Your Vision of Hell?

[silentzorah]

We all have our own different ideas on what Hell should be; what sort of Hell maps do you prefer?  Are they cavernous, with numerous pits of lava, echoing with cries of the damned?  Fleshy or rocky outdoor hellscapes, with rivers of blood?  Or maybe you have a more refined taste in damnation, preferring ancient gothic castles with beautiful architecture, but loaded with traps.

 

Or, maybe you're just that sick bastard that prefers low-poly brimstone environments, packed with tens of thousands of Revenants.

 

Me, I've always been partial to rocky outdoor hellscapes, complete with ancient castles, as seen in Z-Pack.  But, occasionally, I love to dive into void-style Hell maps.  Things like what you might find late into Valiant, with pools of lava suspended in a black abyss.

 

But what's your preference?  Share what really makes you feel what Hell should be.

[Tracer]

My vision of Hell is a dark place riddled with torment and torture.  I imagine hearing the voices of my loved ones calling out to me, telling me that I'm almost out...only to be met by mutilated versions of their bodies begging me to save them.  My biggest fear is probably bugs...so I imagine always feeling as though bugs are crawling all over me throughout the entire experience.  

 

But as far as maps go?  I like cavernous redrock Hell with lava pits and Hell Knights.  Lavafalls, bloodfalls, rocky floors and a seldom seen sky.  Also, no floating computers whatsoever.  And lots of fleshy, organic, surreal textures!

[leodoom85]

Hell can be summarized as a red, bloody environment with lava and mutilated, tortured corpses everywhere. But I wonder if anyone thought of doing a map with a similar ambience like the hell portrayed in Devil May Cry 3, where the hell is in heaven itself, white combined with red color...yet a threatening place...

[Misty]

I prefer cold environments, so my vision of hell is snowy, icy place. Blue flames don't contain any heat, lots of liquid nitrogen as lava, which turns into rivers. Just lonely place to get here and shoot demons.

 

I don't hate normal red hell, but I think people need think new variations of hell. For example green or purple one.

[CzechMate29200]

this

[Nems]

For me, it's a mix of the Biblical description, what's found in the Divine Comedy, what's mentioned in Paradise Lost, with a small touch of Lovecraftian 'this thing/place that should never be seen/found/described' horror and some Quake 1 aesthetics. Also void spaces/abysses as those places give off a kind of 'ancient Hell' or 'worse than Hell' vibe.

 

Barring those things, I also imagine Hell to be a place where the worst of the worst of anything exists with a twist of the grotesque, where everything is perverted in some way by evil. It's not just fire and brimstone. It could literally be anything. Don't like snow/ice? Have fun with this blinding snowstorm where the freezing snowstorm is made of human fat! Hate spiders? Have a giant arachnid where the body is an upside down head (i.e. an oversized Trite). Hate eating your vegetables? Now the vegetables eat you! Didn't like babysitting children when you were older? Now those same children are babysitting you, only you're stuck in a razor wire covered crib while they poke you with pins and needles. The horrors are infinite and just as soon as you get used to one horror, Hell finds a way to ratchet up your fears so it's a brand new horror all over again with an added twist you were hoping wouldn't be added. You never become dull or indifferent to what you're exposed to because Hell makes sure each thing you experience is fresh in its torment of your mind, body, and soul.

[Nine Inch Heels]

I have no visual concept of hell. In fact, the concept of hell as a place is alien to me and my religion as a whole. When I think of something I'd call hell, then it's more like a feeling rather than a location. If I were to enter a place that conveys the message that it (and everything around me) hates me, regardless of how it looks, then it's "hell".

[R1ck]

Aren't we living in hell right now? 

 

As a Muslim, I believe there's seven hells and the most bottom one is the worst; the ground is always hot, the structures are made from freshly burnt firewood. You'll get a white liquid that usually popped up from a cyst to drink. A fruit made by metal and there's spikes in it..

 

But I prefer Viking frozen hell. 

[Red]

Some kind of brony furry anime convention 

[nxGangrel]

Nothing. In hell, there is nothing. Just torment.

That's my take on it. I also can't help but hear Fredric Chopin's Funeral March playing in reverse whenever I think of hell, and vice versa.

[StoneMason]

While redrock and lava is cool, I've always felt I was in a volcanic planet, rather than in Hell.

 

Hell to me, is a creepy, abstract and otherworldly place, with liquids such as Blood or something alien being in use more so than Lava.

[Mr. Freeze]

I've always liked the idea that Hell is just a word we gave a dimension filled with evil monsters, not necessarily biblical in creation. If we're strictly going off of what the Bible says, it's just a big dark area filled with flames. 

 

The idea of Hell that I use for my own stories is that it's this evil alien plane of rocky landscapes, ruined gothic buildings of a forgotten past, rivers of blood and forests of burnt trees. Monsters we call "Demons" roam with abandon, feasting and tormenting any soul unlucky to enter. 

[EmotionalFelineinaMadstate]

I see Hell as a restaurant that has quality hot food, but has absolutely no air conditioning and has stoves and ovens running all the time, even when not being used.

[Sir Deus Midi]

I see Hell as a barren landscape with rivers of blood and fire spewing out of the ground, filled with uncanny creatures similar to that of the lovecraftian mythos.

it has no overlord and no order, thus filled with torture and murder. All souls who enter get a free ticket to more torture and being exposed to their greatest weaknesses and fears.

 

So yeah.

[Era Di Cate]

To me, Hell sounds like a very miserable and very cold place to be in. No fantasy stuff, no boiling lava, no instruments of torture, no barons or lords, just a neverending hilly land surrounded in black and death. Hell should be a miserable place because you would be stuck there forever, and you cannot do anything, not even scrape the ground, and you cannot kill yourself.

 

I consider Hell in Doom to be a alien dimension, kinda like Xen, shaped up by the dezinens there, to be a mixture of guts flowing around, tough castles, this and that.

[Rifle Infantry]

I've always looked at Doom's hell to be not unlike that of The Salvation War's; in other words, the biblical deal, but less "eldritch location of unimaginable shapeless torture" and more "Satan's realm, where bad souls go to be tormented for eternity and demon lords make power plays in a feudal structure". My favorite Hell maps are those with a semblance of order and structure: wooden structures and castles, torches in bloody, mossy stone halls. Imps standing before great iron gates. It's a place where you can identify what things are, but they're twisted and evil in a pulpy fashion.

 

While damned souls writhe in pits of agony, feeding the evil rituals required by demon society, lords push and shove to vie for more. The only reason Hell hasn't swamped Earth with demons yet (even though it has gotten close to doing so) is because most demons are busy making war with one another, and the only thing guiding the great invasion is the Icon of Sin; that is, Satan (or at least something close to it). Zombies and lesser demons are absolutely everywhere and run the gamut from slave laborers to soldiers to other positions of society (well, less so for zombies, but it all depends on how you view their intelligence).

 

I've always wanted to create a map that's just a demonic city of some sort. Some great, twisted Medieval hellhole with murder, intrigue, and dark rituals in the streets; a place where Imps live in festering slums of tightly-packed shacks, slitting throats over the most trivial of things. Unfortunately my mapmaking skill isn't nearly developed enough to realize it.

[Battle_Korbi]

Despite whatever pop culture says, hell is indeed not a "place", not even a " alternate dimension", but a really shitty sensation riddled with desperation and spiritual constipation of not "seeing" God and hanging out in heaven, laid upon one's soul for a eternity. I say hell reflects the feeling one gets moments before death, so ones who are happy knowing that they didn't depart the world with debt and dishonour upon their name should reach heaven, and those who have small doubts but remain faithful have to go through purgatory first, and those who are stricken with guilt and desperation of epic porpotions, knowing what they leave behind them and all, curses one to hell. At least what I think. This can also be a reason for all the ghosts as well. Imagine being so pissed off by in-justice (a subjective term) laid upon you that not even Hell cannot contain you, and you break over to the other side to show some motherfuckers where did they do wrong. Except every motherfucker looks the same, but if you keep trying you might hit the one responsible, over time. One by one, just to correct this shit. Hell, other motherfuckers might learn from this as well, so it is all good.

 

Meanwhile from our perspective the ghost is fucking up everything it touches because someone had pissed it off and now it won't rest even after the guy who pissed the ghost off gets rekt, and now we have multiple dead bodies and one really pissed spirit.

 

Catholic fluff isn't far from my statement when it comes to "hell". Basically, not some sort of a alien dimension like in Doom, a place filled with fire and ruins and demons or whatever. In fact, no game can properly simulate "hell". Not even that new Agony game. It is a sensation, not a tourist resort.

 

And I think that @Nine Inch Heels almost nailed it totally. Not only it is a very lonely place, but it is literally a feeling only comparable to having yourself erased from Recycle Bin. And this goes on forever.

[scifista42]

The only thing mentioned in this thread that does NOT fit my vision of hell is the void theme, which I never liked much.

[Memfis]

Just don't make everything red. There are some hell maps where the floor is red, the walls are red, and the sky is red. That looks horrible, see e.g. Scythe episode 3.

[Aldaraia]

Too much red is just nauseating, it's horrifying how it fades into darkness with mixed shades of gray and pea-soup green. Scythe was a definite offender there with its hell  levels .   

 

As for my own perception of hell, it'd be pure chaos, and if it were a place it would have nothing to offer in terms of artistic inspiration. A real hell would for me would  essentially be a reality where you're trapped in a Groundhog Day loop, while being forced to relive the worst moments of your life nonstop. 

 

In Doom, some of my favorite aspects of a hell level includes the use of burning skies, "living" architecture, fortresses amidst open-ended wastelands, and lots of hanging bodies. 

[NeedHealth]

“All those eyes intent on me. Devouring me. What? Only two of you? I thought there were more; many more. So this is hell. I’d never have believed it. You remember all we were told about the torture-chambers, the fire and brimstone, the “burning marl.” Old wives’ tales! There’s no need for red-hot pokers. HELL IS OTHER PEOPLE!”

 

 

As long as you don't mix green and red, anything goes in Doom.

Edited August 14, 2017 by NeedHealth

[Pencil of Doom]

A place of eternal suffering, torture, damnation and torment, with rivers of blood, a nightmarish realm with rituals envolving human sacrifices, where souls are torn from bodies and swallowed by it's minions, skin being ripped from the flesh for hellish purposes, whose flesh is eaten and bones used for infrastructures, with screams of pain and agony heard from those who are punished and tortured.

 

[Koko Ricky]

Hell is not a place that you teleport to instantly. It is a gradual dissolution of both the cognitive and the physical. As your concept of self spreads to everything around you, confusion and fear take hold. Everywhere one looks, an orgy of pleasure and pain emerges, the two states so intertwined as to become ambiguously described. You not only experience the simultaneous orgasms and endless suffering of each organism, but also the literality of being a pile of human shit, rotting carcasses, severed genitalia, aborted embryonic lumps, prolapsed anuses. Everything is alive, and yet is constantly dying, the consciousness of all matter being an inescapable and indefinite reality. Everything is made of everything else, with no distinction between animate and inanimate.  

[DooM_RO]

1 minute ago, GoatLord said:

Hell is not a place that you teleport to instantly. It is a gradual dissolution of both the cognitive and the physical. As your concept of self spreads to everything around you, confusion and fear take hold. Everywhere one looks, an orgy of pleasure and pain emerges, the two states so intertwined as to become ambiguously described. You not only experience the simultaneous orgasms and endless suffering of each organism, but also the literality of being a pile of human shit, rotting carcasses, severed genitalia, aborted embryonic lumps, prolapsed anuses. Everything is alive, and yet is constantly dying, the consciousness of all matter being an inescapable and indefinite reality. Everything is made of everything else, with no distinction between animate and inanimate.  

 

There needs to be a metal song about this. There probably already is though.

[ATP2555]

Walls littered with bones, souls roaming around, screams of the damned, and flames occasionally shooting up.

[Koko Ricky]

13 minutes ago, DooM_RO said:

 

There needs to be a metal song about this. There probably already is though.

Well, no one was really taking the thread seriously, it was time to up the ante!

[yakfak]

having a job

[Memfis]

30 minutes ago, GoatLord said:

Hell is not a place that you teleport to instantly.

That's what I liked about The Lost Seraphim. It's the only wad I know where there is a whole level dedicated to the process of teleportation to hell. Virgil had some great ideas.

[NeedHealth]

1 hour ago, GoatLord said:

Well, no one was really taking the thread seriously, it was time to up the ante!

Well I did. You're other people for me, but not necessarily hell.

[Cipher]

While I don't believe in any kind of spiritual or religious hell, other than completely desolate emotional states (the figurative application, which can be quite powerful), as far as Doom goes (which surely is what the thread is asking?), I'm partial to the disparate nonsense envisioned by Sandy Petersen for Episode 3 of the original game.

 

The particular style I'm thinking of is best embodied by E3M4, "House of Pain," which sees intestine floors, fleshy walls, marble rooms gazing out on bloody seas with bodies strewn on the wall, rusted tech, etc., all positioned right next to each other. It's a very Doom-specific approach, as opposed to the standard fire-and-brimstone, but it's sufficiently alien and that's exactly why I like it. Doom's Hell should be intestine floors, marble and tech.

 

Unfortunately that style seems to have been abandoned as early as Doom II, where Hell suddenly consisted of wood panels and caverns in a way that felt a little too close to Earth.  A lot of fan maps I've seen are a little too "tidy" with it as well. While I like Doom 64's self-consistent take of a bleak world of gothic architecture, I wish later games or  fan maps were more willing to get sufficiently Doom-esque and weird.

 

Also, fireblu buildings, of course.