Where does Episode 3 of Doom 2 take place?

[Hellbent]

Where does the third episode of doom 2, titled "Hell", take place?

• In Hell

or

• On Earth

or

• In Hell on Earth?

[[PROTOTYPE]]

"The levels can be divided up into three episode-like sections, defined by their corresponding sky texture and separated by a textual intermission in addition to the standard intermission screen..."

Episode 3: MAP12 to MAP20; City levels.

On Earth,I guess...

[Memfis]

Hellbent said:

the third episode of doom 2, titled "Hell"

[citation needed]

[PRIMEVAL]

Judging by the blood red sky and strange mountains...I'd say Hell. You kill the final boss and because of his death, untold miles of Hell starts to crumble.

[Hellbent]

Memfis said:

[citation needed]

Funny, I always thought Hell was the official name of the episode, but now that I try to think where I read it, I really don't know where I got that from. Doom 2 wikia says: "MAP21 to MAP30; inside hell levels"

[printz]

Memfis said:

[citation needed]

This is not Wikipedia.

No matter how much I dislike to think about it, the third part is just hell, and the hell on Earth is the city episode.

[Vordakk]

In-game text after beating MAP20:

"There must be a way to close it on the other side. What do you care if you have to go through hell to get to it?"

In-game text after beating MAP30:

"The monster shrivels up and dies, its thrashing limbs devastating untold miles of hell's surface...Hell is a wreck."

Obviously the third portion of the game takes place in hell. OBVIOUSLY. Seriously, have you guys ever played this game?

[ellmo]

printz said:

This is not Wikipedia.

No matter how much I dislike to think about it, the third part is just hell, (...)

I completely agree. I even think there's something in the episode ending titles about Doomguy finding the portal, whence all the demons came to earth, going inside it to fight the mastermind, who opened the portal. I'll double check.

...but maps like Nirvana, Monster Condo, the Spirit World and the Living End - I can't portray them ANYWHERE outside hell itself.

[Alfonzo]

ellmo said:

...but maps like Nirvana, Monster Condo, the Spirit World and the Living End - I can't portray them ANYWHERE outside hell itself.

The concept of Nirvana seems to me the perfect segue between worlds. But then of course you have maps like The Catacombs, or The Abandoned Mines, which I suppose is where much of the dilemma comes from. "Monster Condo" could suggest more of a hellish attempt to mock human society than anything else (unless that "anything else" is Sandy Petersen having a bit of a laugh).

Personally, though, all this gives me the impression of a Hell which has, in ripping open a new portal to the mortal plane, caused a "backwash" of reality to funnel down into the maw of chaos. Either that or it all takes place beneath the surface of Earth anyway, and that places like The Catacombs or The Abandoned Mines are just quickly vanishing vestiges of humanity. And reality.

The most likely answer though is there isn't one. We're not supposed to understand Hell, its whereabouts, or the nature of its all-consuming abstracted design. We're just supposed to DIE.

[40oz]

I feel like you don't really get to hell until about MAP28. There's a text intermission saying that you receive a message in that the source of the alien invasion is at the heart of your home town, (Maybe Monster Condo is the condominium complex that doomguy used to live in?)

[printz]

st.alfonzo said:

The concept of Nirvana seems to me the perfect segue between worlds. But then of course you have maps like The Catacombs, or The Abandoned Mines, which I suppose is where much of the dilemma comes from. "Monster Condo" could suggest more of a hellish attempt to mock human society than anything else (unless that "anything else" is Sandy Petersen having a bit of a laugh).

Personally, though, all this gives me the impression of a Hell which has, in ripping open a new portal to the mortal plane, caused a "backwash" of reality to funnel down into the maw of chaos. Either that or it all takes place beneath the surface of Earth anyway, and that places like The Catacombs or The Abandoned Mines are just quickly vanishing vestiges of humanity. And reality.

All that reminds me of Mortal Kombat: Annihilation.

[Alfonzo]

40oz said:

I feel like you don't really get to hell until about MAP28. There's a text intermission saying that you receive a message in that the source of the alien invasion is at the heart of your home town

Perhaps, yeah. It would be supported in a way by The Living End, which sounds just as much a divide as Nirvana does.

But then there's Gotcha!, which is probably Doomguy's blurt after finding the entryway to Hell. I also like to think that the blood pooling around the structures in that map is spilling directly from the wound that Hell has torn open through the earth... But maybe now I'm getting a little carried away.

[Maes]

[thread breaker]
Doom II doesn't have episodes
[/thread breaker]

[Gez]

Hellbent said:

Doom 2 wikia

This forum has awesome filters. :p


Shame on you for still going on the old and forsaken site!

[Grazza]

printz said:

This is not Wikipedia.

True, but Memfis was just using thise meme as a way to query the use of a "official name" for an "episode" in a game where these things aren't formally defined. You can view certain things as defining episodes (skies, intermissions, map numbering), but it certainly isn't anything like as clear-cut as the structure of (Ultimate) Doom.

In terms of id's naming, the whole game is subtitled "Hell on Earth". id's naming of the later maps also suggests that we are still on Earth (where else would you find abandoned mines, for instance?), but one that has been so transformed (bloodfalls??) that we could easily think that we had entered hell itself, or that the two had been merged. As with the rest of both games, the design is sufficiently abstract that almost everything is open to our own interpretation, and there really isn't a right or wrong way to view things.

Gez said:

This forum has awesome filters. :p

Heh, yeah. Some people were getting hassled for linking to the wikia site, and I asked for views on whether it was or was not OK to link to the wikia site (expecting the consensus view that people could link to wherever they liked and shouldn't be attacked for making an unpopular choice). But the outcome was a little different. :p

[Justince]

r_init: getpostnumberforname: post not found!

Edited July 28, 2017 by Justince

[Xaser]

Hell is Hell. Doomguy enters a portal at the end of MAP20. It says so in the game. :P

There are some oddball maps placed in there, but at some point id decided to put gameplay over progression and left a few tough-but-seemingly-unfitting maps in the 3rd episode, making it a lot less "hell" than Doom's E3.

There's also the "Inmost Dens and Abandoned Mines got slot-swapped" theory that I stick to. Look at the key types. They're backwards -- skulls on Earth and cards in Hell. :P

[Marcaek]

Xaser said:

There's also the "Inmost Dens and Abandoned Mines got slot-swapped" theory that I stick to. Look at the key types. They're backwards -- skulls on Earth and cards in Hell. :P

It definitely makes sense when you consider their locations in the game world, the Abandoned mines being between Downtown and The industrial Zone, and Inmost dens between Bloodfalls and Monster Condo.

I think the presence of human technology in hell is due to the portal growing, pulling material inside and corrupting it.

[GreyGhost]

It's Hell - or whatever the demons happen to call their home.

[This post may contain original research or unverified claims]

[lupinx-Kassman]

There is a large ominous sky-hole at the end of map 20 that does not look like any exit prior to map 20 (unless you count Thy Flesh Consumed exits, which didn't come until after doom 2). I don't know about you, but I think that is a pretty good segway into hell.

[Alfonzo]

Xaser said:

There's also the "Inmost Dens and Abandoned Mines got slot-swapped" theory that I stick to.

Heh. I don't consider The Inmost Dens to be misplaced at all, personally, although I can see why it might be. Pretty much every significant European city has remnants of a centuries old empire bound in brick and shiny cobble, so entering into map14 for me is just like walking into the old district in Delft or Bruges or somesuch. In this respect, it's actually one of the more realistic depictions of cityscape that Doom II has on offer.

Of course this is largely because it's an American venture, which come to think of it is oddly ironic.

[NiTROACTiVE]

I think it takes place in Hell because of the red sky and hellish mountains. It's obvious to me.

[TheDarkArchon]

Memfis said:

[citation needed]

Setup.exe > Warp to

[myk]

The concepts of mutation and hybridization or implantation are strong in the game, so the idea of hell being merged with the material world is not incompatible with the third episode of DOOM II. This idea makes the "medikits in hell" syndrome more acceptable.

[Technician]

I never had a problem with some of the earthly architecture in hell. Doom's vision of hell is surreal enough to accommodate buildings and such.

[Marnetmar]

After putting some thought into it, I don't think there's really any one place where episode 3 is intended to take place. My theory is that everybody designed levels simply for the sake of designing levels, and the story was tacked at the end of development.

[andrewj]

Marcaek said:

I think the presence of human technology in hell is due to the portal growing, pulling material inside and corrupting it.

Or it's just because Hell is the place where naughty humans go when they die, and in between pitchfork torture sessions they build stuff out of sheer boredom.

[Walter confetti]

IMHO is in Hell in Heart, and the later maps are actually the hell itself (since from nirvana "you enter in the corrupted heart of city" as the in-text story says after you beat map20)

[Marcaek]

The text implies that "Gotcha!" takes place in the corrupt heart of the city, not that you enter it via the portal.

[NiTROACTiVE]

walter confalonieri said:

IMHO is in Hell in Heart, and the later maps are actually the hell itself (since from nirvana "you enter in the corrupted heart of city" as the in-text story says after you beat map20)

I agree with this because I feel that I'm entering the corrupted heart of city after going the portal in MAP20.