Doom Eternal E3 2019 Thread

[Matt]

Enjay: The anticipated cringe was more for me, personally, as a Christian expecting some really garbled muddle of heresy and pop culture. It... kinda still looks like that, but as elaborated below what I'm seeing is so far removed from what I believe in it's safely climbed up the other side of that doctrinal Uncanny Valley.

(As for the dichotomy of hell versus tech, let's just say that per System Shock, the original Unreal, The Matrix, Terminator, Aliens, C.S. Lewis, the entire 20th century's worth of government atrocities, etc., sterile sunless rooms full of computers and bizarre experiments are a lot more evocative of literal Hell for me than red mountains full of angry fire- and ghost-type Pokémon (which, don't get me wrong, certainly has its own appeal).)

Bringing down a paganized "Heaven" like that isn't even edgy, just vaguely subliminally quasi-Protestant.

If you don't mind going into further detail, I'm genuinely curious and want to know more as to how this possible premise/plot/story is that.

This is all based on the few glimpses we see in the trailer so I can be totally off base about all of it.

Those glimpses show a lot of blue-white ornate cathedral-esque decor, of the sort that we typically associate with paladins and Lawful Good/Lawful Neutral stuff... at best.
At worst, it's the whitwashed-tomb decaying stifling ancient order of the sort in a Phillip Pullman book. Everything communicates a strong sense of hierarchy, purity and symmetry and static balance.

In the meantime there isn't really anything clearly Christian other than a cross on top of the building - as long as you don't count a distorted Christianity with the sympathetic loving God parts filed off.

All the visuals communicate a duality: blue and red, order and chaos, angels and demons. Even just thinking about the meta of it I can't shake off the feeling that this "Heaven" is really created as an anti-Hell, opposed to it and thus equivalent to it.

The placement of this heaven stuff in the narrative feels like a big setup for the old "you've been fighting these little bad guys and now it's time to fight the real Big Bad that's been pulling the strings this whole time" trope. I'm almost half expecting that the next game's going to have the doomguy join forces with the demons to rescue them from their past wrongs and free them from the evil forces of heaven or something.

The bearded guy on the throne - whoever he is - looks like a fantasy Viking type, and there's nothing resembling a cross anywhere there. The narration implies strongly that this is at least the guy on the throne in the heavens, whatever that might mean. It might be a guy on a throne in heaven, the leader of the rebel faction, or it could be a bad-guy "God" from Pullman or the Gnostics etc. - we just can't tell from this.

The only hints as to the motivations of this "heaven" are the references to wrath and penance. We don't know why and from what. It's an invisible, angry thing from on high demanding suffering from its putative subjects.

In light of all this, consider this completely arbitrary, grossly incomplete list of bits and pieces from Western culture:

• Pullman, as above
• Dan Brown (if anyone remembers him, but he was huge back in the day)
• Everyone who's read Paradise Lost and thought the Devil was the hero, whether in intent or effect
• Your typical Evangelical Christian's reaction to the use of statuary and institutional clerical hierarchies in Christian worship
• The guy in white from the second Matrix movie
• Westboro Baptist Church
• Chocolates and cars branded with references to devils, temptation, the seven sins, etc.
• Glorification of the notion of angels leaving heaven for ~true love~
• Pride Month (and the accompanying references to the other six deadly sins especially the ones made in jest)
• Old churches, Latin chanting and someone saying the Our Father quietly in the dark - used as tropes for creating a creepy horror-movie vibe
• This song by a very successful music group who are also kinda involved in video games
• The "God and Satan Are Both Jerks" and "Church Militant" entries in TV Tropes
• The entire Modern narrative about the printing press as a means of democratizing liberation of individuals from the capricious tyranny of the Church

Which leads us back to the Protestant comment: If I'm right about what this trailer is leading up to, then we're about to see a violent dismantling of a stifling, stale, calcified old "holy" order by "just one man" (rather than "One Man", i.e. Christ, but there might be analogues here as well though that's a tangent on its own), not connected with that old order, who hates the same evil that is opposed by/to that order, but is otherwise not connected to it (not in communion with it) and has been established as someone who gleefully destroys the images (faces, πρόσωπα) that belonged to human persons and which he believes have been corrupted. It's definitely not any sort of 1:1 allegory or anything even close, but if not rhyme then at least assonance.


EDIT: And on that note...

Or even worse, since instead of good old shoot em all mechanics you forced to...watch fatality cutscene to receive medikit/ammo.

: oh_no :
Shit, now that you put it that way I can't help but think of those mobile games that explicitly have you watch ads in exchange for ingame bonuses... and now I'm wondering what all this is intended to... advertise...

[Enjay]

Add the weapons and monster behavior on top of that. Visually they are very well made, but somehow there is again something missing when it comes to firing them or killing the enemies. Too many shaders and effects, too little basic feel of "I click fire, the shotgun goes BOOM".

I've mentioned before that, for me, modern games seem to have a fuzziness, a sort of disconnect between the immediacy of the button press or the mouse move and the result on screen. I'm not quite sure exactly how to describe it but there is an indirectness about modern games that is not present in older titles.

@Matt: I understand what your comment meant now.

[Nems]

This is all based on the few glimpses we see in the trailer so I can be totally off base about all of it.

Those glimpses show a lot of blue-white ornate cathedral-esque decor, of the sort that we typically associate with paladins and Lawful Good/Lawful Neutral stuff... at best.
At worst, it's the whitwashed-tomb decaying stifling ancient order of the sort in a Phillip Pullman book. Everything communicates a strong sense of hierarchy, purity and symmetry and static balance.

In the meantime there isn't really anything clearly Christian other than a cross on top of the building - as long as you don't count a distorted Christianity with the sympathetic loving God parts filed off.

All the visuals communicate a duality: blue and red, order and chaos, angels and demons. Even just thinking about the meta of it I can't shake off the feeling that this "Heaven" is really created as an anti-Hell, opposed to it and thus equivalent to it.

The placement of this heaven stuff in the narrative feels like a big setup for the old "you've been fighting these little bad guys and now it's time to fight the real Big Bad that's been pulling the strings this whole time" trope. I'm almost half expecting that the next game's going to have the doomguy join forces with the demons to rescue them from their past wrongs and free them from the evil forces of heaven or something.

The bearded guy on the throne - whoever he is - looks like a fantasy Viking type, and there's nothing resembling a cross anywhere there. The narration implies strongly that this is at least the guy on the throne in the heavens, whatever that might mean. It might be a guy on a throne in heaven, the leader of the rebel faction, or it could be a bad-guy "God" from Pullman or the Gnostics etc. - we just can't tell from this.

The only hints as to the motivations of this "heaven" are the references to wrath and penance. We don't know why and from what. It's an invisible, angry thing from on high demanding suffering from its putative subjects.

In light of all this, consider this completely arbitrary, grossly incomplete list of bits and pieces from Western culture:

• Pullman, as above
• Dan Brown (if anyone remembers him, but he was huge back in the day)
• Everyone who's read Paradise Lost and thought the Devil was the hero, whether in intent or effect
• Your typical Evangelical Christian's reaction to the use of statuary and institutional clerical hierarchies in Christian worship
• The guy in white from the second Matrix movie
• Westboro Baptist Church
• Chocolates and cars branded with references to devils, temptation, the seven sins, etc.
• Glorification of the notion of angels leaving heaven for ~true love~
• Pride Month (and the accompanying references to the other six deadly sins especially the ones made in jest)
• Old churches, Latin chanting and someone saying the Our Father quietly in the dark - used as tropes for creating a creepy horror-movie vibe
• This song by a very successful music group who are also kinda involved in video games
• The "God and Satan Are Both Jerks" and "Church Militant" entries in TV Tropes
• The entire Modern narrative about the printing press as a means of democratizing liberation of individuals from the capricious tyranny of the Church

Which leads us back to the Protestant comment: If I'm right about what this trailer is leading up to, then we're about to see a violent dismantling of a stifling, stale, calcified old "holy" order by "just one man" (rather than "One Man", i.e. Christ, but there might be analogues here as well though that's a tangent on its own), not connected with that old order, who hates the same evil that is opposed by/to that order, but is otherwise not connected to it (not in communion with it) and has been established as someone who gleefully destroys the images (faces, πρόσωπα) that belonged to human persons and which he believes have been corrupted. It's definitely not any sort of 1:1 allegory or anything even close, but if not rhyme then at least assonance.

As soon as you mentioned Phillip Pullman a light bulb went off in my head. I think that was what I was trying to describe back on page 1 of the thread with my concerns about the story regarding the inclusion of "Heaven" but was failing to do so. The story of Doom Eternal based off the trailer definitely has this "Doom but Phillip Pullman wrote it" vibe to me. It feels like there's two Hell's now (Hell: Red Version and Hell: White Version).

In any event, thank you for expanding on that. :>

[Matt]

It feels like there's two Hell's now (Hell: Red Version and Hell: White Version).

This is the best one-line objection to the bad sort of mainstream Christianity (and several other Abrahamic belief systems) I've seen in some time.

Thank you!


EDIT: And suddenly I have the worst idea for a DE-based TF2/Overwatch clone...

[Enjay]

Yep, that sums up how I feel about it too. Nicely put Nems.

[dpJudas]

I've mentioned before that, for me, modern games seem to have a fuzziness, a sort of disconnect between the immediacy of the button press or the mouse move and the result on screen. I'm not quite sure exactly how to describe it but there is an indirectness about modern games that is not present in older titles.

That's exactly what I'm thinking of. Some of it is technical, some of it design choices.

The technical part is input lag. A lot of newer games like to do compute shader style calculations one frame, then use it the next. The swap chain stuff also really want the engine to buffer up data to the GPU for maximum throughput. Catch is, it adds 8-16 ms of input lag, which is enough to be annoying but still playable if you never knew it could be lower. GZDoom deliberately waits for a frame to finish to minimize the input delay, but it does come at price. Most newer games would rather have that extra scene detail or effect instead.

The design choice part is longer fire start/end animations and stuff like having the camera look at your own hand when you push a button, jump into a vehicle, jump over a fence. It looks fancy (although nobody looks at their hand like that), which why they do it. Personally I no longer feel its me being the character when they add this stuff.

[neoworm]

As I am reading this thread it seems like a lot of people complaining that the grass is green. Apart from the game looking like Anthem. I don't even want know where did that came from.

There are aspects that doesn't fit with me. The glows for example, I felt like somebody is shining a flashlight directly in my brain most of the time, only changing color sometimes. Also the over the top arcade-like triple jumping in midair over the Mario like spinning firetraps is a step too far for me. It seems like it's starting to be more of a parody of itself, than a serious game, inevitably aiming to be as cringy and forced as Duke Nukem Forever (or Borderlands) in few more sequels.

But the rest? the run and gun gameplay? Speed of original DooM character feels more uncanny the better the graphics are, replacing it with grappling hook, dodges, double jumps and focus on verticality in levels is really good. It is unreal, but it's not uncanny, since you never do that in real life compared to running. The separation in original DooM worked because of the low-fi graphics, it doesn't work when the graphics are that much more advanced. And skill based movement is proven to be one of the most rewarding and fun gameplay mechanics. It was even in original Doom, this is just a natural extension. Finally somone realized that! And that the maps feels like a heightmap with few obstacles is really golden when it comes from the 2.5D DooM community.

Pardon my bitterness but this thread to me really feels like trying to find what to hate DooM Eternal for.

[dpJudas]

Pardon my bitterness but this thread to me really feels like trying to find what to hate DooM Eternal for.

Sorry that I wasn't amazed by what I saw. In this context I'm just a random gamer like anyone else, so take it for what it is - one opinion from someone on the Internet. No need to be bitter. I'm sure there are other gamers out there that liked what they saw.

[Darkcrafter]

What makes doom a doom? Maps, monsters, guns, pace, switches, teleports and doors and it all connected consistently to make an interesting and not boring game. Doom 2016 felt like an arena fighting game to me. The original 90's doom maps weren't meant to be arenas by any mean, but there were some arenas like E2M8, E3M8. E4M8 was an arena like fight but still featuring lots of cover where player could hide. Map 23 - barrels of fun in doom 2 featured almost the same set in fighting with spidermastermind in the middle of the map. What they did in doom 2016? They adopted it to nowaday mainstream wish, to crush everything blindly - have a brutal guy without mind, even Duke Nukem would be jealous of that. In Doom 2016 maps are like you walk from a coridor to coridor in a maze like way to get to another arena to rip and tear. It was enough of 2 hours of gameplay to delete this game and forget about it. Graphics? Decent in overall, but I can't forgive having blurry textures even on ultra, blood looks like a juice to me. The first time I seen the gameplay I thought it was a replica of Brutal Doom mod, but this mod is still better because of maps, it even features combat vehicles like tanks, AAs, choppers and robots, and it's all on ZDoom engine. What do we have in Doom 2016? Would be better if they made a decent remake of original Doom 2 assets and an SDK, but that is never going to happen because no one would buy it. Also why do you think Bethesda wanted to halt Vasyan's Doom Remake mod development? Is is because of name or that they're scared it would distract players from Doom Eternal? Is it like they are afraid that gopnik stuff will find more popularity and get a piece of Doom Eternal fame? Doom Remake 4 mod has a really nice look to the game, but not just that, it allows playing legendary Doom.

https://community.pcgamingwiki.com/topi ... egal-team/ I don't understand where those guys found their copyrighted material.

[Rachael]

Pardon my bitterness but this thread to me really feels like trying to find what to hate DooM Eternal for.

You have no room to complain, considering what things you do happen to find to be "legit" complaints.

I haven't forgotten. And I don't want to make an issue of this. I suggest you drop it regarding what other people complain about - everyone has a right to their opinion - and if they don't, then you sure don't either.

[wildweasel]

I s'pose this is the part where I just say, "Huh, looks pretty good, I'm into it."

[neoworm]

Sorry that I wasn't amazed by what I saw. In this context I'm just a random gamer like anyone else, so take it for what it is - one opinion from someone on the Internet. No need to be bitter. I'm sure there are other gamers out there that liked what they saw.

Sorry I don't want to suggest what should people like or not, I just think that the criticism in this thread is really misguided. Mostly because if you had a chance to work with iD on remaking DooM with features and capabilities of modern systems and you had freedom to do it however you liked, you would end up in similar place as DooM 2016 and DooM Eternal did.

What makes doom a doom? Maps, monsters, guns, pace, switches, teleports and doors and it all connected consistently to make an interesting and not boring game. Doom 2016 felt like an arena fighting game to me. The original 90's doom maps weren't meant to be arenas by any mean, but there were some arenas like E2M8, E3M8. E4M8 was an arena like fight but still featuring lots of cover where player could hide. Map 23 - barrels of fun in doom 2 featured almost the same set in fighting with spidermastermind in the middle of the map. What they did in doom 2016? They adopted it to nowaday mainstream wish, to crush everything blindly - have a brutal guy without mind, even Duke Nukem would be jealous of that. In Doom 2016 maps are like you walk from a coridor to coridor in a maze like way to get to another arena to rip and tear. It was enough of 2 hours of gameplay to delete this game and forget about it. Graphics? Decent in overall, but I can't forgive having blurry textures even on ultra, blood looks like a juice to me. The first time I seen the gameplay I thought it was a replica of Brutal Doom mod, but this mod is still better because of maps, it even features combat vehicles like tanks, AAs, choppers and robots, and it's all on ZDoom engine. What do we have in Doom 2016? Would be better if they made a decent remake of original Doom 2 assets and an SDK, but that is never going to happen because no one would buy it. Also why do you think Bethesda wanted to halt Vasyan's Doom Remake mod development? Is is because of name or that they're scared it would distract players from Doom Eternal? Is it like they are afraid that gopnik stuff will find more popularity and get a piece of Doom Eternal fame? Doom Remake 4 mod has a really nice look to the game, but not just that, it allows playing legendary Doom.

https://community.pcgamingwiki.com/topi ... egal-team/ I don't understand where those guys found their copyrighted material.

Original DooM very far from perfect. Playing original DooM or even original DooM2 without ton of mods nowadays is quite far from satisfying experience. Game design evolved and a lot of new mechanics that are fun and makes the game better also conflict with older mechanics. And a lot of stuff in original DooM is often result of compromise. Modern game engines are good, but they still have their limits and working around them influences how the game plays on basic level. I really think that both DooM 2016 and DooM Eternal are best result of combining modern and traditional and overall are better experience than original DooM. What DooM have are the sheer amount of mods, levels and nostalgia, that the modern games realistically can't ever achieve and it's unfair to say they are garbage because of that.

And about the DooM remake - I don't think it was done because it would be better than DooM Eternal and hurt it's revenue. My guess it that it used DooM remake in the name and because of how the copyright system in US works Vasyan could actually get a legal ownership of that name if Zenimax didn't interfere. Also I read it was packaged as standalone game, which is shady. I think he would not have a problem if it was a mod requiring doom.wad, because use of all DooM intellectual property inside a mod is explicitly permitted by the licence. Was it stupid on Zenimax part? Maybe. Was it malevolence and a way to boost DooM Eternal sales? No way.

EDIT:
From Vasyan's latest video:
"This is a new page for Doom Remake 4 mod. The previous one was taken down by ZeniMax because of legal issues. The new build of the mod is fixed to comply with any copyright/trademarks laws. The legal problem with the previous build was that it was distributed as a stand-alone release which was using Doom IP, the new build REQUIRES an actual original game which you will have to purchase from GOG or Steam."

[dpJudas]

Mostly because if you had a chance to work with iD on remaking DooM with features and capabilities of modern systems and you had freedom to do it however you liked, you would end up in similar place as DooM 2016 and DooM Eternal did.

Not really. You see, my critique here is against more than just Doom Eternal - I don't like the direction most games have taken the last couple of years. They consolidated on engines that are mainly designed for outdoor. I know a lot of people might not agree with me on this one, but I think there's a connection between tooling and what kind of creativity people come up with. After all, if something is too labor intense or painful to do, then you opt for other solutions.

Modern engines are brilliant at rendering static meshes and height maps. And I suspect most of the meshes are done in external tools (Blender, Max and Maya). A consequence of that is most games opt for what I think the industry calls "open world" games. In shooters that means either loot shooters, battlefield style, or battle royale. All three have a nasty tendency to consist of a beautiful skybox, some gorgeous terrains and good looking buildings. Anthem was one of those. The static nature of mesh making in the tools they use means they always create oversized and half-open buildings - essentially the opposite of what you would experience in a good Quake 1 or UT 99 map. Exploring and fighting gets dull and repetitive to me. I've been here before and I'm not entertained.

Id software had an opportunity because they are one of the few game studios left with their own engine. They could have made it better at something else. But on the video it looks like its the same old I've seen before - static mesh gallore with a hell skybox. Doom 3 wasn't very good but at least it tried to be its own thing. So yes, I'm complaining grass is green because I want a wild jungle. In games predictable stuff is boring. If I was part of their team I would have wanted to make something different.

[Matt]

So yes, I'm complaining grass is green because I want a wild jungle.

You just beat Nems for "best turn of phrase for expressing exactly what I wanted to say on a lot of subjects" on this thread.
[EDIT: if anyone cares, I'm revising this, Nems' comment still wins out because it's easier to make sense of out of context]

And re: hand-staring input lag, I've always really appreciated how they abstracted all that out in the original Quake.

[JPL]

Mostly because if you had a chance to work with iD on remaking DooM with features and capabilities of modern systems and you had freedom to do it however you liked, you would end up in similar place as DooM 2016 and DooM Eternal did.

Not really. You see, my critique here is against more than just Doom Eternal - I don't like the direction most games have taken the last couple of years. They consolidated on engines that are mainly designed for outdoor. I know a lot of people might not agree with me on this one, but I think there's a connection between tooling and what kind of creativity people come up with. After all, if something is too labor intense or painful to do, then you opt for other solutions.

Modern engines are brilliant at rendering static meshes and height maps. And I suspect most of the meshes are done in external tools (Blender, Max and Maya). A consequence of that is most games opt for what I think the industry calls "open world" games. In shooters that means either loot shooters, battlefield style, or battle royale. All three have a nasty tendency to consist of a beautiful skybox, some gorgeous terrains and good looking buildings. Anthem was one of those. The static nature of mesh making in the tools they use means they always create oversized and half-open buildings - essentially the opposite of what you would experience in a good Quake 1 or UT 99 map. Exploring and fighting gets dull and repetitive to me. I've been here before and I'm not entertained.

Id software had an opportunity because they are one of the few game studios left with their own engine. They could have made it better at something else. But on the video it looks like its the same old I've seen before - static mesh gallore with a hell skybox. Doom 3 wasn't very good but at least it tried to be its own thing. So yes, I'm complaining grass is green because I want a wild jungle. In games predictable stuff is boring. If I was part of their team I would have wanted to make something different.

Some unsolicited design analysis: the mainstream of FPS design shifting to consoles in the 00s had a profound impact on all of this. Turning around and looking up and down are harder and take longer on a gamepad. When turning around takes longer, fewer walls and more open spaces are better. Player skill and sophistication have progressed since the 00s, and Doom 2016 was able to take some advantage of that by having a fairly aggressive (for console FPS) amount of verticality and platforming. But an assumption of relatively relaxed scale arenas was embraced pretty deeply in the core design. I think this is part of why SIGIL has been a bit polarizing; the spaces are dark and cramped in that 1990s way and you can't run continuously in a circle through most of them, it's the anti-Doom2016 in certain ways. To be clear I enjoy both but I think Classic Doom offers greater latitude for level designers - you can have weird, hyper complicated, cramped spaces if you want, and then the very next area you can have a big open combat arena with dozens of monsters. The past 25+ years of wads have shown how this wide range of possible design sensibilities is valuable.