About Doomguy's name...

[Hellser]

You / Our Hero. If the game is being told from a third person perspective (say, a retelling from another marine's point of view), then I go with the true and tried Flynn Taggart. Doom (The Movie) has John Grimm, which is pretty cool.

[Gez]

IMO the name "Flynn Taggart" should only be used if the real way to vanquish the demons is to convert to Mormonism.

[openroadracer]

My opinion?

William "Doom Slayer" Blazkowicz III.

[Enjay]

William Flynn "Doom Slayer" Blazkowicz-Dacote III

[wildweasel]

Here's a take for you: They're all canon. Even the dumb ones. Because there's nothing that specifically denies any of them being true. (Also, who's to say there's only one Guy? Maybe Flynn is the green one, Buddy is the brown one, John is the red one, and Stan is the grey one.)

[Rachael]

42.

That is my final answer.

[Matt]

Seconding 42.

that or Prisoner Number 69420

[Nems]

that or Prisoner Number 69420

Nice.

[NeuralStunner]

I've also slowly progressed towards the camp of the whole "Doom Slayer" as trying too hard to be cool and edgy, especially with the story of Eternal.

I dunno, this seems needlessly nitpicky to me. Classic Doom with its blood and gore, "everyone is dead" storyline, and overt satanic imagery... was peak Edginess™ for the 90s, and is still pretty standout. (Though changes in tech and art have made it a little less so.)

There's nowhere to go from there but "moreso" (see Doom 2), unless you're going into Your Path of Destruction level satire. (Which is basically the only in-universe context you're going to see "Doomguy". Quake 3 saw fit to just call him "Doom".)

If we're talking about lore: Doom Slayer is a rather literally-minded appellation given by demonkind (the original Edgebois*) to the one being in the universe that scares the besatan out of them. Yeah, it's going to sound pretty edgy.


* I'm sure imp teenagers smoke, stay up past their bedtime, and say "bums" when their mothers aren't listening. The fiends.

[okbuddy]

DG Blazkowicz

[Gez]

Guy Von Doom.

[jdredalert]

For me, it's just as Nems said: trying too hard to be cool and edgy.

Plus, a high school ex cheerleader from Los Angeles, later Sunnydale, already has the Slayer title.

Gotta agree with NeuralStunner a few posts above, Enj: try too hard to be cool and edgy is what Doom have been doing since the 90's

PS: That Buffy reference caught me off-guard. Bravo, my friend!

[Chris]

Gotta agree with NeuralStunner a few posts above, Enj: try to hard to be cool and edgy is what Doom have been doing since the 90's

I'm kinda curious how the original Doom was "trying too hard to be cool and edgy". Maybe some of its side material (the infamous comic book*, for example). But considering Doom was based on ideas derived from Aliens and D&D, with some music styled after bands popular the decade prior (and other music that was more downbeat and almost atmospheric at times), I wouldn't call it "trying too hard to be cool and edgy". There was far too much nerd cred to be try-hard, IMO. I think what people confuse to be "edgy" is the fact that the engine was a graphical powerhouse, and had artists and designers capable of taking advantage of it while staying true to its inspirations.

* Funny enough, the whole "Rip and Tear" slogan adopted by new-Doom originally came from that comic. I remember people deriding the comic for devolving Doom to such simplistic carnage, and "Rip and Tear" was mainly used as a joke against those who see the games as mindless slaughter-fests. Interesting how things are now.

[Enjay]

Yeah, I never saw the original Doom gore and imagery as too edgy or trying too hard. To me they just got it very, very right and there was no need to be "edgelords" because they set exactly where the benchmark was, but didn't step over the line of trying too hard IMO. I would say that by the time Quake III came out though, I was tiring of the predicable gothic blood-soaked horror style that seemed to characterise everything that id was doing and, even then, it was becoming predictable, boring and like they were trying too hard to me.

To me, the vibe that I get from the new game is the "trying too hard, slightly cringey" kind of edgy. The protagonist is not merely a marine in the wrong place at the wrong time, he is the super-human "DOOMSLAYER" (has to be said in a Thunder Throat style) and he's battling angelic beings, finding celstial locators, there's a bunch of nonsense gladitorial lore yada yada.

The comic was, to me, quite unlike the game and did what Chris suggests. However, it feels as if the spirit of the comic is alive and well in the new game - moreso than it was (albeit that it would have to be retro-fitted any way) in the original game. OK, perhaps bunny heads on spikes was moving into that territory, but it was the silly end art and end "story" for the add-on episode that finally took it over the edge IMO, not the original game.

[jdredalert]

Gotta agree with NeuralStunner a few posts above, Enj: try to hard to be cool and edgy is what Doom have been doing since the 90's

I'm kinda curious how the original Doom was "trying too hard to be cool and edgy".

Well, I would start with the graphics. Top-notch for the time, filled with all that violence and satanic imagery. Let's put emphasis on violence here, because while it looks silly and cartoony by today's standards, Doom's art is excessively gory, especially how the humanoid enemies get gibed and you can see the ribcage bones exposed, or Baron of Hell's torso ripping apart while it's intestines fell. That was a whole other level and even Mortal Kombat, which was infamous for its violence, paled in comparison. Sure, MK had spine rips and people getting impaled, but the impaled corpses in Doom also twitched, which was a lot more bizarre. The soundtrack, ripped straight from 80's metal bands, that although as you said were kinda popular a decade prior the game release, both metal bands and fans were always labeled as misfits, edgy and inappropriate. Unless you had some real open-minded folks, playing "Angel of Death" during a family reunion wouldn't end well.
There were some other stuff as well. Think of how Doomguy grims every time he gets a new, more powerful weapon. Or the intermission texts: "Once you beat the big badasses and clean out the moon base, you were supposed to win aren't you? Aren't you?". That really sounds like trying to be cool for me.
My theory is that people tend to forget the impact of some of those aspects of oldschool Doom, especially when newer games, more realistic, violent and shocking (sometimes for no reason) games appeared. Doom rapidly became tame, silly and the graphic violence was banalized (even more after the whole Brutal mods craze).