Why is Doom 3 so different from the rest?

[slowtorturepukechamber]

Why is Doom 3 more of a horror game rather than a shooter, like the original Dooms were? Hell, I'm pretty sure that even Doom 4 is going back to their old roots. Why did they decide to change the tone and pace of Doom 3? New decade, new audience, I suppose?

[RUSH]

When you think about it, the original game had some pretty scary themes for 1993. Demons from hell, pentagrams, blood and guts etc. During the re imagining process I'm sure id realized the id Tech 4 was capable of generating some extremely impressive monsters/environments. John Carmack has always been about pushing graphics to the absolute limit - the downside being frame rate.

All those thick shadows can make for a smooth, beautiful game - with little action on screen. Otherwise, it would be too much for computers to handle. In order to compensate, id uses no more than a couple monsters at a time with small rooms and corridors. The only possible style for this type of design? Horror.

[purist]

I think Doom 1 was intended to be a horror game. The reviews and general consensus at the time was that it was a scary game rather than an action packed game. Lots of references to the idle growling of monsters, traps, darkness and gore.

There were action/arcadey elements still in, partly because that was the direction Romero preferred and partly as a carry over from Wolfenstien but I think horror was the initial direction the game was designed to go in.

[William Blazkowicz]

1.) It is ment to be a remake/re-imagining of Doom
2.) It tried to keep up with it's time by playing somewhat similarly to other fps games at the time (though it feels very much appart from them IMO)
3.) Maybe ID assumed people would get tired of the same formula?

[clamgor]

They tried "re-imagining" Doom.

I guess the horror elements are part of that re-imagination thing they've got going.

[Koko Ricky]

It was going to be inevitably different from the previous Doom games for the mere fact that the engine was now truly 3D. Clearly, id didn't want to make a carbon copy of the original, and what we got was their attempt at reimagining the franchise. The horror element was great and the plausible, claustrophobic settings were very immersive. There's just way too much of that (along with all the minor gameplay issues that ultimately add up), not to mention questionable enemy designs.

[scifista42]

GoatLord said:

questionable enemy designs.

IMO, Doom 3 has great enemy designs - well, except for the fact that majority of enemies are grey and very slow, that's a big problem.

I'm inclined to believe that the game was different from its precedessors, because its new engine allowed id to set up much more immersive horror elements than they could in Doom 1+2 - and they saw it as the right direction, to focus on horror. I also agree with William Blazkowicz's post specifically, and actually all posts in this thread so far.

[Badboy]

GoatLord said:

It was going to be inevitably different from the previous Doom games for the mere fact that the engine was now truly 3D.

my believe is, the engine had impact on gameplay design.

willits explained the method.
http//www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8teXxWXn_M

first is the new engine with features from john. and the devs used these features. it sounds like the devs looked what is doable with the engine and built a game around. the problem, we dont know their work behaviour. doom3 was the last game which was made with a small team.

plus i think, id had doom & quake, so they could stray away from the old formular and do something new with doom3.

[snapshot]

DOOM 3 doesn't really look like a horror game (however cutscenes ...),it's more like a Sci Fi,like Half-Life was meant to be a Horror game and Half-Life 2 had many scary Levels .... but it turned out as Sci-Fi .

[printz]

It's like a game made in 2004, long after two nearly identical games made in 1993 and 1994. If you factor in the two single-player Quake games, it makes much more sense. Quake 1 and 2 already rely a lot on ambient sounds and gruesome designs. Doom 3 is really on the same track, just more intense. It all fits nicely with id Software's own more and more tattered logo design:

[Orchid87]

IIRC someone from id said that Doom 3 is what Doom 1 was supposed to be in 1993 but only D3 engine allowed them to realise all the ideas. Remember, Doom 1 was also supposed to be Aliens game. Doom 3 reminds me of the marine part of AvP games a lot.