What's generally considered "canon" in DOOM's continuity?

[schmerr]

printz said:

Speaking of this, has anyone tried making a megawad with said officer as villain?

Someone needs to make a wad like this right meow.

[clamgor]

Doom 1 & 2 is canon for me.
That's it.

Episode progression:
- Knee-Deep in the Dead
- The Shores of Hell
- Inferno
- Thy Flesh Consumed
- Hell on Earth

And after Doomguy destroys hell, that's pretty much the end of the series.

Doom 3 is Doom 1 "re-imagined" so it's not technically canon to the first two.

[MFG38]

PRIMEVAL said:

I view the first 3 episodes of Doom to be the first in the series of, say, a TV series that really made it big and popular. Doom II came about as a sequel that, while still cool, sorta lacked in some areas (not as good looking of maps) but excelled in others (maps still fun and new monsters/pickups). Episode 4 could very well be the end of the original company's time for said series with an attempt to go back to their original style.

TNT is the rebooted series (not remade, just brought back to life to continue the story) by another company that ended up getting the rights. While fun in its own right, doesn't compare to the original and has a lower budget for visuals (TNT map design, anyone?). Can be considered canon but not necessary to see for the story.

Plutonia is yet another reboot from a sister company after TNT that is more focused on action and nice visuals (better budget aka map design), but still falls short of the original. Yet again, not necessary but can still be considered canon.

Then there's Doom 64, rights bought by a bigger company than the last 2, putting more effort into this reboot with a good budget. Still holding true to the original series, possibly even at the same level of awesome, but also bringing something new and refreshing to the table. A respectful end to the franchise and can quite possibly be held canon over the previous 2 eras.

Doom 3 is the big budget movie reboot that gets mixed reviews.

PWADs are the fan-fictions that flood the internet.

I like this analogy. It makes perfect sense if you think about it, no joke.

[clamgor]

MFG38 said:

I like this analogy. It makes perfect sense if you think about it, no joke.

It does. But what about the actual Doom movie?

Where does that fit?

[schmerr]

Crasger said:

It does. But what about the actual Doom movie?

Where does that fit?

Nowhere. Lets just forget about that one.

[Doomkid]

Crasger said:

But what about the actual Doom movie?

Where does that fit?

It's the crappy video game spinoff from the awesome TV show, of course!

[clamgor]

Doomkid said:

It's the crappy video game spinoff from the awesome TV show, of course!

Quite the way to twist things around, huh?

[Quasar]

Doom 64 at no point explicitly states it comes immediately after Doom II or excludes Final Doom (keep in mind Williams had practically just finished PSX Final Doom when they started working on Doom 64 - some of the changes made between PSX Doom and PSX Final Doom are retained in the Doom 64 code base, even, indicating it was based directly on the latter and not the former).

What Doom 64's story says exactly is "The military episodes code named 'DOOM' were not actually completed." You could take that as meaning all of the original Doom games, especially if Doom 64 is meant to be a sequel to the PlayStation games in particular, which would seem logical. They included bits of Doom, Thy Flesh Consumed, Doom II, and both Final Doom episodes. NR4TL was created afterward, so it's a retcon. You could still consider them to happen on the same timeline easily though - the stories are wide open for as many "episodes" and "incidents" to be crammed in there as id wants.

The only limit is your imagination, as to when it becomes unbelievable that this same Doomguy went through all this bullshit and made it out alive :P

[Blastfrog]

Quasar said:

Keep in mind Williams had practically just finished PSX Final Doom when they started working on Doom 64 - some of the changes made between PSX Doom and PSX Final Doom are retained in the Doom 64 code base, even, indicating it was based directly on the latter and not the former.

Though a bit off-topic, what differences were there? I know at the least that it supported the PSX mouse (I would guess that analog movement went into the analog stick in 64?) and that its map format was different. And I know that the super-shotgun sprite was different except in Japan, but that has nothing to do with the engine, only IWAD assets.

[40oz]

Quasar said:

NR4TL

is this really what we're calling it?

[Blastfrog]

40oz said:

is this really what we're calling it?

I prefer "NRFTL" over "NR4TL." I've never really been a big fan of numbers in place of letters in title acronyms.

[Quasar]

Sodaholic said:

Though a bit off-topic, what differences were there? I know at the least that it supported the PSX mouse (I would guess that analog movement went into the analog stick in 64?) and that its map format was different. And I know that the super-shotgun sprite was different except in Japan, but that has nothing to do with the engine, only IWAD assets.

Mainly the change-over from names to a numbered hardcoded index for textures in the map format. That stuck from Final Doom to Doom 64.

Also, NR4TL is what I've been calling it since release. Sorry you no likey. ;)