Arch Vile's attack psychic or pyrokinetic?

[Creaphis]

Note that archviles injure themselves and other archviles with their attacks in the basic engines, but in ZDoom they are immune to their own attacks by default.

[MmM]

[GreyGhost]

I'm subscribing to the "DOOM Magic" theory until someone can offer a better explanation. The innate abilities that various species of hellspawn possess defy explanation - since they don't have counterparts in the known world - and can't be researched properly until someone (apart from JohnnyRancid) can acquire live specimens. Alternately we could organise a 15th anniversary reunion for the DOOM development team and lock them (unarmed) in a room full of rabid evangelists until they give us the answers.

Next question - How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?

[myk]

Many science fiction phenomena can't likewise be explained by science either. I think perhaps a better question would be, is it essentially spiritual or material?

Depending on the answer you give that (I'm sure the game can accommodate either to certain degrees) you'll give the game's hell a different nature, either more fantastic or more "Lovecraftian".

Regardless, I liked the phrasing of the original question, which concentrated on material phenomena. Fictional ones, but then the game is fiction.

[printz]

I'm not sure if it has already been said here, but "traditional" magic is often linked with devil "worship", this is why many people tend to associate Doom monsters' attacks with magic. It seems that in the Doom world, around all those pentagrams, inverted crosses, skulls, marble & wooden shacks in space, mangled corpses and castles, traditional "magic" more likely comes to mind than Sci-Fi-like element manipulation techniques.

[myk]

The "Lovecraftian" idea is that traditional explanations have something inhuman or alien behind them which inspired the tradition, and is thus similar to it but more materialistic. Lovecraft's writing moves in that direction; his later works are less mythological and more "alien" than the earlier ones. DOOM also seems to do that to a degree; the monsters added for DOOM II have techy or not-so-classic features. The game game seems to lose a good deal of "D&D-like" aesthetic elements as it is developed. First from the DOOM bible and betas to the released game, and then from DOOM to DOOM II. In the second installment Petersen also had a bigger role as designer, and he was the Lovecraft expert.

[Pirx]

JohnnyRancid said:

How many people caught an archvile and studied it? I have one in my poke-ball but I can't get it out

not many. and those didn't survive ;)