Doom 4 should have...

I think DOOM 4 will be like DOOM 1 PC. The music will be changing between levels. Some levels it will be some badass metal! Some levels it will be creepy ambience scaring the shit out of me like DOOM 64 did. Some levels will be the most horrific thing on Earth... it will give DOOM 3 a run for it's money. There will be lots of dismemberment. Lots of action, lots of horror. It's a game that all of us have dreamed of. The perfect blend of action and horror. THE WAY DOOM 3 SHOULD HAVE BEEN MADE!!!!!!!!!!!!!

idSoftware981 said:

I think DOOM 4 will be like DOOM 1 PC.

I think you have very unrealistic expectations.

I must say I'm on a completely different page than most of you guys.
I love Doom 1/2 as well, but I don't really want to play a new bastardised version of it. I play custom maps somewhat frequently, but I see it more as a casual game today on the same page as freecell, solitaire or bubble shooter. If I'm bored and don't feel like working on projects, I'll load up whatever megawad, load my latest save game and work my way forward. It's practically all about the game mechanics and not so much the experience.

When I first played Doom 1 and 2, it was the experience that captured me. Yes, the game mechanics are important and should always be good, but many old games have fine mechanics. I don't want to play pacman with "HD graphics" either. It would probably be 2 minutes and out. Been there done that. I feel the same way about Doom 4.

I don't want to play the same game all over again and I don't want to be stuck in 93. I see no reason to produce a game like that and I see no value in ignoring the fact that 19 years have passed. It's kind of like going back to high-school 19 years later, seeking out the good old times and trying to recapture the moments you had. It's not possible. Those days are gone and they will never come back.

I agree with that. Even if it doesn't push shooters in any new direction I'm more interested in seeing how id executes the DOOM concept today than anything else. I disagree with the idea that putting DOOM II in id Tech 5 would magically make a perfect DOOM 4. I've been playing DOOM since the shareware of DOOM 1. I still do, which is pretty amazing but I want a new game. It might be classic and oldschool but it can't be just an official Megawad with pretty graphics.

That's why I'm neither worried nor requesting any specific features. Like I've said before, I just want a new DOOM game and I will judge it on its own merits.

Semi-coherent ramble:-


Would I want Doom 4 to be a "HD" remake of Doom 1/2, being precisely the same game but with updated visuals? No, certainly not. I want something fresh, something which doesn't make the same mistakes Doom 3 (or Rage) made but which feels like a Doom game. I'm not going to individually list all the qualities which this entails, because I know most of you know what I'm talking about. And then there's those illusive little qualities which have been debated ad nauseum lately, such as what kind of music works best. I also think it's fruitless to list all the things I want to see in Doom 4, be they traditional Doom qualities or fresh things, because I'm not confident any of them will be in the game :p.

However. I don't agree that 1:1 remakes of vintage games with a modern makeover are entirely pointless. It just happens that most of the ones I've seen haven't been done very well. Suffice it to say if Doom HD looked something like this I'd be a happy bunny. But I don't think it would be a good idea to make it a retail game with a triple-A price tag. As Shaviro pointed out, it's the same game you were playing 19 years ago with a shiny new cosmetic appearance. Maybe as a hobbyist's project. Whether it would be possible to do something on that kind of scale without the support of a team of full-time professional developers is another matter, though. I get that there's also going to be issues with how to make 3D models of the monsters which are somehow faithful to the original pixelated sprites in both appearance and behaviour, but I believe with the right artists it would be possible.

Shaviro said:

I must say I'm on a completely different page than most of you guys.
I love Doom 1/2 as well, but I don't really want to play a new bastardised version of it. I play custom maps somewhat frequently, but I see it more as a casual game today on the same page as freecell, solitaire or bubble shooter. If I'm bored and don't feel like working on projects, I'll load up whatever megawad, load my latest save game and work my way forward. It's practically all about the game mechanics and not so much the experience.

When I first played Doom 1 and 2, it was the experience that captured me. Yes, the game mechanics are important and should always be good, but many old games have fine mechanics. I don't want to play pacman with "HD graphics" either. It would probably be 2 minutes and out. Been there done that. I feel the same way about Doom 4.

I don't want to play the same game all over again and I don't want to be stuck in 93. I see no reason to produce a game like that and I see no value in ignoring the fact that 19 years have passed. It's kind of like going back to high-school 19 years later, seeking out the good old times and trying to recapture the moments you had. It's not possible. Those days are gone and they will never come back.

I fully agree with this. There's no sense in creating Doom 2.1, nor will there be any market for that sort of thing (apart from the few people here on Doomworld).

I had a long post ready but I've decided to post this instead. It's a more or less complete collection of what id has said about DOOM 4 throughout the years. I've added dates so you can see how recent those are, older ones obviously might not be valid anymore.

* There's gonna be "blood, gore, guns and demons" (2008)
* John Carmack: "It has to be a triumph of heavy weaponry over demonic forces in some way, and you have to be blowing demons all to hell all around you" (2008)
* It'll be more action oriented than DOOM 3 (2008)
* It's not gonna be horror oriented like DOOM 3 (2008)
* It'll more of a "traditional run&gun first-person shooter" (2008)
* Driving will not be a major feature (if at all) (2008)
* There'll be more enemies on screen than in RAGE (30 is mentioned) (2011)
* It's gonna have more cinematic / scripted events than RAGE (2009)
* Hell is a "centerpiece" of the DOOM universe (2011)
* "Marines against demons" is what John Carmack thinks DOOM is all about (2011)
* Making things on more of a "grand scale" was mentioned (Hell on Earth?) (2009)
* It's not a sequel to DOOM 3 and it's not a reboot like DOOM 3 (2009, I think)
* The game is structured so it'll most likely end up on 3 DVDs (three major themes / episodes?) (2009)
* Although Carmack said in 2008 that being 30Hz instead of 60 will render better graphics, recent comments about higher number of enemies suggest increase in scale instead of graphics

If Doom 4 is going to be like the first half of RAGE (without the driving), I have to say I'm already pretty satisfied. RAGE's game-engine is great (especially the animation-system is impressive), and it also looks great on consoles. I know most of the PC people on here don't give a shit about consoles, but I don't have the money or motivation to upgrade my PC every two months, so I DO like to have the advantage of inserting a CD and playing the game just like that without any trouble.

I just didn't really like the second half of RAGE, the driving scenes were okay-ish, but I feel that it didn't add a whole lot to the overall core of the game (which, to put it bluntly, is just a nuts and bolts first person shooter). RAGE was Id's first attempt in years to create a story-driven game again, so I applaud them for that, because good singleplayer-games are hard to come by these days, so I'm glad they ditched the "well, at least it works for multiplayer" thing. But not including any real final boss in the game, was just a unforgivable 'faux pas' for any Id game.

Agentbromsnor said:

RAGE was Id's first attempt in years to create a story-driven game again, so I applaud them for that

Except the "story" was half-assed and nothing made a lot of sense.

I won't disparage Rage entirely though. They learned from their mistakes in Doom 3 and made shooting stuff very fun. I also love a lot of the level design and art style in the game despite the technical shortcomings and inconsistencies in quality.

DoomUK said:

Except the "story" was half-assed and nothing made a lot of sense.

I won't disparage Rage entirely though. They learned from their mistakes in Doom 3 and made shooting stuff very fun. I also love a lot of the level design and art style in the game despite the technical shortcomings and inconsistencies in quality.

Exactly my thoughts about RAGE...it was good but not good enough sadly. Has there been any word on the Id studio and DLC?

DoomUK said:

Except the "story" was half-assed and nothing made a lot of sense.

I won't disparage Rage entirely though. They learned from their mistakes in Doom 3 and made shooting stuff very fun. I also love a lot of the level design and art style in the game despite the technical shortcomings and inconsistencies in quality.

Sure, but I do consider RAGE a step in the right direction, with the story-telling approach. Id just needs a competent writer.

I also have to admit that, when I reached the last few missions of RAGE, the story became so convoluted to me that I didn't even put much effort into making sense of it anymore.

All I wanted when I played Quake 2 when I was 13, was Quake 3, but I had to wait untill the whole 'tournament deathmatch' trend of the time blew over, just so I could play Quake 4 by Raven (which is an okay game I guess).

It would be great if more companies could focus on giving us a great interactive piece of art, instead of focussing on the CoD kids and Battlefield fanboys who just want to point guns at eachother in military-settings from across the map (and nothing else).

I love RAGE, and that comes from someone who didn't give a damn about it at first, because I just wanted DOOM. It positively surprised me especially in the gameplay, movement "feel" and combat fields. I don't like the setting (not a fan of Mad Max type of thing), the ending and the story was... well, it wasn't weak because id screwed it, it was weak because it was the overused same old same. But it didn't stop me from finishing the game four times.

I enjoyed Rage, and this enjoyment came as a surprise to me as well.

Though there were a few areas where I felt id dropped the ball: The vehicle sections, while a nice distraction, didn't feel nearly as polished as id promised they'd be (it felt like someone made a TC for Rage, not like a proper part of the game); the game was sinfully easy on even the hardest difficulty, and the game ended too abruptly, and kind of anti-climatically (though id has always had trouble with ending their games).

Still, the shooting felt good; the co-op felt good. And all of it ran at a smooth 60 frames per second - which was a MASSIVE treat for console users, unused to seeing such pretty graphics running so smoothly.

So while I think id's true glory days may be behind them, it wasn't a bad game, and I hold out some hope for Doom 4 also not being bad, heh. [:

I'm honestly not worried about DOOM 4. I really like DOOM 3 and RAGE so I don't expect DOOM 4 to disappoint me. The only thing that will disappoint me, and it's basically bound to happen, is the difficulty which, based on RAGE, upcoming BFG Edition nerfs and various comments from id guys, will be virtually non-existant.

Doom 4 needs moar John Goodman. :)

No, bromsnor.
You are John Goodman.

On a serious note, I'm all for games with very little story to speak of. In my experience, devs too often ruin an engaging experience, by trying to tell a captivating story and failing.

Also the less exposition, the more replayable the experience. It's the main reason I replay Half-Life 1 much more frequently than HL2, despite the fact that I love HL2's actual gameplay. A good story is fun the first time through, but by the third or fourth, you just want to get to the action (at least in action games you do).

DOOM 4 should just be what DOOM was and still is. I want the game to be to have the.... classic DOOM spirit... meaning this game will be banned in some countries. Some people will be excited to play the game and enjoy it... others will just faint from how epic it is... others will cower in fear at the shear power of the game. I want this game to liberate the video game industry from COD. I want it to make COD look like a 4 year old's game. I want this game DOOM 4... I want it to have straight up old-school gameplay. Heck, they are making Painkiller HD... why can't we have gameplay similar to Serious Sam or Painkiller?! All you guys want f---ing PSX DOOM. I want PC DOOM. The real DOOM.

idSoftware981 said:

DOOM 4 should just be what DOOM was and still is. I want the game to be to have the.... classic DOOM spirit... meaning this game will be banned in some countries. Some people will be excited to play the game and enjoy it... others will just faint from how epic it is... others will cower in fear at the shear power of the game. I want this game to liberate the video game industry from COD. I want it to make COD look like a 4 year old's game. I want this game DOOM 4... I want it to have straight up old-school gameplay. Heck, they are making Painkiller HD... why can't we have gameplay similar to Serious Sam or Painkiller?! All you guys want f---ing PSX DOOM. I want PC DOOM. The real DOOM.

You're still going on about this? I think at the core, all Doom games are 'the real Doom' (not including Doom 3 in this case, because thats a different story), and I don't see why the PC version is such a big deal to you. Seems to me that you want to see ID to release a classic game like the old Doom, which is not going to happen. Just trust me on this. The simple reason being that there's no big market in that kind of game.

As far as I can remember, both Painkiller and Serious Sam were released as budget-titles. Doesn't mean that they're not good and all, but that just goes to show that you can't make alot of return with a mindless shooting game simply because there's not a big market for it. Just let it go dude.

I think it would be neat if id sicked a couple of interns on a classic Doom project, but I don't think there's any way they could justify getting the heavyweights like Carmack, et al. behind what would, essentially, be a pet project, without a great return on investment. The community would adore them, yes, but they'd be losing money. :/

I wish this were not the case, but it's an economic reality. If you want to justify a Doom project using so many high salary employees, it's just gotta go big.

My hope for a true, classic Doom successor is entirely in the indie genre at this point. Because they don't have to answer to investors or stockholders.

idSoftware981 said:

Heck, they are making Painkiller HD... why can't we have gameplay similar to Serious Sam or Painkiller?!

What?
The games are nothing alike. Serious Sam is nothing like Doom. The games had completely different tones, goals and ambitions.

Shaviro said:

What?
The games are nothing alike. Serious Sam is nothing like Doom. The games had completely different tones, goals and ambitions.

Exactly, I REALLY don't get it why people compare Doom to Serious Sam, if anything, it's more like Half Life(which in some ways was a spiritual successor to Doom 1 anyway)

I agree 100%
Half-Life 1 basically grabbed what Doom did and took it one step further. Back in 1993, Doom looked and felt real compared to everything else. All other games in the nearby genres looked arcade after Doom. Serious Sam went the other way and aimed for a more arcade feel than the other games of its time.

I like both Doom and Serious Sam, but they are very different games. Both in a relative and absolute scope.
On that note, I actually hope Doom 4 will be a spiritual successor to Half-Life 1. The genre has, in my opinion, not moved forward since then.

I'd say it has gone back in the arcade direction ever since. Modern shooters basically feel like virtual cop. Point and shoot. The game will do the rest.

Shaviro said:

Modern shooters basically feel like virtual cop.

I know this cynicism is heightened for comedic effect, but all the same that's a little harsh. And if I didn't know you better I could assume that you're saying ALL modern shooters work in exactly the same way. But I know you know better than that ;)

Stalker, Fear, Far Cry, Crysis and Bioshock have little in common with Virtua Cop. Whether you (or I) don't care for any of these games for other reasons is another matter. Heck, it's even a stretch to compare CoD to an arcade shooter in anything but a joking manner. The level design is obviously linear and (imo) repetitive and boring (and, yes, doing nothing but shoot bad guys before progressing to another area where you shoot more bad guys does give the game an "arcade" feel much like Painkiller), but if you replaced that with something more intelligent you'd have an incredibly sleek, polished and interesting FPS. And that's not to mention the MP portion of the game, which people who are fervently opposed to CoD typically overlook when bashing it. Comparing that to Virtua Cop would be an indication that you've never even played it :p

Stalker: 2007
Fear: 2005
Far Cry: 2004
Crysis: 2007
Bioshock: 2007

These games are 5 - 8 years old.
Did you consider Doom to be a modern shooter in 2001 or even in 1998?
I haven't played COD and didn't mention it, but compare something like Crysis 2 to Far Cry or even Crysis. The game is so much more restricted and you're forced through a series of chokes by having narrow, clipped hallways (poorly disguised as a city) herd you forward. The game has even taken over half of your controls. I'm reminded of some of the early sections in Rebel Assault 2 where you watch a short movie, then shoot a few bad guys in a location, then another short movie of you going forward, then action, repeat for ~6 hours.

Of course modern shooters aren't virtual cop (or rebel assault 2's shooter sequences) and you still have more freedom of movement, but the direction and the trend is pretty clear. Less freedom, more forced sequences and actions. And yes there are exceptions. Far Cry 2 did something else entirely, but it didn't quite work out.

Even a semi-open world game like Rage has arcade shooter tendencies. They've almost completely eliminated all movement of freedom. You can jump, but it's a worthless feature because you can almost never use it to elevate your position. The environment is nothing but a static backdrop that has been completely blocked off, so you can't interact with it. All shooting has been restricted to 100% controlled environments.; Arcadish arenas where you are allowed the freedom to shoot. There is still a little dodging going on, but other than that it's basically point and shoot.

What about Deus Ex Human Revolution? I thought that one was VERY good.

Regarding Far Cry 2 and other 'open world' or 'sand box' action games: I've heard the analogy, and I can't help but agree, that most sandbox games play out like a very complex in-game menu system. That is, there's isn't much to do in-between missions, other than futz about.

This is most clearly seen in Red Dead Redemption: You have 1) your main, story quests, that trigger when you go to one of the letters on your map, then you have 2) minor side quests, that trigger when you go to a symbol on your map, then you also have 3) semi-random 'encounter'-type quests, like someone tries to steal your horse, or you have to rescue someone from hanging. Other than that, there isn't much to do than take in the (beautiful, I will admit) sights, and find better horses to break.

Call me lacking in imagination, but I can't really feel free in a game like RDR, or even Far Cry 2. I much prefer a semi-linear game like Far Cry 1, where the entire game is layed out before you and you have a large degree of control in how individual engagements go down, even if you can't necessarily choose the order in which you tackle 'missions.' I suppose open world games could alleviate this with higher-quality futzing, though. ;)

That all said, I don't see why a game called Doom would need free-roaming elements. I suppose there was always the intermission screen, so that could be emulated to a certain extent. And I'm certainly not against the franchise trying new things, I just don't see the point.

DooM_RO said:

What about Deus Ex Human Revolution? I thought that one was VERY good.

I thought about listing it but then I remembered it's not really a FPS in the strictest sense. Unless you go around shooting everyone and earning only 10 XP every time, which I doubt anyone does.

But yeah, if you really want to call it a FPS then it's an excellent example of a modern FPS which flies in the face of the "modern shooters are simplified trash" argument. If only those facial animations didn't look like they were from 2004.

DoomUK said:

I thought about listing it but then I remembered it's not really a FPS in the strictest sense. Unless you go around shooting everyone and earning only 10 XP every time, which I doubt anyone does.

But yeah, if you really want to call it a FPS then it's an excellent example of a modern FPS which flies in the face of the "modern shooters are simplified trash" argument. If only those facial animations didn't look like they were from 2004.

Yeah, Half Life 2 had better facial animations.

I honestly couldn't care less if a game is considered linear or not. Sure, I like exploring in games, but in many sandbox-games the exploring completely sacrifies the story. I think the only games that have done freeroaming well, is the Elder Scrolls series because those games in general stay true to a overall theme or objective even if you're doing nothing to engage the story.

The main thing I care about in a game is immersion, and story telling. Since Doom is not exactly very well known for its story, I hope Doom 4 goes for immersion.

Some people consider BioShock to be a linear game too, but it has some of the best stories in modern games (not counting the awfull BioShock 2 sequel) and I have yet to see a game that has BioShock's level of immersion. The whole reason I want to play a game is to be immersed into another world, thats why I hate games that try to be 'realistic'.

I've read several posts on this forum by people who said that mapping is a form of art, and I agree. In the same sense as any piece of art, a level in a game is supposed to engage, immerse, and tell a story. But thats just my opinion. The days of playing Pac-Man in the arcade are over, and I think its about time people treated videogames as a true art medium.

Actually I always thought that BioShock level structure is pretty oldschool, reminiscent of DOOM / Duke3d / Quake / etc levels. The mandatory progression is linear but the interconectivity creates a more player-driven experience.

I would be most grateful if DOOM 4 had similiar level structures.