Level Discussion

[BluePineapple72]

So there were 13 levels in this game

The UAC
Resource Operations
Foundry
Argent Facility
Argent Energy Tower
Kadignir Sanctum
Argent Facility (destroyed)
Advanced Research Center
Lazarus
Titans Realm
The Necropolis
VEGA Central Processing
Argent D'Nur

So what did you think of each of these levels, what did you feel were their strengths and weaknesses?
Also which one was your favorite?

[Trycon]

I would pick Foundry as my favorite one.

The last arena where you're fighting over the big vents and the music was pumping. It was great.

The Hell levels were nice too. Loved the art design of them.

[BluePineapple72]

I have a feeling Foundry will be the popular choice, I personally really like Kadignir Sanctum and The Necopolis, their design and music make me a happy person

[DooM_RO]

The Foundry.

It is so good it is better than many of the levels in the ORIGINAL. Better than E1M2 in any case.

[id.dav]

13 levels? How's that in the leaked stuff there were actually 17....for example what is BFG division? Maybe 2 areas are combined within 1 level. Could be.

[Chubzdoomer]

Foundry is definitely in a league of its own. The second best in my opinion was the first Hell level, which blew me away with its visuals, music, and verticality and also made good use of skull keys.

Honorable mention: Titans Realm and The Necropolis. I loved their devious little traps, though their "keycard hunts" weren't much of a hunt at all and therefore felt pointless.

[tuo]

id.dav said:

13 levels? How's that in the leaked stuff there were actually 17....for example what is BFG division? Maybe 2 areas are combined within 1 level. Could be.

BFG Devision is where you get the BFG. It's in the game.

Did you actually play the game?

The Beta leaks no longer pointed to 17 levels, but to 14. One of them (one of the Blood Keeps) seems to be missing. Plus, people (me included) speculated if we revisit the foundry (since it had such a huge list of objectives compared to the other levels), but we now know that we only revisit one map.

[id.dav]

tuo said:

BFG Devision is where you get the BFG. It's in the game.

Did you actually play the game?

The Beta leaks no longer pointed to 17 levels, but to 14. One of them (one of the Blood Keeps) seems to be missing. Plus, people (me included) speculated if we revisit the foundry (since it had such a huge list of objectives compared to the other levels), but we now know that we only revisit one map.

Nope I still haven't! But it all points to one thing - SP expansion with cut content.
Well as for revisiting levels it is strange to see that there's none one..cos with layer system they can make various scenarios for any map just like in Rage.

[tuo]

id.dav said:

Nope I still haven't! But it all points to one thing - SP expansion with cut content.
Well as for revisiting levels it is strange to see that there's none one..cos with layer system they can make various scenarios for any map just like in Rage.

There is one level you revisit. And it looks completely different than before, as in: it's a completely new map. The amount of levels and playtime is actually quite good! I prefer 10 to 13 hours (without rushing it) of quality content to 20 hours of revisiting the same places three times with different missions.

If you wanna search for stuff that has been moved to DLC, search in the multiplayer files. You'll find plenty of stuff that they obviously forgot to remove in alpha and beta from internal testing that later even had the "DLC" appendix, and was spawnable in alpha via some hacks, and worked and was playable (so finished).

Then again: I don't care about this DLC hate. It is part of this industry we all enjoy and spend many hours in for oh so long, and everyone should have understood by now that when (most) studios develop games, they develop most of the DLC stuff during the main development time. It is a part of their business case.

[Cynical]

Foundry was clearly the best level, followed by Resource Operations, and then Necropolis in a distant third.

[Urthar]

Argent Facility, Foundry and Resource Operations all had a non-linear approach with plenty of exploration, in which the arenas felt like natural extensions of the environment.

Some of the later maps felt too much like a connected series of obvious arenas, and since all the monsters and weapons had been introduced by that point, I felt like I was just getting more of the same. I have to wonder if the monster's mobility was actually a little detrimental at some points. A few turret monsters might have allowed for more tactical variation in the setups, for example in that Dead Simple homage.

[HXCpr0n]

Urthar said:

Argent Facility, Foundry and Resource Operations all had a non-linear approach with plenty of exploration, in which the arenas felt like natural extensions of the environment.

Some of the later maps felt too much like a connected series of obvious arenas, and since all the monsters and weapons had been introduced by that point, I felt like I was just getting more of the same. I have to wonder if the monster's mobility was actually a little detrimental at some points. A few turret monsters might have allowed for more tactical variation in the setups, for example in that Dead Simple homage.

spot on, beat me to it.

I noticed that a lot of those earlier levels had very non-linear approaches and were sort of maze-like. You could just explore and do things in whatever order. It really felt like Doom to me.

After Argent Facility, you can pretty much kiss all of that goodbye. It basically became just gladiator dome to gladiator dome... which is not really my idea of a good level.

Thank god the combat is fun enough to overlook it. I was also disappointed in the relative lack of newcomers to the Doom Beastiary

[DooM_RO]

Urthar said:

Argent Facility, Foundry and Resource Operations all had a non-linear approach with plenty of exploration, in which the arenas felt like natural extensions of the environment.

Some of the later maps felt too much like a connected series of obvious arenas, and since all the monsters and weapons had been introduced by that point, I felt like I was just getting more of the same. I have to wonder if the monster's mobility was actually a little detrimental at some points. A few turret monsters might have allowed for more tactical variation in the setups, for example in that Dead Simple homage.

I agree. It seems I am not the only one who thinks the first part of the game is better. Not that the second is bad, just not as good. I think the Foundry is one of the best Doom levels of all time.

[tuo]

DooM_RO said:

I agree. It seems I am not the only one who thinks the first part of the game is better. Not that the second is bad, just not as good. I think the Foundry is one of the best Doom levels of all time.

Same feeling here. The hell levels were fun, but not as non-linear as the first half, and basically consisted of many arenas.

[LittleBurger]

tuo said:

Same feeling here. The hell levels were fun, but not as non-linear as the first half, and basically consisted of many arenas.

Which is weird as you think they would have had more abstract design with those.

[Reisal]

Foundry reminds me a bit of Enpro from Doom 3, namely the "Fix this to prevent a catastrophe" thing.

However, I'm not that thrilled with the arena "lockdown" thing, that's just so un-Doomy.

[Use]

Glaice said:

However, I'm not that thrilled with the arena "lockdown" thing, that's just so un-Doomy.

You have to remember, Doom '93 was very much a product of it's time. People were more impressed by little things like the engine advancements, and the additional CPU power could make for slightly more varied and convincing level design.
Now days hardware has completely eclipsed design, anything you can dream up can be a reality, there's more at stake to make an environment that is likely to exist in the 'real world'. Beyond the non-linearity approach I'm not entirely sure a more abstract form of level design would work anymore in a modern game. Even if you pull it off, you risk alienating a chunk of your user base, 'I got lost after so many tries I just gave up'.

I noticed a shift in how the later levels were presented in the new Doom, but it was not detracting enough to take away from the gameplay, you did begin to anticipate it, coming into a large room and sure enough, in pop the critters. But honestly, would monster closets be any better? You can easily exploit them once you know where they are, like a jump scare, they lose a bit of their element after the first few times. Though seemingly uninspired at this point, at very least arena battles have an element of randomness to them that can make subsequent plays more dynamic and keep you off balance.