Is Hell from Doom a "virus" or rewriting reality?

[Nightmare Doom]

If you played the original Doom especially KDIZD, have you ever noticed that that Hell and Demons when they took over the Phobos and Deimos base they seem to have hell slowly taking over it as if it's rewriting reality? Especially for example what if Deimos was once a planet/moon but got turned into a floating Island by Hell meanwhile "Outer Space" is also getting rewritten as a large landscape of Hell?

Well one of my main bases of these theories is from various White Wolf WoD games called "Mage: the Ascension" which is a game about people who can shape reality entirely even by rewriting their perceptions of Outer Space is like (which for example in the Book of Worlds describes a Dreamspeaker viewing space as a large desert with portals which a lone Void Engineer catches off guard seeing someone surviving without a space suit and not following their view of space as a airless void.

[myk]

Perhaps we could see it as an unintentional representation of id Software and DOOM themselves. A self-reference of sorts pointing out how the authors subconsciously perceived their own ascension into the gaming industry. After all, the company and the game helped rewrite a portion of video gaming history, and they were aware they were onto something.

[Nightmare Doom]

myk said:

Perhaps we could see it as an unintentional representation of id Software and DOOM themselves. A self-reference of sorts pointing out how the authors subconsciously perceived their own ascension into the gaming industry. After all, the company and the game helped rewrite a portion of video gaming history, and they were aware they were onto something.

Interesting theory, Perhaps I'm beginning to see that Doom is actually a metaphor for bringing games out of their prototype era/technical birthplace (the tech base levels) into a new era of gaming (the Hell levels...).

[Csonicgo]

hell is a series of tubes.

[Nightmare Doom]

Csonicgo said:

hell is a series of tubes.

I don't think Hell is a big truck...

[Gez]

Woah, déjà vu.

[esselfortium]

Nightmare Doom said:

If you played the original Doom especially KDIZD

Stop right there.

[EvilNed]

KDIZD? What's that?

[Nightmare Doom]

EvilNed said:

KDIZD? What's that?

It's short for "Knee Deep in ZDoom".

[EvilNed]

How is that Original Doom?

[esselfortium]

EvilNed said:

How is that Original Doom?

It isn't, hence my reply. :P

[Nightmare Doom]

esselfortium said:

It isn't, hence my reply. :P

Well I actually included both the original Doom and KDIZD in that list since both games did show that Hell was manifesting into the bases although KDIZD only shown the details of it.

[Fletcher`]

EvilNed said:

How is that Original Doom?

It isn't. At all.

[Quasar]

The subversion of reality occurs in all of the DOOM games; personally I always assumed it's because the demons are cursed to eternal damnation, and thus wherever they go will turn into hell around them.

"And Hell followed". Sums it up pretty well.

[Tetzlaff]

Maybe he meant "Knee-deep in ze dead".

[esselfortium]

Nightmare Doom said:

Interesting theory, Perhaps I'm beginning to see that Doom is actually a metaphor for bringing games out of their prototype era/technical birthplace (the tech base levels) into a new era of gaming (the Hell levels...).

According to Essel's Corollary of Occam's Razor, the simplest explanation is never the fanon one.

[printz]

Well it's neither a virus nor a rewriting of reality. It's really bad religion -- so you can still call it rewriting reality, but it would be blasphemous.

[esselfortium]

printz said:

Well it's neither a virus nor a rewriting of reality. It's really bad religion -- so you can still call it rewriting reality, but it would be blasphemous.

I don't think Bad Religion were involved in the invasion at all, actually.

[Gez]

This thread, too, is a repost.

Coming soon from Nightmare Doom on Doomworld: countless pointless comments about nipples on sprites, and why there should be more of them.

[printz]

esselfortium said:

I don't think Bad Religion were involved in the invasion at all, actually.

If this were the ZDoom forum, people would be all over me with huge (meme) photos as replies :P

[myk]

Gez said:
This thread, too, is a repost.

Meh, not everyone here visits those forums. If anyone wants to post something they posted in some other forum here, they're welcome.

[EvilNed]

As Doom II implies, the Demons bring their own reality with them. I'm gonna go with that one as well. The Demons come first, and reality around them slowly corrupts into something gruesome and surrealistic.

There's no practicality to the demons reality. It's just there for unknown reasons. Meh. Who knows... I very much like the "Hell" aspect of Doom, anyway.

[HackNeyed]

I go with the Doom II story of altered reality. I enjoy the surreal nature of Doom/II maps and I use it to explain why Episode1/tech maps have odd unrealistic parts. The geometry is alterd (who builds crushing ceiling or lifts that only lead to holes in the ceiling or monster closets) yet the materials rename man made.

The longer the monsters have been around/closer you get to hell the bigger the change.

[kristus]

The Doom bible said:

Demon: The demons have made some areas more “like home.” You know sorta Art
Decomposed. Everything is harsh sharp rock, with living organs in the walls, plus the
occasional glowing bit or tortured soul.

[Maes]

HackNeyed said:

The longer the monsters have been around/closer you get to hell the bigger the change.

No HackNeyed, you are the demons.

[Spleen]

These days, most people probably see Doom 1 as an action FPS. But you have to realize that back in the mid 90's, it seemed as much of an atmospheric game as an action game, especially to those of us who were really young at the time.

Today DOOM is one of the old classics, but when it came out it had a cutting-edge engine. I have no doubt that id intentionally used its revolutionary graphics to make an intense atmospheric experience, just like it tried to do with Doom 3. The early plan to make levels realistic was scrapped to make way for improved gameplay and atmosphere.

It's too bad that many modern FPS developers don't agree. Then again, given the sales figures of modern "realistic" games, maybe it doesn't matter that much anymore.


In short: The Doom Universe is a surrealist work of art, and analyzing the events in it is like analyzing the logic in one of Salvador Dali's paintings.

[magicsofa]

I always imagined those skin textures to be demonic flesh that spreads over the bases and takes them over...

So I have a question, do the demons build stuff? I have this silly image in my head of imps with hammer-and-nail...anyway who builds the hellish structures that are clearly not converted moon bases? Is it by magical ability?

Also where did the bionic upgrades come from - cybie, arachnotron, mastermind, mancubus...these guys have robotic arms and shit like that. Revenants of course. I think you could make a whole doom episode based around the crazy scientist-engineer-demon-lord that makes all this stuff...

[Nightmare Doom]

magicsofa said:

I always imagined those skin textures to be demonic flesh that spreads over the bases and takes them over...

So I have a question, do the demons build stuff? I have this silly image in my head of imps with hammer-and-nail...anyway who builds the hellish structures that are clearly not converted moon bases? Is it by magical ability?

Also where did the bionic upgrades come from - cybie, arachnotron, mastermind, mancubus...these guys have robotic arms and shit like that. Revenants of course. I think you could make a whole doom episode based around the crazy scientist-engineer-demon-lord that makes all this stuff...

I guess it's a mystery with no established answer...and sometimes mysteries are best unanswered so we can have our imaginations run wild due it's subjective nature.

[Mr. Freeze]

magicsofa said:

I always imagined those skin textures to be demonic flesh that spreads over the bases and takes them over...

So I have a question, do the demons build stuff? I have this silly image in my head of imps with hammer-and-nail...anyway who builds the hellish structures that are clearly not converted moon bases? Is it by magical ability?

Also where did the bionic upgrades come from - cybie, arachnotron, mastermind, mancubus...these guys have robotic arms and shit like that. Revenants of course. I think you could make a whole doom episode based around the crazy scientist-engineer-demon-lord that makes all this stuff...

It's magic. Demon magic. Nothing else needs to be said.

[Creaphis]

I've always imagined that these transformations kind of just happen, organically and unconsciously, once Hell's malevolence enters an area. Also, different sorts of transformations will occur in different places, via different mechanisms. For the sake of illustration, imagine a loaf of bread that's been left in the open for about a month. Some parts of it will be covered with black mould, and some parts of it will be green. Parts will have been eaten away by vermin. Replace "bread" with "techbase," and "mould" and "vermin" with "corrupting influence of Hell," and that's basically what happens. This is why, when playing B2B, you find some structures have become green marble, and some places have become walls of bloody skulls, and some areas have become shot through with tunnels of skin, bone and demonic flesh - flesh from which red-brick structures eventually emerge, with a peculiar order about them, like the organized structure of a snowflake.

I'm open to other interpretations, though, and I like it when a mapper puts enough attention into arrangement of Doom's decorative elements to create a different sense of "how it works."