Let's talk about Hell...

So, we’re fighting bugs and aliens in some yellow, foggy fantasy land instead of fighting DEMONS in HELL? How does Id intend to piss off the Christians when they have designers who can’t do the concept of Hell any justice? Did they forget about Satan? I don’t see any elements of a classical interpretation, which is lame.

It seems they have focused on the ultra-violent, hyper-masculine aspects of Doom (which are essential) and lost sight of the claustrophobia, hellishness and abstract design of the original Doom, Doom II and Final Doom. Doom 3 had a lot of great ideas, as well as a lot of ideas that didn’t really work. To throw out any element of horror, darkness, or strangeness is to do Doom an injustice. I understand that the popular opinion lately seems to be “RUN FAST SHOOT MONSTERS BIG MUSCLES FUCK YEAH!!!” which is all good and well, but if you have lame-ass design behind it all, it falls flat. I read a comment on these forums stating that the new monster designs look like Gears of War rejects, and I’d have to agree. (with the exception of the Revenant. The Revenant is near perfect. He could do with some trimming in the armor department, but that's about it.)

And what ever happened to the feeling of having the odds stacked against you? I remember hearing during the E3 conference, “we never want the player to feel like they are back-tracking” - what? I want to feel like I’m back-tracking. I want to be sprinting and climbing and diving into lower ground in an effort to buy time and create enough space to kill before I am killed by the insane amount of demons after me. I saw a bit of that in the second half of the gameplay video, but it still seemed pretty tame as far as pace and difficulty go. Maybe I’m misinterpreting the comment, but Doom, to me, was never about blasting forward through Hell like it’s a fucking cakewalk. It was about being against the odds. How could a man survive Hell? How fucking tough and resilient must one man be to be able to kill every last demon and still be able claw his way out by the skin of his teeth?

Don’t get me wrong, the graphics are pretty. The blood is nice. I even dig the executions. I don't completely hate it, to be fair. Watching the gameplay while listening to homogenous, uninspired metal music (I'm not saying metal is bland as a whole, but christ, some Doom fans have some really bad ideas about what Doom's soundtrack should be) offered me a firmer grasp on what they're going for, and as I've stated previously, I'm into that. The fact that there is a new DOOM after so many years is something to be excited about, but this new gameplay has diminished that excitement. The design is bland. I really don’t want a Doom 1 clone, but a fundamental piece of Doom's spirit does seem to be lost. It brings to question whether or not Id has employees who understand Doom and are genuinely passionate about it.

It may be too early to complain, and I get that, but based on what I've seen so far, I'm disappointed. I wish Id could take ideas from every Doom in order to make the best Doom possible, instead of being so bent on what their idea of "true to the original" seems to be. Doom, in my mind, is as much about horror and complexity as it is about your basic running and gunning. Unless the next bit of footage we see is a complete 180º from what we saw, my excitement will further diminish.

Edit: The appropriate color palette for Hell goes something like: red/pink (like blood and guts!), black (like my black, ugly soul), gray (like fucking rocks!!!) and brown (like DIRT and SHIT). Yellow and its variations just aren't doing it for me.

I agree with you. The lack of satanic themes in modern games is frustrating, first Diablo III becomes all World-of-PG, then DOOM. Probably, there are more to this list.

The hell levels are the ones you wish you could go as soon as possible, IMHO, they need to stimulate player to go on, to be the great pay-off, to be an opportunity for an artist to show off his skills.

I want to be blown away by the twisted and surreal, brutal and sinful, I'd want the hell made me feel dirty, just looking at it. So there were no doubt that this place is evil, rotten to its core.

The hell presented in demo stayed in my memmory as yellow desert with some ruins, actualy reminded me of Uncharted 3 :D.

And as was said before, demons look more like mutants and not like hellish spawns. They don't move me. I see just targets in 'em, they lack personality and charm. They don't look evil, they look like they might be in need of some medical threatment, i pity 'em.

Doom's aesthetic was one that drew, quite clearly, from "Evil Dead," "Hellraiser," "Aliens" and maybe even "Total Recall." All of those movies featured nightmarish, grotesque creatures and striking, highly memorable environments. Neo-Doom looks like it's harking back to that, but only mildly. I think there's a bit too much of the sterility of modern sci-fi and horror cinema, what with its focus on bland, completely non-threatening visuals. I still like neo-Doom's look, but I have to admit that the human facilities looked a bit more interesting than Hell.

This is, of course, pretty disappointing, because the original Doom did such a great job hinting at what was to come throughout the game. There are tiny little demonic touches scattered throughout E1, and as you trudge through E2, it starts to get really weird and occultist/arcane/demonic/ritualistic. By the time you make it to E3, you're fully embedded in hell, and yet it has these weird cybernetic/human touches. It's something you never forget.

In Doom 3, you get lots of cramped, bluish corridors and some cool looking tech, with some tacked-on "Hell stuff" that doesn't really pay off until the last 10% of the game. There's no way neo-Doom is going to do that to us, but we need a better impression of Hell if we're to be invested in the single player campaign. What was shown was promising, but that piss yellow filter looks pretty bad compared to those doctored shots where it was removed. Nit-picky? Maybe, but recall that PC, PSX and N64 Doom all did a fantastic job with Hell. Those games made very good use of the engine's limits to provide us with something that was both abstract and surreal. I've talked before about how Doom's 2.5D engine forces Hell to look very architectural and methodical, and I think it's important that we see some of that in the new Doom. Epic, towering structures that were clearly designed by something greater than any individual demon. We need this!

mafon2 said:

I agree with you. The lack of satanic themes in modern games is frustrating, first Diablo III becomes all World-of-PG, then DOOM. Probably, there are more to this list.

The hell levels are the ones you wish you could go as soon as possible, IMHO, they need to stimulate player to go on, to be the great pay-off, to be an opportunity for an artist to show off his skills.

I want to be blown away by the twisted and surreal, brutal and sinful, I'd want the hell made me feel dirty, just looking at it. So there were no doubt that this place is evil, rotten to its core.

The hell presented in demo stayed in my memmory as yellow desert with some ruins, actualy reminded me of Uncharted 3 :D.

And as was said before, demons look more like mutants and not like hellish spawns. They don't move me. I see just targets in 'em, they lack personality and charm. They don't look evil, they look like they might be in need of some medical threatment, i pity 'em.

I agree. Nothing seems like a demon, its all mutants. Hell seems too bland, real and brown. Real like yellow is sulfur. Brown like I'm sure there's rock. There needs to be fire, lava and surrealistic.

Now that they have a year to go, they can listen to feedback and adjust.

We saw only one hell level so far so not all hope is lost. That said I don't know why people being kiled is ok but satanic imaginery always causes butthurt. Is their faith so weak they somehow feel tempted when they see a pentagram or hear the word ,,demon''? The argument I sometimes hear is ,,but da childrun'' and it's the same idiotic fucking argument people use against tits and curse words in entertainment industry. The guy just assasinated someone but emerghed he said the F word and banged his girlfriend quickly call the press! They are twisting the minds of our kids who will encounter foul language and tits in their life anyway!

I don't know how Satanic imagery could possibly be taboo in the 21st century. The fundamentalists are a very small minority within Christianity and there were religious folks who worked on the original Doom. Hell, it's a game about KILLING demons! How can that be bad? Also, there are some hurt butts about the audience at E3 cheering for the gore and I think that's just as silly. It's Doom. It's over-the-top, violent and dark. That's was made pretty clear by the demo. At QuakeCon last year, I was cheering along with them, because it made me want to play the damn game!

GoatLord said:

I don't know how Satanic imagery could possibly be taboo in the 21st century. The fundamentalists are a very small minority within Christianity and there were religious folks who worked on the original Doom. Hell, it's a game about KILLING demons! How can that be bad?

I think I read some comments by some Christians years ago that vaguely suggested something or other about how it's bad to be tempted into violent impulses and how "evil should be fought with goodness instead".

I suspect they're getting butthurt about the very idea of taking pleasure from the idea of bloody vengeance against all things evil, but I still think they're overreacting and basically being overly puritanical.

As for Hell in the new game, well, I like it a lot better than Doom 3's version of Hell, but I admit that I'm not feeling blown away by it either.
Too much rock and not enough flesh, but at least it has evil thorny trees and dead branches, which is at least mildly more interesting than Doom 3's floating rock islands.

Hoping they're saving the best of Hell for the final version of the game and that this was just an unfinished sneak peek to show us that "Nope, Hell isn't pitch black anymore and you can actually see stuff now".

I rather like the yellow sulphuric hell. Some of you guys are acting like that's all there is to it. They're saving the best,grotesque and the macabre for later. Hold on!

Piper Maru said:

I rather like the yellow sulphuric hell. Some of you guys are acting like that's all there is to it. They're saving the best,grotesque and the macabre for later. Hold on!

This! We saw 5 mins of hell gameplay. I'm sure there's a lot more left to be seen. We essentially saw 2 rooms. The entrance and the one (large arena like place) where the doom guy fought. I'm sure there's a lot more in store for us.

Only complaint I have with how hell was represented, at least in that specific area we saw ...was that it was a yellow sky/background. Isn't hell generally red with darker undertones? Maybe their just going for something a little less generic hell based.

Piper Maru said:

I rather like the yellow sulphuric hell. Some of you guys are acting like that's all there is to it. They're saving the best,grotesque and the macabre for later. Hold on!

I agree. Was just thrown off by the yellow for the first glimpse of hell.

Well, maybe the artists and designers just wanted to depict Doom's world the way they did in the demo videos. However, I gotta say that all the satanism in Doom 3 did help make the atmosphere oppressive. It really looked like they were all against you. I hope we get some collective sentience here as well that makes you feel like you're not wanted.

I do believe thats a satanic pentagram in the blood on the wall behind the dead guy in the distance. Just hang tight guys, everyone seems to be jumping the shark and saying the new game is lacking A,B,C etc when we've only seen a glimpse of the game. I captured it from the E3 Demonstration for those curious. It's right before the marine grabs the super shotgun.

Piper Maru said:

I do believe thats a satanic pentagram in the blood on the wall behind the dead guy in the distance. Just hang tight guys, everyone seems to be jumping the shark and saying the new game is lacking A,B,C etc when we've only seen a glimpse of the game. I captured it from the E3 Demonstration for those curious. It's right before the marine grabs the super shotgun.

http://i46.photobucket.com/albums/f131/randolphcarter1/doomsatan_zpsrmo7dllc.png

I personally loved that shot in the demo. I'm a sucker for a blood soaked hallway in a game. Reminds me of Doom 3 and also Area 51.

Yeah I'm not sure I'd jump the gun and just assume that what we saw in the demo is the totality of ideas that the game holds for hell.

I think id is very, very well aware of what the people expect from this game at this point and there's a part of me that thinks we could see the same kind of appalled, frightened response from parents, religious, and political figures that happened when the original Doom was released.

I imagine that this demo is probably just barely scratching the surface of what's in store for everyone who's been eagerly awaiting this title.

To be honest, my only gripe so far is that the plasma rifle seems kinda weak.. not to sound "stuck in the past" but the original weapon still had this boomy, concussive sound to it. The one in the demo just doesn't look like it's as fun to use. But who knows.

What if the hell demo is only the first level of hell and it goes deeper, gets red and more like the lava hell we know and love.

That would be an interesting progression. The more dangerous the Hell levels become, the more darker in color it becomes, kind of like as if you're descending a ladder into the lower depths. The analogy may be literal too, as this Doom seems to be focusing on vertical level design and combat.

I did get the vibe that what was shown was meant to be the entrance to Hell/upper layer of Hell. I can maybe give it a pass if that's the case. If that's honestly meant to be to the depths of Hell, however, it's pretty damn weak. I'd like to believe that what we saw was merely a representation of surface-level neo-Doom.

I'm still in opposition to the enemy, weapon, and overall aesthetic design.