read what I said while suffering from Attention Defecit Disorder.

[Xenaero]

This is Doom3. Not Half life or System shock.

[COBALT]

Things like this are difficult. In an age where video games and books cross over to movies it's hard for a software company to avoid spending too little or too much time and money trying to develop a plot for a game.

When you played asteroids you never asked yourself, "gee...I wonder if the U.S. and the world saw these asteroids comming, and using a lame-ass ploy like pay-no-taxes-for-life recruited Bruice Willis and a haphazard group of oil drilling platform workers to go blow these things up with nuclear weapons...". No. You just played the game and spent quarters.

As a part-time writer I remember dreaming up all kinds of plots to add beef to the doom story. I always liked the idea that the man behind the shotgun was a victim of circumstance. Take that stupid eyebrow-strong face off the HUD, and make him more human and afraid. This story line (for doom 3) does a good job of leaving that option open - no Ahhhnold like bravado, but the antagonist scientist is a little too much over the top. Too "Enron" if you know what I mean. They spend too much time trying to turn UAC into a company that "had it comming" with incident reports, and a recluse and crazy scientist with a wierd magical ability to hold an entire world company hostage, and build his own little kindom on another planet where he's free to do whatever he wants...BUT his budget is limited....huh?

It's much more scary to me to consider a well-run operation filled with idealistic people actually trying to do something never attempted and very creative suddenly become victims of a planetary catastrophy they DIDN'T see comming. Much more compelling for them to accidentally discover all at once what destroyed an entire planet's civilization, and could face the same extinction they thought themselves immune to...

No antagonist besides the invasion. Our hero is just a man...doesn't want to fight, but doesn't want to die either. Hell, make him an alcoholic...give him a terminal disease...but give him depth (let him actually speak).

He can interact with other people. Make choices...what enemies he's forced to fight and where he's forced to go in the game can be determined by those choices...

...but again. The whole point of this game was to showcase the new rendering engine...not to recreate the original Alien movie...

[Jomero]

COBALT said:

They spend too much time trying to turn UAC into a company that "had it comming" with incident reports, and a recluse and crazy scientist with a wierd magical ability to hold an entire world company hostage, and build his own little kindom on another planet where he's free to do whatever he wants...BUT his budget is limited....huh?

Betruger didn't start out evil and megalomaniacal. All reports that talk about it say he was a completely different person after coming back from his first trip to hell. I personally think he's half possessed, half seduced by the dark side of the force.