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Koko Ricky

Hell guardian didn't feel Doom-y

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Pretty much everything else has, though. But the guardian's WOW-esque design, the focus on a rock-based biology and that silly green spherical shield bubble did not feel like something that belongs in Doom. Granted, I ultimately enjoyed the fight, but this dude just doesn't fit with the rest of the bestiary. It seems to be one of the only design choices where id dropped the ball. It's less irritating than it is confusing, since the other fantastical elements seem completely appropriate in the context of an occultist space battle.

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From what I remember, this boss has had its name and location changed since the MP Alpha leaks. It wouldn't surprise me if it was hurried together or modified to be harder as a part of some form of restructuring of the game itself. I could just be talking out of my ass, though.

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Got a fair try at the game yesterday and got to that part, and while I did get a fun kick outta that particular fight (not to say anything about the rest of the game which feels a Doom game proper, all around fucking fair and square) and I gotta say I would've been much more satisfied if they'd had gone with a design update of Doom 3's guardian battle.

Because, and let's face it, whatever the hell that was, both it and the battle space you fight it in clash so fucking much with the remaining of what I played so far, both visually and atmosphere-wise, that I can't possibly think of what the fuck ID could have been thinking at the time.

I don't oftentimes agree with people who compare this game to other games for the sake of an overstretched ass-backwards comparison to the childish way they believe it looks or plays, be it WOW, Halo, whatever have you, but goddamn, that was something straight out of a fantasy dungeon crawler android game. And I've played a LOT of those.

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That battle definitely felt out of place. I wish they'd at least given the Guard a more demonic appearance instead of it looking like a golem or elemental that fell straight out of The Witcher.

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Good to see I am not the only one who feels this way, but I did not want to devote a topic to this or sound bitchier than I sometimes already do.

Just feels like that 'thing' is out of place to the max, not to mention aesthetics wise it looks like something out of Diablo (which I like too).

Jaxxoon R said:

From what I remember, this boss has had its name and location changed since the MP Alpha leaks. It wouldn't surprise me if it was hurried together or modified to be harder as a part of some form of restructuring of the game itself. I could just be talking out of my ass, though.


Yeah, it was olivia's talisman guards or something! Good call on that, jaxxoon.

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I felt the same but never thought of mentioning it.

Transform half of its armour into random human bones and perhaps add a few screaming faces in anguish like as if you're somewhat fighting a gore nest. Then it should feel more like Doom... then again it probably would better suit Warhammer.

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I think the general concept of 'hell golems controlled by a worm parasite' is appropriately doomy, but they dropped the ball somewhat on the art direction. Chezza's suggestion would have been a good one, or just make them more spiky/horny/fleshy. Anything that distinguished them from alien bugs that just happened to have some demonic sigils on them.

The mechanics are fine. Sure, they're much more like a WoW boss fight than you would have found in the original Doom, but so are the Cyberdemon and Spider Mastermind. (The Spiderdemon fight literally made me think of a specific WoW boss, namely the Nefarian 2.0 encounter in Blackrock Descent... though that's more because of the pillar mechanic in particular than the fight as a whole.)

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In my "review" here i told that i have only 2 real major complains about this game. And the Hell guard was one of them. I never played WoW, therefore this fight reminded me a lot on Metroid Prime (besides the worm inside). It looks almost retard when this thing gets angry and smashes his babyrattle-like weapon on the ground. I really hate the design of this enemie and location.

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jerrysheppy said:

I think the general concept of 'hell golems controlled by a worm parasite' is appropriately doomy, but they dropped the ball somewhat on the art direction. Chezza's suggestion would have been a good one, or just make them more spiky/horny/fleshy. Anything that distinguished them from alien bugs that just happened to have some demonic sigils on them.

The mechanics are fine. Sure, they're much more like a WoW boss fight than you would have found in the original Doom, but so are the Cyberdemon and Spider Mastermind. (The Spiderdemon fight literally made me think of a specific WoW boss, namely the Nefarian 2.0 encounter in Blackrock Descent... though that's more because of the pillar mechanic in particular than the fight as a whole.)


The following is pure speculation:

When looking at the alpha strings and the models included in the alpha, there were plenty of references to some kind of parasite that enters and controls living beeings. In the leaked alpha screenshots, when people spawned all kinds of enemies, many of the human enemies had these "snake like" things all over them (it looked strange, btw.). On some enemies they have been completely removed, on some only a very slight note is left (IMHO, the ones where the parasites seemed to be their own mesh, they were completely removed, others, where the mesh were one, are still there).

There also where many more strings in the codex regarding this creature, and allthough I can't recall them that much, it basically was something like a virus that broke out in hell or that the attackers of Argent D'Nur created to conquer them by infecting them with it.

The codex entry for the hell guards actually states that these creatures are the remains - like fossils - from the once living creatures, now empowered by these parasites.

I can only speculate, but since this storyline used to be more fleshed out, and is now so out of place makes me think that id made the (IMHO correct) choice to go away from "midichlorian" Hell - trying to explain everything - into what it used to be, and the Hell Guards are just what they are: the remnants of a ditched storyline without enough time to remove them interily. I mean the fight is fun. So I don't blame them in the slightest.

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When i first read about a "hell guardian" on the game i thought that it was the doom 3 guardian updated. I was kinda surprised to see it wasn't the case when i got there

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Not a huge fan of Doom 3's monster designs, but I have to agree that its interpretation of a hell guardian is far more fitting, visually.

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Yo if anyone could find that "resign the doom 4 monsters!" thread, maybe people could start doing owns for the hell guard (That is if the mods are cool with a pretty old thread being bumped)

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It is a rather uninspired design and I'm pretty sure I've killed a million of them in Darksiders 2 but it was a fun fight.

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Yeah, they felt very out of place.

I thought the fight itself was nothing special either, especially the first Guard with the shield felt like it was balanced in a "middle ground" sort of way, so that it's beatable with or with no upgrades, which as a result makes him work well in neither case.

Honestly, while they did a good job at making the old enemies look badass, I thought that any new enemy design was weak.

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methy said:

Yeah, they felt very out of place.

I thought the fight itself was nothing special either, especially the first Guard with the shield felt like it was balanced in a "middle ground" sort of way, so that it's beatable with or with no upgrades, which as a result makes him work well in neither case.

Honestly, while they did a good job at making the old enemies look badass, I thought that any new enemy design was weak.


I thought hell razer was cool and fit in well.

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The Hell Razor and Hell Guardian kind of look like something out of Quake and Heretic.

Let's face it though, most of DOOM 2016 makes me crave more Quake.

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Absolutely. I was reminded of Q3A countless times. Those jump pads especially, man they're fun. And the random teleports. Really, it seems like they incorporated a lot of what made Quake into the game, and in a way it's about what makes an id shooter great. Probably my main issue is that there's certainly a sense of the boss being an otherworldly villain, but very little gave it the overtly demonic feel that the others have possessed so far. I mean, the baron of hell is so tall and intimidating, he feels like more of a boss, even though encounters with him become manageable after awhile. Referencing to the leaked documentation, It seems like there was some intention of a parasitic boss that was like a super-organism or something. I'm kind of thinking something along the lines of that crazy worm monster in Resident Evil 5, the one you kill in the furnace. Something more along those lines would have felt more legitimately macabre. Maybe the rocky exoskeleton could stay.

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I guess I'm in the minority here, but I thought the Hell Guards were plenty Doom-y. They were certainly different, but I thought they fit well and were interestingly designed.

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I'll toss my two cents.
The Hell Guards aren't a bad addition with me. They seem to look like a biosuit made from the remains of other demons, honestly! They have the legs of a Baron, the shoulders that resemble pieces of a Cacodemon, and limbs like a Hellknight! Although it was a buzz kill knowing a generic parasite controls them. I mean, how do they fit in the hell lore?

The reason, i believe, on why these Guards not felt Doom-y was because these enemies are the biggest oddballs in the game, GAMEPLAY WISE. Think of it: every enemy in the game, EVERY ENEMY, can be killed with mindless onslaughts to the front! Sure, with the Pinky, it'll take a good 3 Charged Gauss shots to kill it, but its still doable. And the shield guys can be kill frontal-wise as well, abeit it takes forever to destroy the shield! with the Hell Guard, the shield FORCES the player to change the strategy that can kill the Spider Mastermind! They must use quick-damaging guns onto the Guard when the shield is down! It requires a different strategy not shown in any other part of the game!

That's why it didn't felt Doom-y to me. I needed to actually time my firing. It's only the phase 2 fight were the battle is return to form: shoot it until it dies.

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The way it looks, the way it moves, the way the mechanics are built, it all felt to me like a World of Warcraft raid boss.

I liked the idea of the worm but I agree that the appearance of the robot does look absolutely generic and golem-like.

id did a very good job re-imagining the existing monsters and I also liked the Possessed, which are a fresh reboot of the zombie theme. But they did a rather poor job adding new monsters to the bestiary. While Doom 2 and Doom 3 were given a lot of freedom to expand on the stock bestiary (introducing such iconic creatures as the Arch-Vile and the Cherub), The art director seems to have held the reins pretty tightly this time...

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NodEliteX5 said:

So.....the guardian from DOOM 3's hell was better? (In terms of design)


Tough question, if you ask me. The concept on the original Doom 3 was quite interesting, but I never liked the design of the enemy. I also didn't like the design of the hell guard in Doom 2016, but I liked the battle much more.

Regarding the fight in the Lost Missions: IMHO there are not many boss battles worse than that. Tip: if you design a boss with a huuuuge health pool, either give him a health bar, or give hints to the player that you are actually inflicting damage. A five minute guessing game wether you missed some kind of weak spot/mechanic or if you should simply "shoot it until it dies" is not much fun!

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Yeah, I gotta say the health bar for the Doom 16 bosses are a great touch. And I DID enjoy the Hell Guardian. On UV, he's a pretty tough bastard and even though I started to lose my patience, eventually I started having fun and felt very satisfied after kicking all those asses. So it's still a positive experience overall. But in the old Doom games, it was you having to fight the boss (or bosses) while simultaneously taking care of lower tier monsters looming in the background. Every single classic Doom boss fight has this feature. I don't like that it was a one-on-one thing in Doom 16.

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Potatoguy said:

Sure, with the Pinky, it'll take a good 3 Charged Gauss shots to kill it, but its still doable.

You can actually kill it instantly if you hit it in the back. Even on Nightmare.

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