So, are there no Arch-viles in Doom 4?

[Rampy470]

If not, that's a shame. As much as I hate their guts, they always induced this special brand of panic that would be interesting to experience in a modern-day game.

[Arctangent]

Summoners are basically their replacement for a game without persistent corpses. Zooms around all speedy speedy with long breaks of stillness, fiery attacks, swarms you with enemies.

[Linguica]

People who datamined the beta found codex entries talking about the archvile, but in the final game all those entries now call it the "summoner". It seems like the name was changed pretty late in development.

[LittleBurger]

Arctangent said:

Summoners are basically their replacement for a game without persistent corpses. Zooms around all speedy speedy with long breaks of stillness, fiery attacks, swarms you with enemies.

I still think it would be interesting to see how the summoner and arch-vile would mix together as some tag team group of demons.

[Rampy470]

Arctangent said:

Summoners are basically their replacement for a game without persistent corpses. Zooms around all speedy speedy with long breaks of stillness, fiery attacks, swarms you with enemies.

Ah I see. I saw plenty of footage of them, but I never made the connection between them and Archviles.

[Deatheye]

no arachnotrons either :c

[NodEliteX5]

Deatheye said:

no arachnotrons either :c

But for some reason the Spider Mastermind uses a plasma gun instead of a chaingun like she use to.

[DMPhobos]

My guess it's that the archvile design was so radically different, that late in development they decided to just name it something else to leave the door open for a more traditional archvile in the future

[snapshot]

Maybe they just decided to call it something else because of the different color, Head ... etc .

[tuo]

If I am not mistaken, it is now fair game to post datamined stuff? If not, I will gladly remove it:

"#str_codex_catagory_bestiary_archvile_2_desc" "The Lazarus Project has managed to successfully capture several Summoner demons. The imprisonment process requires careful preparation, as a Summoner will immediately launch multiple Argent wave attacks when trapped. To prevent this, Hell energy must be continuously drained from the demon until it is sufficiently sedated. Anatomical study of the Summoner suggests that it is a highly evolved sub-genus of the Imp form."

Clearly shows that the Demon used to be a reimagination of the Archvile, but was later renamed to "Summoner".

This dates back to alpha, though! (NOT this string, but the renaming!)

[dsm]

NodEliteX5 said:

But for some reason the Spider Mastermind uses a plasma gun instead of a chaingun like she use to.

The game design for the new Doom heavily emphasizes movement as defense - movement becomes worthless as soon as you have a hitscan enemy, because it requires you to find cover instead of moving around, and the development team specifically wanted to avoid this.

Hence why they gave the Spider Mastermind a plasma gun and decided that the arachnotron was redundant.

Still, would be nice to see a re-interpreted Arachnotron with a somehow different way of attacking and moving some time in the future.

[snapshot]

tuo said:

a highly evolved sub-genus of the Imp form.

Hmm ..

[tuo]

dsm said:

The game design for the new Doom heavily emphasizes movement as defense - movement becomes worthless as soon as you have a hitscan enemy, because it requires you to find cover instead of moving around, and the development team specifically wanted to avoid this.

Hence why they gave the Spider Mastermind a plasma gun and decided that the arachnotron was redundant.

Still, would be nice to see a re-interpreted Arachnotron with a somehow different way of attacking and moving some time in the future.

Back in alpha datamining, people tripped over a certain state regarding the Spider Mastermind which red "isUpsideDown". People (myself included) tried to put pieces together, and since (back in the alpha and beta...and even release) the Spider Mastermind was the only Demon to not have a killcount in SnapMap, we assumed it was the only thing not available, because it might need a certain arena to work correctly, where it could climb to the ceiling (actually, there even is a state of it which mentions a ceiling). So many of the dataminers concluded that the Spider Mastermind might be able to climb to the ceiling, in it's arena. In the final release, at least the "isUpsideDown" now makes sense.

But how cool would it be if they include Arachnotrons - with the argent gun from either the possessed soldiers or - if you want them closer to a champion type enemy - from the Mastermind, and make them super mobile? Like the Imps can scale the struts and fire at you, they can even climb to the ceiling superfast and fire their gun upon you? Would make an awesome addition, since you not only have to care about stuff below and next to you, but also stuff that climbed the walls and the ceilings :)

[Technician]

DMPhobos said:

My guess it's that the archvile design was so radically different, that late in development they decided to just name it something else to leave the door open for a more traditional archvile in the future

I disagree. The Cybermoose deviates even more from it's original design. They probably just felt the name fit the monster better.

tuo said:

But how cool would it be if they include Arachnotrons - with the argent gun from either the possessed soldiers or - if you want them closer to a champion type enemy - from the Mastermind, and make them super mobile? Like the Imps can scale the struts and fire at you, they can even climb to the ceiling superfast and fire their gun upon you? Would make an awesome addition, since you not only have to care about stuff below and next to you, but also stuff that climbed the walls and the ceilings :)

I would have liked to have seen the Trite make a reappearance. It could do all the spidery things and could explode on contact. I like kamikaze enemies in shooters.