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40oz

Is UAC bad?

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I only know the gist of the doom storyline. Trying to make teleportation devices, UAC constructs one that opens up a gate to hell, where all the monsters come from. Prior to that, Doom Guy gets put in prison for assaulting a Commander in chief for ordering to fire upon innocent people. (or something like that.)

Since during the course of playing doom, the doomguy never actually meets a living UAC guy. I'm a little bewildered of what the expected reaction would be. Would the UAC guy try to kill you? Hide? Fight on your side? Is the Doomguy bent on destroying UAC? Obviously the initial target is Hellspawn, but once the monsters are tamed and sent back where they came from, is the UAC to blame now?

UAC logos are dotted all around IWAD doom maps and PWAD doom maps. Is there a real reason for this, other than it being an easy wall fixture texture? Are you trying to destroy the place or make it safe again? Did the Doom guy go into the UAC Facilities, or is he trying to escape from them?

Is the Doom Guy chosen, or does he choose to be fighting for UAC, or is he just a loose cannon and it's just coincidence that he acquires all these weapons and doesn't change out of uniform?

I don't know if there is much clarification on this subject matter (hopefully not) So I suppose you can just make this up as you go based on how you view the UAC in doom. I'd also prefer to leave Doom 3 plot out of this, I hardly trust that Doom 3 really is initially what Doom and Doom 2 was meant to be.

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I would imagine that most UAC workers and marines, like Doomguy himself, were just workers who had no idea what was being done in the top-sekret teleportation labs and whatnot. The original Doom Bible plans suggested having at least one NPC, possibly in a secret level, which if I remember right was supposed to be a scared and confused UAC worker who somehow managed to avoid being killed in the invasion.

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I'd say the answer is kind of political. Is what corporations do (put profit in the foreground and such) evil?

We had a thread comparing UAC and Umbrella that dwelled on this subject to a point.

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JohnnyRancid said:

UAC logos are dotted all around IWAD doom maps and PWAD doom maps. Is there a real reason for this, other than it being an easy wall fixture texture? Are you trying to destroy the place or make it safe again? Did the Doom guy go into the UAC Facilities, or is he trying to escape from them?

The maps probably take place in UAC facilities that the hellspawn took over, which sounds kind of reasonable considering that they got to our world through UAC facilities in the first place. What Doom guy's doing there depends on the map, I guess.

JohnnyRancid said:

Is the Doom Guy chosen, or does he choose to be fighting for UAC, or is he just a loose cannon and it's just coincidence that he acquires all these weapons and doesn't change out of uniform?

He's just one bad ass marine bent on kicking the living Hell out of anyone who tries to to kill him. When all you care about is trying to get out alive you don't bother with pointless details such as which shirt you're wearing right now, the green or pink one.

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I'd consider the UAC to be like any other corporation in reality: Interested in profit and interested in damage control if it is suitable to maintain their company's image. As for individual UAC workers, I'd go with essel's theory.

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Let me quote again from the Doom readme file...

For the last four years the military, UAC's biggest supplier, has used the remote facilities on Phobos and Deimos to conduct various secret projects, including research on inter-dimensional space travel. So far they have been able to open gateways between Phobos and Deimos, throwing a few gadgets into one and watching them come out the other. Recently however, the Gateways have grown dangerously unstable. Military "volunteers" entering them have either disappeared or been stricken with a strange form of insanity-babbling vulgarities, bludgeoning anything that breathes, and finally suffering an untimely death of full body explosion. Matching heads with torsos to send home to the folks became a full-time job.


Okay, you've got an experimental teleporter. What do you test it on? "Volunteers" of course! They become crazy and explode. What do you do? You continue the tests, of course! In fact, you'll send even more people now!

In the real world, you'd start with animal testing rather than quote-volunteers-unquote. And after the first tragic and incomprehensible accident, everything would be stopped for investigations.

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Gez said:

In the real world, you'd start with animal testing rather than quote-volunteers-unquote. And after the first tragic and incomprehensible accident, everything would be stopped for investigations.


Yes, but 'The Real World' isn't Mars or its moons, its earth.

And I'm sure that crazier self-destructive testing has been done on earth before without being stopped, of course nothing involving teleportation probably.

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Military "volunteers" entering them have either disappeared or been stricken with a strange form of insanity-babbling vulgarities, bludgeoning anything that breathes, and finally suffering an untimely death of full body explosion. Matching heads with torsos to send home to the folks became a full-time job.


I love that bit. It's deliciously absurd.

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Gez said:

Okay, you've got an experimental teleporter. What do you test it on? "Volunteers" of course! They become crazy and explode. What do you do? You continue the tests, of course! In fact, you'll send even more people now!

An interesting question would be, did the teleports ever really get stable and if not, how come Doom guy is still fine from using them..? Maybe he isn't and the only real invasion he fought back was the one on Phobos, after which he just went on killing poor people while thinking they were hellspawn?

Sadly, that would make impse less disturbing I guess. :(

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I'd say that the teleporters started working correctly once the invasion began because the monsters needed them, because that they started working is what brought the monsters forth, or both.

Maybe they worked earlier to a point too and those going through got possessed (hence the gibbering and homicidal madness) but the protagonist is so tough they never get to control him.

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all the teleporters in Doom though doesn't appear to be by UAC. Since all of them got demonic glyphs on them. Or at least they've been manipulated by the demons I'd think. Like Myk just suggested.

Sigvatr said:

How many times has the UAC opened a gate to hell now (in canon)?

Only one time.

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eargosedown said:

Yes, but 'The Real World' isn't Mars or its moons, its earth.


I'm pretty sure Mars and its moons exist for real, though. :P

Just pointing out that the full-scale butchery this experiment became is, as Creaphis puts it, deliciously absurd.

Jodwin said:

An interesting question would be, did the teleports ever really get stable and if not, how come Doom guy is still fine from using them..? Maybe he isn't and the only real invasion he fought back was the one on Phobos, after which he just went on killing poor people while thinking they were hellspawn?


You mean, "and then John was a zombie"?

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Judging from all pwnage UAC gets from demons all the time, I'd say they're just retarded, not evil. They're not bad, they're just dead all over the place, a continuous home for invading hellspawn. They're just some losers.

I hope I edit my sig when I find a wad in which UAC is in one shape, in order to prove that they're just people joyfully working in space, not suicidal satanists.

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The Plutonia experiment story is revolving around the UAC trying to safeguard the real world from the demon world's attacks.

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Well it appears that the original doom lore that the UAC just made 'science gone wrong' which resulted creature/beings old bygone beliefs which happen to be demons to appear (similar to Paradox from Mage: The Ascension).

It isn't until Doom 3 where they made one of the UAC scientists (Dr. Betruger) evil and pulled off the Demon invasion on purpose not to mention that the whole "science goes wrong" theme was taken out and replaced it with some Erich von Däniken/Zecharia Sitchin inspired pseudeohistory (ancient advanced civilizations on Mars, etc) as the reason why the UAC was able to connect teleportation to Hell.

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kristus said:

all the teleporters in Doom though doesn't appear to be by UAC. Since all of them got demonic glyphs on them. Or at least they've been manipulated by the demons I'd think. Like Myk just suggested.


That seems most probable. Many of the maps in Doom have demonic attributes that were most likely a result of hell's manipulation. For example, I doubt the UAC placed those candelabras with a skulls engraved in them near the exit of E1M1.

Speaking of Hangar, a hangar is basically a garage for airplanes typically found in airports. I can't seem to find anything in that map that would make it look useful for aircraft at all.

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Heh, well the reason those candelabras are there is because Romero probably thought they looked cool there. Although it might be fun, there's no sense explaining something that has no logical explanation.

I would probably go with "after the demons invaded, the level architecture and technology starting transforming into something a bit more hellish". Remember when Doom 3 started going from tech base to tech base with "possessed" computer terminals and fleshy veins running throughout? Something like that.

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Another thing to keep in mind when pondering UAC's stance is that, throughout the missions, you come across the bodies of dead marines and various other non-demon corpses (scientists and other workers, I assume). If the UAC cared enough to hire that many people to safeguard their work, they can't have been too bad.

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Nightmare Doom said:

Well it appears that the original doom lore that the UAC just made 'science gone wrong' which resulted creature/beings old bygone beliefs which happen to be demons to appear (similar to Paradox from Mage: The Ascension).

It isn't until Doom 3 where they made one of the UAC scientists (Dr. Betruger) evil and pulled off the Demon invasion on purpose not to mention that the whole "science goes wrong" theme was taken out and replaced it with some Erich von Däniken/Zecharia Sitchin inspired pseudeohistory (ancient advanced civilizations on Mars, etc) as the reason why the UAC was able to connect teleportation to Hell.


Yeah, I think it's safe to assume that Doom was inspired by movies like Event Horizon, Evil Dead 2, and the Fly with their experiments going bad. Not by ill will, but simply "-I made a whoopsie."

While Doom3 ended up coming in an era where every project must have some sort of conspiracy involved. Even if it in this case was the crazy scientist conspiring against the big company instead of the other way around. Well, at least it makes the Doom3 story somewhat unique.

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I see the UAC as the future equivalent of Electronic Arts, taken to the furthest possible extreme. They're a vastly unethical company that likes to overwork its people, perform research on human subjects without approval, and when the Earth communities all pressed on them to stop, they merely relocated to the most remote location possible: Phobos.

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WildWeasel said:

I see the UAC as the future equivalent of Electronic Arts, taken to the furthest possible extreme. They're a vastly unethical company that likes to overwork its people, perform research on human subjects without approval, and when the Earth communities all pressed on them to stop, they merely relocated to the most remote location possible: Phobos.

Oh, come on. EA only did like half that stuff.

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To me the Doom storyline reads something like this - UAC provides the military with suitably remote facilities (probably complete with support staff) where research can be conducted in secret. When things get way out of hand the military can't/won't admit liability so the UAC became a convenient scapegoat. While UAC mightn't be "evil" bad I definitely wouldn't hire them to manage a portfolio of rental properties - when it comes to vetting tenants, they suck.

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esselfortium said:

Oh, come on. EA only did like half that stuff.

And they'll do the other half in the near future.

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I'm going to go with the "UAC isn't evil, just cares about money" hypothesis. I'd liken them to something like the "Company" in the Aliens films. That makes the most sense to me--their business practices may not be terribly ethical, but I don't think they'd intentionally allow the legions of Hell to invade our reality or anything like that . . . unless they can write all the damages/loss off at tax time. :D

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MmM said:

I'm going to go with the "UAC isn't evil, just cares about money" hypothesis. [...] I don't think they'd intentionally allow the legions of Hell to invade our reality or anything like that


Wait, does keeping on killing countless guys gruesomely in an FUBAR experiment gone wrong only count as evil if it opens up a gateway to Hell?

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I'm going to discard the quotes, so that military "volunteers" means that they're: 1) military and 2) volunteering, in that they actually wanted to be test subjects -- and they were soldiers too.

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