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Thorgrim103

Doom and Narrative.

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I love Doom 2, It grew up with the shareware, discovered sourceports.
got a copy of final doom (never beat that way to hard.)
Eventually played skulltag. I've experienced a fair amount. Doom was there for me before I even had a ps2. My friends play Halo and CoD and others. I still play Doom. Ok enough touchy feely I love doom Onto my disccusion
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A Doomed Narrative.

Yet one thing in Doom I've always yearned for is an interesting narrative.

Some may say, "Doom already has a detailed story."

Well yes it does have a story. Yet it's not much to go by.
Originally Doom 1 was planned to have cutsences far more horror and narrative. The Doom Bible tells us this.

Yet in the end we got Doom. That's amazing I love Doom it did what it did for it's time and revolutionized PC gaming in some ways.

Yet We've been at it for years. One thing I have yet to see is a large Doom map that gives a narrative like games today.

Doom 3 for example and Hl2 are amazing examples of giving a narrative in an Fps. Doom 3 has more thing the player finds out about,Hl 2 is more of a Journey with minor stops.

An Example is Call of DOOty or the well known Void.

They have some or allot of narrative for the good or bad.

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I think here's a few ways story can be told better in Doom.

Cut scenes and voice acting.

This this this this.
I would love to be able to beat a level and be rewarded with more then a score screen.

I want to know why these thins are happening. there or possibly something like unloved yet with cutscenes like silent hill Character interaction wise.

Now one issue is the generic oh lol SPASS MARUN story. Well some times it works. Not always, I think a remedy for this could be just changing settings. A science lab, a post apocalyptic city or landscape, a man lost in a forest or ghost town.

I've seen doom wads that are amazing and would tell an interesting story if given the effort.


Utilizing the text boxes using more text. For a simpler possibly easier solution is to do this. Possibly a journal recounting something or inner thoughts of the protagonist. Once again all which can be improved in some ways with proper implementation of voice acting.

Lastly the Classic.

Words on the wall. This is something I never ever seen done. HL2 kinda innovated this a bit alongside portal dead space and left 4 dead.

Doom has the potential to tell a scary story with nothing but mad writings on a wall. Custom hd textures be a bitch though and words are too with doom graphing.

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This is just my opinion. I would love to play a spooky or action doom game with a narrative.

So any one know if any other existing wads doom a Good job at this?

Please tell me more.
What do you think of Doom and narrative?

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I think you should play Action Doom 2, Zen Dynamics, City of the Damned: Apocalypse, and Winter's Fury at the very least before making this thread. That's just off the top of my head, and you already mentioned Unloved and then went on to say that Doom wads could potentially tell stories with minimal elements. Like...you know, Unloved.

Seriously though, first to mention DTS-T loses.

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What I'd love to know is what process does doing all this take. I thought it was impossible at first to include voice acting in Doom and was blown away by the Call of DOOty gameplay video and more.

So how does it work is it doombuilder or a far more complex process?


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Yeah I mentioned unloved. I don't remember the wad really making any sense it had a small story and possibly some text at the end.

I wasn't aware that those Wads had stories. I know unloved sort of has one. Yet it's kind of told like HL's as you figure it out your self.

Anyways "Action Doom 2, Zen Dynamics, City of the Damned: Apocalypse, and Winter's Fury"

I will need to look into those. I've played a bit of the ordinal action Doom.

Unhinged is a good example I think of one that could use a narrative. I think it's that huge city map that reminds me of Dawn of Reality.

Still though I can understand making normal levels is cool and all. Yet making a actual game out of it and giving it a story has a different feeling then just levels.

I am trying to correlate the relation of giving doom levels stories to creating rpg worlds in rpg maker and creating a story.

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Firstly, I'd just like to make it clear that the Call of Dooty series is a parody, and it's story is intentionally terrible (thus doggedly referring to the Demons as 'Russians'), so it's not really the best example.

Unloved had a story, but not necessarily a narrative. It was something to interpret, not something to be explained to you, because it wasn't showing something that went from point A to point B, it was framed as a psychological tale.

Unhinged relied on atmosphere. Sitting down and talking about it would have taken the manic progression of the thing. Instead, it just has you go through a meaningless parade of horrors. This is why Steven King often refrains from explaining things in many of his works. It doesn't matter WHY monsters are coming out of the trunk of a Buick/A car is killing people/we are surrounded in monster-filled mist, they just are, and the characters have to deal with that. In a horror environment, it's almost always far better to see how something is dealt with and plays out than to have the reasons for its occurrence explained to you. But if you can pull it off, that's pretty epic, but things like Unhinged are intentionally without an overarching point. The Happy Time Circus series is similar in this regard - evil clowns; deal with it.

In the ZDoom-branch ports, voice acting/cutscenes are often just recorded sound files and camera changes triggered by ACS scripts.

But yeah, those wads have more or less detailed stories. Apocalypse is an implied tale discovered through loose pieces of paper, while Winter's Fury has full dialog and cutscenes, with cinematic camera changes and stuff. AD2 has a branching story with art and voice acting. Zen Dynamics has some brief cutscenes with a couple plot twists and a lot of text to read at the start.

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Captain Ventris said:

I think you should play Action Doom 2, Zen Dynamics, City of the Damned: Apocalypse, and Winter's Fury


Also: RTC-3057, Space Station Omega, Assault on Tei Tenga, Daedalus: Alien Defense, Barista, the Massmouth series, Paranoia, The Darkest Hour...

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Thorgrim103 said:

Originally Doom 1 was planned to have cutsences far more horror and narrative. The Doom Bible tells us this.

Horror, doom bible, horror?

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Well I just remember the Doom Bible having far more story in it's rendition of Doom and it seemed as if it was a little spookier.

Oh and thanks for the recommendations. I kinda feel bad for writing a psuedo article I could of just asked in WADS about what are good Doom wads that use the power of STORY.

I really didn't know there were that many. I mainly brought this up due to the review of that one really bad one. I wanted to see if they're were any real good ones.

Also I do agree that all of those I mentioned are more like Half Life and implore more or less the players interpretation of the story. I just had not come across and or played many that used it.

I appreciate it.
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Other then just the topic of naming off Wads at Random.

What's the most impressive cinematic Story you've seen in your opinion.

What's in funniest in you're opinion.

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A Side note: I came across the unfinished Robotech mod on MODDB.
It looks amazing. I really liked Macross and other Robot related things. Did you guys like this. I really don't understand why no one has made a Gundam Doom so far. It's be complicated to do though and the Scale would be massive.

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