Doom 4?

[hardcore_gamer]

printz said:

If only they can redo Quake or Quake 2 for it...

Well, assuming that the modding tools are going to be good then modders could just create a TC or something.

[chungy]

hardcore_gamer said:

Id has already confirmed that Doom 4's story line will have nothing to do with that of Doom 3's.

They've just said that it won't be a direct sequel to Doom 3, and this still leaves plenty of room for question open. It might not be a full reboot again, but it might not carry on the invasion-of-the-UAC story from Doom 3 or the antics of John Kane, either.

[printz]

hardcore_gamer said:

Well, assuming that the modding tools are going to be good then modders could just create a TC or something.

I meant Quake quality gameplay, not content. As in "the Quake games were fun, as 3d games; I hope id don't make a linear feature game only with cutscenes and simple challenges".

[hardcore_gamer]

printz said:

I meant Quake quality gameplay, not content. As in "the Quake games were fun, as 3d games; I hope id don't make a linear feature game only with cutscenes and simple challenges".

Heh.

I never really got it why people liked Quake 1 and 2 so much.

Quake 1 pretty much just felt like Doom but in 3D and all of the levels looked and felt the same. Quake 2 was also not that fun with weapons that were not fun to use. The only thing i really liked about Quake 2 was the awesome music.

[Tetzlaff]

MikeRS said:

It might not be a full reboot again, but it might not carry on the invasion-of-the-UAC story from Doom 3 or the antics of John Kane, either.

Wasn´t Kane the marine protagonist from Quake4, or do you mean John Grimm from the Doom movie?

hardcore_gamer said:

Heh.

I never really got it why people liked Quake 1 and 2 so much.

Quake 2 is IMO the best classic FPS out there. Quake1 was also great and unique with its weird atmosphere, but Q2 perfected everything that was kind of experimental and rushed in Quake1. Quake2 has excellent level design that is quite non-linear in many places and has plenty of secrets and exploring, excellent 3D combat (verticality and connectivity), a strong and coherent theme and atmosphere, great mix of monsters and weapons. I played through the Q2 SP many many times and it never gets boring for me.

[chungy]

Tetzlaff said:

Wasn´t Kane the marine protagonist from Quake4, or do you mean John Grimm from the Doom movie?

Matthew Kane was the protagonist in Quake 4; John Kane was the protagonist in Doom 3, at least if you count the novels (written by the same guy that wrote the story in Doom 3 itself, although admittedly the books don't follow the events of Doom 3 exactly as the game had them...)

[eargosedown]

hardcore_gamer said:

Doom 4 is not going to be the same as Doom 3. Carmack said in a interview that Doom 4 gameplay would be fast paced and that there would be gibs.

That's good to hear. Doom 3 was nice in many ways imho, but the lack of atmosphere through ambient music, and a fast paced combat system hurt it in my opinion. Seemed like the same 'ambush' again and again and again for the first 4/5th of the game =(

hardcore_gamer said:

I still hope they keep at least some of the horror elements from Doom 3 though as i actually liked many of them.

I really hope they do as well. Some of the horror elements were really like O.O

[TerminusEst13]

This is a bit of a pipe dream, but what I'd like is the ability to play the invasion from the PoV of the demons.
Y'know, corrupting humans, fighting down tanks and soldiers, and going up against badasses like the Doomguy and take him down.

Pretty much no chance of that in Doom 4, though, is there?

[jobro]

TerminusEst13 said:

This is a bit of a pipe dream, but what I'd like is the ability to play the invasion from the PoV of the demons.
Y'know, corrupting humans, fighting down tanks and soldiers, and going up against badasses like the Doomguy and take him down.

Pretty much no chance of that in Doom 4, though, is there?

Now that is something I'd like to see myself. HalfLife got it's oposing forces, so why shouldn't Doom4 get the same optional mission pack? Good to hear the game being more straight forward combat. Allthough I love D3's creepy slimy world with it's horror spikes I still can't wait for some old skool battles.

[ReFracture]

Tetzlaff said:

Quake 2 is IMO the best classic FPS out there. Quake1 was also great and unique with its weird atmosphere, but Q2 perfected everything that was kind of experimental and rushed in Quake1. Quake2 has excellent level design that is quite non-linear in many places and has plenty of secrets and exploring, excellent 3D combat (verticality and connectivity), a strong and coherent theme and atmosphere, great mix of monsters and weapons. I played through the Q2 SP many many times and it never gets boring for me.

Quake II is hands down my favorite Quake game. It's themes, enemies, and weapons felt just right to me.

Sometimes I feel people give Quake too much credit. It was a good, important game, but it was also incredibly bland in hind sight.
Brown castle after brown castle got old, really quick. The only thing I feel holds up about that game is the sound track.

[printz]

hardcore_gamer said:

and that there would be gibs.

Like that's anything new... Seriously they should try corpses that don't explode (unless a necromancer says so) and instead cling to poles.

And Romero should be damn back.

[HellsBounty]

printz said:

And Romero should be damn back. [/B]

THEY SHOULD! Originally he made the Quake series a gothic game, but after he left the entire ID team turned it back into a futuristic Doom game, which explains the comparison between DOOM and QUAKE.
Apparently he was awesome at Deathmatch in the ID home ground too
(I read that on this very site).

As for Doom 4, I think it would be great for them to bring back the old Doomguy - he was classic. Or atleast keep the new guy. To be honest I was shattered when I saw they had a new marine in. This addition is supposed to be an entire new game with nothing to do with the past series - but I don't know what that means exactly, plus I read it on Wikipedia.

[voodizzle]

Anyone else praying that they have built in online co-op? I sure as fucking hell am.

[Airman266]

HellsBounty said:

As for Doom 4, I think it would be great for them to bring back the old Doomguy - he was classic. Or atleast keep the new guy. To be honest I was shattered when I saw they had a new marine in.

What's the difference besides the updated graphics for him? He's just a random marine that happens to survive the initial invasion so you play him for the rest of the game.

[Maes]

printz said:

And Romero should be damn back.

He was never quite the same after that whole bitch ad thing backfired ;-)

[kristus]

Tetzlaff said:

Quake 2 is IMO the best classic FPS out there. Quake1 was also great and unique with its weird atmosphere, but Q2 perfected everything that was kind of experimental and rushed in Quake1. Quake2 has excellent level design that is quite non-linear in many places and has plenty of secrets and exploring, excellent 3D combat (verticality and connectivity), a strong and coherent theme and atmosphere, great mix of monsters and weapons. I played through the Q2 SP many many times and it never gets boring for me.

This.
And Q4 was such a terrible waste of opportunity. Thank goodness for ETQW though.

[dsm]

They shouldn't make like 3-5 different off-shoots of classic Doom monsters like Doom 3 did, and if they do make "off-shoot" monsters make them fucking distinct!

Imp in Doom 3: Imp, Maggot, Wraith. (The latter sucked so hard, it's unbelievable they kept it in; not scary, not distinct, not challenging at all). All three heavily melee oriented, only the imp had a ranged attack, but it preferred leaping in your face.

Lost Soul in Doom 3: Lost Soul, Trite, Tick, Cherub (and RoEboat added the Forgotten One).

You get the picture.

They shouldn't put such a heavy focus on melee monsters either - I'm sure you can have scary monsters that aren't predominantly melee or in-your-face all the damned time.

Doom 3 had a few dozen enemies that leapt or otherwise got in your face in a split-second. Not that I mind such enemies, but when +50% of a game's enemies do that, it's not fun or unique anymore.

I think the keyword I'm looking for here is "variation" and that goes for everything in the game from monster looks and behavior to visual themes.
Techbase was always my favorite theme and Doom 3 had a great bunch of techbase themes, but they used it too overwhelmingly much, so at the end, you got sick of techbases.
Variation id - write that word one hundred times on a blackboard so you never ever dare to forget it again :P

[jon_infektion]

kristus said:

And Q4 was such a terrible waste of opportunity. Thank goodness for ETQW though.

Was it really that bad? Never got a chance to play it, at least it came with a copy of Q2 if you bought it new

[Philnemba]

As long as the Spidermastermind boss and Arachnotrons(not to mention a plot similar to DOOM 2) are in DOOM 4 I'll play it :P

kristus said:

And Q4 was such a terrible waste of opportunity.

Quake 4 was a pretty good game(at least to me) but its not as awesome as Quake 2(too many chattering and cutscenes slows down the action too much in Quake 4) but at least turning into a strogg was a neat touch ^^

[Hellbent]

jobro said:

Doom 4 you say. I hope that they make it brighter.

And brighter colors again! Red cacodemons and pink demons! Rich brown 'floors' you could plant ripe red tomatoes in, and brown imps hurling bright red fireballs at ya.

I think they should just remake the original Doom with maybe like one or two new monsters in the later episodes. Same level of realism (marine that can outrun a BMW Z3) same abstract environment; keep the AI easy, but maybe a little bit more intelligent: ie. give the monsters more behaviors, but don't make them super hard to kill because they're so smart now. I dunno.. maybe someone should make a thread of all the ways in which you'd like a new doom game to be.

From Wiki:
On April 10, 2009 GameSpot published an interview with id Software's CEO Todd Hollenshead in which he revealed that Doom 4 is "deep in development." He stated however that the game is "not [in] pre-production". The development team is "relatively new" and id is "still actually hiring people" onto the Doom 4 team. GameSpot asked Hollenshead if Doom 4 is "a sequel? A reboot? A prequel?" and his response is "Gosh, that's actually an excellent question. It's not a sequel to Doom 3, but it's not a reboot either. Doom 3 was sort of a reboot. It's a little bit different than those, and if I told you why, I would get my ass kicked when I got back. So I'll just have to leave it at that."

[Shaviro]

Hellbent said:

And brighter colors again! Red cacodemons and pink demons! Rich brown 'floors' you could plant ripe red tomatoes in, and brown imps hurling bright red fireballs at ya.

I think they should just remake the original Doom with maybe like one or two new monsters in the later episodes. Same level of realism (marine that can outrun a BMW Z3) same abstract environment; keep the AI easy, but maybe a little bit more intelligent: ie. give the monsters more behaviors, but don't make them super hard to kill because they're so smart now. I dunno.. maybe someone should make a thread of all the ways in which you'd like a new doom game to be.

As romantic a thought that is, I don't think it would ever work in reality. A 'copy' remake of classic Doom would fail miserably. I enjoy abstract environments as well, but I think they'd only work in dedicated hell areas. When creating a followup to a game as old as Doom/2, you'd have to pay special attention to the limitations of the old game. Some of the limitations were there because of the technology and others were there because of game mechanics related decisions. Something like 3D floors are obviously a technological limitation. Is the somewhat abstract design of Doom 2 a conscious decision? I somehow doubt that "Downtown" was purposely made abstract. I believe it was much more a case of technological/artistic limitations.

Note: I'm not at all against having abstract parts inside 'real' parts. The hellish influence should have a mind and a theme of its own.

For Doom 4 to be truly successful, I think they have to allow the Doom franchise to evolve, and by this I don't mean adapt into what is currently 'cool' like they did with Doom 3. They need to stop looking at 90mph games and Half-Life and start thinking about what Doom needs in 2012 to be successful in its own right and on its own terms. I agree with you on the AI side of things. This is an area they could revolutionize. Allow the cacodemons to work together, for instance, in order to "smoke out" the player if he's hiding. Keep the lost souls dumb. Give certain monsters the ability to crawl up walls to get the player. Give the monsters different tools to create different strategic situations for the player.

Doom 2 in 2012 alone is NOT going to work. Doom 4 needs to be its own thing. Doom has to evolve or it will be a pointless exercise.

[dsm]

The basic ideas in Doom 3 weren't so bad really.

Classic Doom storyline reinterpreted to give a better sense of believability. Deeper, more fleshed out storyline. Modified, more believable gameplay elements (humanoid enemies can now run as fast as the player, making them harder to escape from). A much more streamlined weapon balance. Etc.

Too damned bad they had to go for scripted AI, flat characterization and generally trying to cash in on the success of Half-Life by borrowing so many things from that game, rather than try to just focus on what classic Doom's gameplay made it special and try to evolve that. That and I will never be able to comprehend the Doom 3 dev team's insistence on simplifying the storyline for the sake of "gameplay".
A deep, multi-faceted storyline, if executed correctly, could really enhance the gameplay. Making everything obvious leaves it too predictable. Characters need a fleshed-out background to better define them as characters and make us more interested in them, so that when and if they die or betray the player, it will really pull the emotional strings and pull us into the gameworld.

It was also a mistake to try and focus so much on making Doom 3 a "horror" game, rather than actually look at classic Doom and determine that the latter's scare factor came from a genuine feeling of never being safe anywhere (due to having multiple monsters capable of hearing you when you fired your weapons and subsequently going hunting for you).
I'm not averse to some horror elements, but these should never come at the cost of the action, and setting up most monster encounters as scripted "scare encounters" only ends up making the game predictable and thus non-scary.

[DoomUK]

Though, for the most part, I thoroughly enjoyed Doom 3, I couldn't help but feel a certain 'spirit' was lost somewhere along it's development process.

Perhaps it was the lack of abstract level environments. Perhaps it was the lacklustre combat and weapons. Perhaps it was the repetitive exploitation of poor gameplay mechanics (soul cube, endless stream of spawning imps etc). Perhaps it was a combination of several things.

The wonderfully gloomy and detailed atmosphere of it's levels didn't make up for the fact that I never felt it a true successor to Doom. Whatever the essence that was missing was that I can never quite put my finger on, bring it back id.

[Alientank]

They better change a lot if they plan to release another doom.

[Darkman 4]

I think Doom 3's major weakness is its pacing. Everything past Alpha Labs to Hell (which is a good chunk of the game) felt like filler. Every area during the filler section was filled with Imps and an occasional "monster of the week" that appears a few times and disappears after you beat that area. Despite the game giving you all sorts of weaponry, you never really needed anything past the Shotgun/Machine Gun for the "filler" sections of the game. By the time you get to Delta 4 you have such a surplus of ammo for powerful weapons from killing all of the cannon fodder Imps with the Shotgun/Machine Gun that blowing away the Hell Knights is easy as piss, especially if you have the BFG.

The game got a lot better during Hell and after because it starting mixing up enemies and gave you reasons to use strong weapons like the Plasma Gun and Chaingun. Instead of sending out one or two Imps at a time, it did things like send out a Hell Knight/Archvile with an Imp or two along with a Commando, so it was a better idea to break out the Chaingun/Plasma/BFG and take out all of them with it. Late in the game I found myself actually using the BFG often because of all the Hell Knights and other enemy types the game sent at me at once.

This is also why RoE played better compared to the standard game; the game goes straight to mixing up enemies and doesn't have long drawn out sections with only Imps and the rare "monster of the week". It doesn't help that it gives you the SSG early on as well. :)

Hopefully in Doom 4, iD will send out powerful monsters and weapons early so that you don't get bored killing cannon fodder enemies with a generic shotgun/assault rifle ala the filler sections in Doom 3.

[dsm]

Darkman 4 said:

I think Doom 3's major weakness is its pacing. Everything past Alpha Labs to Hell (which is a good chunk of the game) felt like filler. Every area during the filler section was filled with Imps and an occasional "monster of the week" that appears a few times and disappears after you beat that area. Despite the game giving you all sorts of weaponry, you never really needed anything past the Shotgun/Machine Gun for the "filler" sections of the game. By the time you get to Delta 4 you have such a surplus of ammo for powerful weapons from killing all of the cannon fodder Imps with the Shotgun/Machine Gun that blowing away the Hell Knights is easy as piss, especially if you have the BFG.

I think way too much of Doom 3 (including the Alpha Labs) felt like filler; no real purpose to the individual levels aside from being areas you just pass through (and as a result: feels more like an obstacle than a cool level to get into), combined with long-strewn and unimaginative mission objectives (which are particularly annoying early on where Sarge, a.k.a. Mr. Impatient, keeps telling you to move faster - just why did they think this was a fun idea?).

I also agree that the imps (and maggots and generally boring grey or brown monster) were overused at the expense of several, more illustrious baddies - the Hell Knight arrived too late and was used too sparingly, the Mancubus was near criminally underused as was the Pinky. It seems they were trying too hard to place monsters for the sake of "psychological scare factor" (which arguably didn't work that well), rather than for good, rewarding gameplay.

The Doom 3 imp is designed as a more "versatile" enemy and most weapons are ideally suited against them (i.e. not just the machinegun and the shotgun - try using the plasma gun, the chaingun or even the rocket launcher against them).

Trouble is, however, that too many of Doom 3's monsters feel weak and seem to feel towards the "cannon fodder" aspect.
The Archvile can easily be killed with a mere two rockets and the revenant is riduculously easy to kill with both the machine gun and the plasma gun. The Cacodemon is also really easy to put out of its misery with the chaingun and it's nowhere near aggressive enough to make up for that weakness, so it comes across as pathetically weak to fight.

Just about the only monsters in Doom 3 that come across as tough are the Hell Knight and the Mancubus; the rest seem about comparable to the classic Doom imp and Pinky.

[Airman266]

dsm said:

no real purpose to the individual levels aside from being areas you just pass through

So which original doom level didn't fit this description perfectly?

[Coopersville]

Doom's AI is dumb shooting gallery material as well. There's just more of them.

[myk]

Airman266 said:
So which original doom level didn't fit this description perfectly?

That suits the original because of its closer ties to arcade games that are all about simple reiterative elements and obstacles used "cheaply." DOOM 3 has take the immersion and narrative progress factors more seriously because it leaves the arcade elements behind. It has to play along with technology capable of highlighting differences and details.

Dsm also described some aspects of the monsters that we can also find in DOOM, many of which are clearly cannon fodder. Again, that works very well in one game but not as much in the other, for the same reasons.

[Ghastly]

dsm said:

I think way too much of Doom 3 (including the Alpha Labs) felt like filler; no real purpose to the individual levels aside from being areas you just pass through (and as a result: feels more like an obstacle than a cool level to get into), combined with long-strewn and unimaginative mission objectives (which are particularly annoying early on where Sarge, a.k.a. Mr. Impatient, keeps telling you to move faster - just why did they think this was a fun idea?).

I think you just described Halo in a nutshell.

@Kristus: Quake 4, in my opinion, was the best in the series. Quakes 1, 2 and 3 were enough hack'n'slash, Quake 4 finally had realism and story, and they finally gave the Strogg an actual persona, as bad guys, besides "they attack civilizations for very little reason and make them into cyborgs."

Raven Software proved once again that they can do great things with Id Software's engines.