Doom 64 is NOT Doom (DEBUNKED)

[Deleted_Account]

Quasar said:

Especially the topic of how Doomguy runs so fast :)

Maes is an expert on the subject!

[roadworx]

MetroidJunkie said:

He does a lot of push-ups and sit-ups, and he drinks plenty of juice.

100 push-ups, 100 sit-ups, 100 squats, and 10km of running EVERY DAY!!!

[Maes]

Giomancer said:

Your problem, Mr. Foebane72, with Doom 64's identity was actually presented some millennia ago in Plato's Republic in the Allegory of the Cave. To sum up, Doom has an essence - a "Doomness" if you will - that makes it what it is. Doom 64, I would argue, has that essential Doomness, and none of your arguments against it disprove this.

A monk once asked master Chao-chou, "Does a dog have Buddha-nature or not?"
Chao-chou said, Mu!

[Graf Zahl]

Piper Maru said:

Maes is an expert on the subject!

http://users.otenet.gr/~velktron/Doom/Doomguy_Janitor_7.png

Funny that he imagines a smoking Doomguy... :P

[Maes]

Graf Zahl said:

Funny that he imagines a smoking Doomguy... :P

I might be missing something here, but I just went with the stereotypical image of the smoking tough guy. Besides, everybody knows that soldiers, prisoners, sailors, dock workers, construction workers, truckers etc. smoke all the time. :p

[Voros]

Carmack stated that Doomguy is essentially a virgin who possibly doesn't even know about sex. A workaholic kinda guy, you might say.

I doubt he has the time or interest to smoke. Smoking's bad. Smoking kills.

[Maes]

Voros said:

Carmack stated that Doomguy is essentially a virgin who possibly doesn't even know about sex. A workaholic kinda guy, you might say.

I doubt he has the time or interest to smoke. Smoking's bad. Smoking kills.

Next thing, you're gonna tell us that Doomguy is a psychotic, Bible-thumping pentathlete who never missed a bulls-eye and thinks that busting broncos is for pussies and the only thing coming out of his pores is Sweat and Christ (incidentally, that's actually the ideal candidate profile for certain elite units, such as Delta Force).

[Voros]

Whatever makes you feel right. Doomguy is supposed to be you. So you view yourself as a stereotypical tough guy, that's fine.

[Maes]

TBQH, I don't see how someone who saw himself as a non-violent multicultural LGBT NGO activist could enjoy playing the part of a person who is, ultimately, a member of the military posted on alien soil and treading on the rights of others.

But maybe Pacifist is all about that. But OTOH ignoring the consequences of one's actions on the local lifeforms, even in "Pacifist" mode, is pure hypocrisy. Not that being non-hypocritical was ever a virtue of the aforementioned groups ;-)

Then again, some of the most fanatical and zealous, politically involved and activist individuals can be found among the ranks of said groups, stopping literally at nothing, not even adopting the methods of their "adversaries" to further their goals. So maybe Doomguy IS actually one of them? O_o

[Voros]

I never said about he (me?) is a nonviolent multicultural LGBT NGO activist. All I meant that he just does his job without letting emotions get in the way too much, by being a workaholic of the sorts.

Just because I said Doomguy doesn't smoke doesn't mean he's a nonviolent multicultural LGBT NGO activist. There are plenty of guys out there who don't smoke and are still badass.

Look at Duke. He smokes, drinks, taunts, wears sunglasses, kicks, shoots guns etc. Stereotypical tough guy, right? Doomguy is portrayed to do none of those and yet we know he's a badass, albeit a violent one, but he's marine so unavoidable. In the manual/story, Doomguy is said to have gone against his superior not because he thinks they're evil (that's debatable)/selfish assholes/Doomguy thinks he's better. He did it because his conscience said the orders given were morally wrong. Oddly, the story says he was watching porn on Phobos, so maybe Carmack's ill informed.

Spoiler

Maybe Carmack was just viewing Doomguy the way he sees himself :/

Of course, everything's debatable.

[Maes]

Then again Doomguy might simply be the Ultimate Battle Butler...

[Deleted_Account]

I don't apply the same macho stereotype to the Doomguy as I would to Duke Nukem for example. I think Doomguy is a ghost who comes into existence the minute demons invade reality. And he focuses only on one thing, to do everything within his power to stop them. No matter how violent or cruel, that is the sole purpose for which he materialized. And once it's all said and done, he returns to the very ether he emerged from, back into non-existence. He's the hero this world needs, the one we want. Sometimes I ponder the idea that Doomguy is a Tulpa. If enough people believe in him, he will exist. Kind of like It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.

[roadworx]

Piper Maru said:

I don't apply the same macho stereotype to the Doomguy as I would to Duke Nukem for example. I think Doomguy is a ghost who comes into existence the minute demons invade reality. And he focuses only on one thing, to do everything within his power to stop them. No matter how violent or cruel, that is the sole purpose for which he materialized. And once it's all said and done, he returns to the very ether he emerged from, back into non-existence. He's the hero this world needs, the one we want. Sometimes I ponder the idea that Doomguy is a Tulpa. If enough people believe in him, he will exist. Kind of like It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.

he is the terror that flaps in the night!
he is the bubblegum stuck to your shoe!

he is...darkwing duck DOOMGUY!

[ShaneAmp]

Well its only the official, true ending to the story and not a remake...

[Doomkid]

Voros said:

Doomguy is essentially a virgin

Gotta admit, this is not a statement I was expecting to see when I clicked this thread

[Voros]

The thread's debunked. Anything can happen.

[Linguica]

Voros said:

Carmack stated that Doomguy is essentially a virgin who possibly doesn't even know about sex. A workaholic kinda guy, you might say.

What the hell, no he didn't.

[roadworx]

well, that was certainly a sizable bump

[Deleted_Account]

I was just playing Brutal Doom 64 and I realized that the Imps have been modified from the original 64 counterpart. It's massive gaping anus has been removed, edited out.

[Koko Ricky]

Well I don't think anyone outside of DeviantArt is going to miss it.

[Voros]

Linguica said:

What the hell, no he didn't.

Yes he did. He said to answer the questions that kept coming up about sex and Doomguy. I need to dig up that article again.

Edit: bah, I need more time to find the article itself. Heres the quote from the wikia:

In a 1996 Interview with a United Kingdom division of PC Gamer, John Carmack stated that canonically speaking, "Doomguy is a virgin"
It is unknown what sparked the question on the topic, possibly stemming from Impse, or even from the same circles that believed Doomguy was a Paraplegic on a Rocket powered Wheelchair.

[Maes]

Since the canonical Impse didn't exist in 1996, that's a bit unlikely. Of course, everybody had noticed the dead Imps' gaping buttholes, and couldn't help but wonder if that was the work of Doomguy (tearing them a new one, ha-ha), but The Impse we are all familiar with would come much later.

[Voros]

The impse part is probably misinformation (then again, its the wikia), but the first line about Carmack is true.

Still looking for that article. Have a reddit thread instead, it's as close as it gets right now.

[mrthejoshmon]

How can Doomguy be a virgin with the existence of slaughterfest? Didn't he get fucked multiple times through my playthrough?

Come on man, stick with the lore.

[scifista42]

Voros said:

The impse part is probably misinformation (then again, its the wikia),

If it's on wikia but not on doomwiki (which is indeed the case, I've checked), it's not unlikely to be misinformation.

[Four Loko Is Gross]

Wait... people believed that Doomguy was a paraplegic on a rocket powered wheelchair?

Did that theory come from these forums?

[Jon]

I didn't think this thread could get any worse, and yet, here we are.

[fraggle]

Voros said:

Yes he did. He said to answer the questions that kept coming up about sex and Doomguy. I need to dig up that article again.

Edit: bah, I need more time to find the article itself. Heres the quote from the wikia:

Please stop using Wikia. The real Doom wiki is at doomwiki.org. It's likely that what you've quoted is vandalism.

[Voros]

I don't use the wikia, I just couldn't find a reference to the "Doomguy is virgin" quote in the DoomWiki. I assure you, this quote is 100% true. Not because it's on the wikia, because I read the article myself sometime ago.

I'm having a hard time finding it again though.

[Cipher]

So, I'm a new Doom player (only been through the original and most of 64 EX at this point), but I've been enjoying 64 EX so much I think it's become one of my favorite games of all time. Recently made a post about it on r/Doom, but for the sake of discussion, I figured I'd bring over a comment about what I like so much about its level design.

For the record, I've been doing a blind "Watch Me Die!" run, keyboard-only and with no mid-level saves. I'm currently on "Pitfalls," just a few levels from the end:

To get specific about what I like about its level design, I think I like how well the game is broken into setpieces.

One of my favorite moments so far, as well as one of the ones most frustrating to me, was a section near the end of "Dark Entries" that involves fighting a room full of Barons and Arachnotrons. I died countless, countless times on that, having to streamline my route through earlier portions of the level each time, and eventually figured out a system of stirring up infighting, retreating to the top of the stairs, picking off monsters who approached, unleashing a swarm of Lost Souls from the middle building when I had a moment, and finally running around the arena in circles taking potshots with the Super Shotgun on low ammo. Finally clearing that was incredibly satisfying (and had me on pins and needles for the rest of the level). The game is full of big, memorable setpieces like that, which punctuate the regular skirmishes you encounter in corridors. The atmosphere and lighting keep the arenas visually distinct as well.

I can think of many, many other setpieces throughout the run so far. As in, "Oh, right. This is the purple room where Nightmare Imps are going to fire at me behind a maze of gates while spear darts fly from the walls." "This is the small library area that likes to place a Baron around every bookshelf." Enemy placement is always designed to take maximum advantage of your surroundings. Another tiny moment I found really well-considered was a switch on the top of a cliff in "Spawned Fear" that summons four Pain Elementals. They're the perfect enemy to form a blockade to trap you into your high perch, and you have to deal with them to get down. That entire area, with its changing geometry, is a great mix of puzzle and action as well.

This, to me, is more satisfying than the approach in the original Doom, which, without taking anything away from it, often boils down to open arenas full of slightly haphazard monsters, or "clear these hallways, get the item, come back and find that three or four mobs of haphazard monsters have run out of closets." It's fun, it's frenetic, but a lot of the combat bleeds together. I'm rarely simultaneously chuckling at/frustrated by clever enemy placement, which is what I want out of a hard game. I know the dark maze in "Halls of the Damned" in the original Doom contains a mix of Demons, Barons, Imps and Lost Souls, for example, but I couldn't exactly tell you where they are or why they're placed there, other than an idea that the more enemies you place in the dark, the harder it is for the player. Romero's levels in episode 1, while enormously clever in their sense of progression and geometry, rarely feel as deliberate with enemy placement.

I understand some of the later expansions a la Final Doom get a bit trickier and more deliberate with their enemy placement and construction of setpieces, but at this point I can only compare 64 to the original, and I frequently find myself delighted by the choices it makes.

Even levels like "Eye of the Storm," designed to have the player consistently moving inward from an opening mote area, as simple as they are, come away memorable for both the layout and combat they contain.

With full acknowledgment of how groundbreaking and well-designed the original Doom is, on a personal level, 64 is hitting more sweet spots for me.

This is all, of course, in addition to how well it combines a horror atmosphere with the fast, arcadey action core to the series.

EDIT -- I see I interrupted a conversation about virginity and rocketpowered scooters.