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drygnfyre

Why is the spider-demon the final boss?

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I'm sure this has been asked before, but did a search and couldn't find it within the first few pages, so...

Something I've always wondered is why the spider-demon, and not the cyber-demon, is the final boss of classic Doom. It has inferior HP, speed, and pain chance. Likewise, its bullets aren't as damaging as the cyber-demon's rockets.

Bullets were hitscan in classic Doom, right? Thus, the only thing I can think of is it's harder to avoid the bullets than the rockets. But that seems to be the only real reason.

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The Cyberdemon is the brawn, the organizer of the demonic armies. The Spiderdemon is the brains, the leader behind the original attack (Mars' moons).

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Cyanosis said:

The Cyberdemon is the brawn, the organizer of the demonic armies. The Spiderdemon is the brains, the leader behind the original attack (Mars' moons).


So you're probably saying that they worked together.

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Didn't one of the devs actually regret making the Spider the final boss since the Cyberdemon more fits the bill? Forgot which one, though. I feel as though the Cyberdemon is more of a true test of skill since you have to be very good at avoiding those rockets, any one of which could kill you if you're not careful. The Spider's just piss annoying since it rapid fires unavoidable hit-scan attacks.

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MetroidJunkie said:

Didn't one of the devs actually regret making the Spider the final boss since the Cyberdemon more fits the bill? Forgot which one, though. I feel as though the Cyberdemon is more of a true test of skill since you have to be very good at avoiding those rockets, any one of which could kill you if you're not careful. The Spider's just piss annoying since it rapid fires unavoidable hit-scan attacks.

I don't know off-hand if any devs said that, I'm sure they did, but I guess it would be the hitscan attacks that make the spider-demon more "dangerous."

A lot of mods (I think Brutal Doom, among others) have given the spider-demon a lot more HP, maybe around 4,000 or so, so it's at least stronger than the cyber-demon.

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I'll admit, the Spider Mastermind became a far more interesting boss fight in Doom 2016 but, prior to that, Cybie was clearly the iconic boss since it was the Final Boss in Doom 3 and was featured on the cover-art of Doom 2.

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The same reason that the commander in chief, although the head of the military, probably can't take on a military drill sergeant in hand to hand combat or in a firefight.

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And has an equally annoying unavoidable attack, the Executive Order.

Of course, Doom 2 kind of follows that tradition since the Icon of Sin is even weaker than the Spider Mastermind, relying on its spawn to do the job for it, unable to even move more or less pose a threat to the player on its own.

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Sandy has reportedly admitted that he didn't initially realize that the spiderdemon isn't generally as strong as the cyberdemon, and so the placement of the two at the ends of E2 and E3 was flip-flopped. Doom's skeletal story/narrative is the kind of thing that was bolted on after the core of the game was done, and so it was not much of a stretch to justify the placement with a sort of 'brains behind the brawn' angle.

Lemme find the quote:

"Sometimes I made mistakes--for instance, I thought that the Spiderboss was tougher than the Cyberdemon, so I had the former be the ultimate Episode 3 boss. Oops. It was true if you started the level armed only with a pistol, which is how we always tested, but of course no players ever did it that way." --Sandy Petersen.

Sourced the quote from page 111 of "Doom: Scarydarkfast", by Dan Pinchbeck. Very cool modern/retrospective look at the game, its historical context, and its making, incidentally, one I'd definitely recommend to Doom scholars/enthusiasts.

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MetroidJunkie said:

And has an equally annoying unavoidable attack, the Executive Order.

Of course, Doom 2 kind of follows that tradition since the Icon of Sin is even weaker than the Spider Mastermind, relying on its spawn to do the job for it, unable to even move more or less pose a threat to the player on its own.

There's a mod that actually turns the Icon of Sin more into an actual enemy (a gigantic one, at that), but it still can't move. But it does attack with lightning and a few other attacks. It's the kind of thing that the Icon of Sin should have always been, IMO.

Sourced the quote from page 111 of "Doom: Scarydarkfast", by Dan Pinchbeck. Very cool modern/retrospective look at the game, its historical context, and its making, incidentally, one I'd definitely recommend to Doom scholars/enthusiasts.

Thanks for the recommendation, I'll look into it. Really like the history of id documented in "Masters of Doom," so another book like that one is right up my alley.

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AbhinandAnilDoomguy said:

How many of you have used cheats to kill the spiderdemon/cyberdemon?(no offence)

When I was a little kid who first played Doom, all the time. I ran through the entire game with God mode activated. I probably never beat Doom in a legitimate fashion until much later, many years after the game had been released.

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drygnfyre said:

When I was a little kid who first played Doom, all the time. I ran through the entire game with God mode activated.


Me too.

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In my personal mini-mod I replaced the Spider Mastermind entirely with the Spider Demolisher (which has twin chainguns and a BFG attack) from the Realm, gave it 8000 HP, speed of 26, and a pain chance of 10, effectively making it twice as strong and fast as a Cyberdemon with more resilience to pain.

E: Oh yeah, did I also mention that it cloaks itself when it's not shooting or being injured? Friggin' UAC technology is gonna damn us all!

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If you ask me, the TRUE mastermind is the Icon of Sin.

The SM is a fucking pawn in the IoS's eyes.

So what would make an amazing/satisfying enough battle for E3M3?

Two SMs. One for Deimos's invasion and one for Phobos' invasion.
Its a simple scenario. And that's what makes it fun.

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"Sometimes I made mistakes--for instance, I thought that the Spiderboss was tougher than the Cyberdemon, so I had the former be the ultimate Episode 3 boss. Oops. It was true if you started the level armed only with a pistol, which is how we always tested, but of course no players ever did it that way." --Sandy Petersen.

FACEPALM. So the spider-demon is the final boss of Doom 1 simply because of a designer mistake that was NEVER really tested? That "Oops" of his is because he ruined the game pretty much with that disappointing ending.

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As much as it was a mistake making the Spiderdemon the final boss, I just can't imagine fighting him in the Tower of Babel and the Cyberdemon in Dis. It's just not the same.

Voros said:

Two SMs. One for Deimos's invasion and one for Phobos' invasion.
Its a simple scenario. And that's what makes it fun.


Making them infight would be incredibly easy though. There goes half of the fight.

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HorrorMovieGuy said:

Making them infight would be incredibly easy though. There goes half of the fight.

But what if SMs were coded not to infight with other SMs, like the imps and cacodemons?

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It seems logical that the Spider Mastermind would be the final boss. Huge brain that orchestrated the whole invasion. It needed more health though. At least the same (if not more) than the Cyberdemon. No idea why it has less.

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E3M8, things aside, is less interesting than E2M8, too. Even with the SM as the last boss, it would have been nice if it was a bit more interesting.

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AbhinandAnilDoomguy said:

How many of you have used cheats to kill the spiderdemon/cyberdemon?(no offence)



I can easily kill the spider with the SSG but it pretty much requires me to bob in and out of corners. When a monster requires you to be cheap to beat it, it's not very fun. =S

RUSH said:

It seems logical that the Spider Mastermind would be the final boss. Huge brain that orchestrated the whole invasion. It needed more health though. At least the same (if not more) than the Cyberdemon. No idea why it has less.


Probably because it's a rapid-fire hitscan so imagine how much more of a pain in the ass it would have been. Should have made it rapid-fire plasma instead.

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A rapid-fire plasma attack would have seen it age even worse, particularly if it had more HP. Just far too weak in almost every scenario imaginable. At least the current mastermind has some niche uses.

A combination of many new attacks would have been great: homing (slower) plasma, a laser beam signaled by the mastermind's eyes lighting up with a very powerful glare, a semi-random and wide field of slow projectiles that it's possible to weave between, etc. Things of that nature.

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In my opinion, the spider-demon is a better final boss than the Cybie because it's actually stronger.

I know it has less HP and seems to be weaker in every way at first glance, but at least you can still dodge rockets. Bullets in Doom are more or less impossible to dodge.

What's more, in Cyberdemon VS Spider-demon fights I've seen, I see the Spider-demon killing the cyberdemon more often. (though the split is kinda like 65-40 for me).

If get a little good at strafing, you can kill the Cyberdemon without taking a single hit and without the BFG. But it's really hard to beat the Spider-demon if you don't have the BFG or are running a bit low on health.

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^Whether a healthy spiderdemon beats a healthy cyberdemon in a one-on-one infight is almost entirely a function of distance. At close range the spider will tend to win the great majority of the time (since most of its hitscans will connect, exponentially increasing both damage and the chance for painstun), and at all other distances the cyberdemon will tend to win the great majority of the time. In an actual scenario 'in the wild', of course, there often aren't such neat distinctions (i.e. the fight often starts at distance but eventually moves to close range as the cyb approaches the spider), so individual results can vary widely.

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Demon of the Well said:

^Whether a healthy spiderdemon beats a healthy cyberdemon in a one-on-one infight is almost entirely a function of distance. At close range the spider will tend to win the great majority of the time (since most of its hitscans will connect, exponentially increasing both damage and the chance for painstun), and at all other distances the cyberdemon will tend to win the great majority of the time. In an actual scenario 'in the wild', of course, there often aren't such neat distinctions (i.e. the fight often starts at distance but eventually moves to close range as the cyb approaches the spider), so individual results can vary widely.


Yeah, you're right. But to me anyway, a Spider is still harder to beat than a Cybie owing to it's hitscan bullets and Chaingun. It's basically a giant Chaingunner and I have enough trouble with regular ones.

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What if the SMM had a simple BFG and was put three times and the layout would be accostumized? Would that be a good boss map? E3M7 should've had a death exit.

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