From a technical standpoint you have it kinda backwards. Doing small scale indoor games is very well explored and all the engines are equipped for doing these kind of enviroments as well as actually possible. The challenge and what was always straining the engines are large scale, open areas. Even Rage struggled with these and was artifically constraining visible distances to able to render everything. The reason there is so much emphasis on open world large scale games is because poeple want these. It's kind of a backlash after ultralinear FPS games of 2000s including DooM3. If DooM3 engine could handle large game areas, they would do it. What you think is burden on creativity is the very opposite. And even though the modern design in shooters tends to be open and as you say stale and boring, leaning too mush on a spectacle and emerging gameplay instead of handcrafted one, it's not because of engine limitations, but because of demand for such games combined with a good player retention for such genres. And development of such games really strains the studios, because handling such large enviroments is exceptionaly hard and unpredictable. A lot of games necesitating new technologies tailored for a specific game even when it runs in the same engine as 5 other games that year.dpJudas wrote: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.
But you can disregard all of that because DooM 2016 is the polar opposite to all of that and huge exception too. I don't really know what you mean by static mesh galore, it doesn't make any sense. DooM 2016 have levels like Foundry which is on par of more complex Quake levels only with 20 years of visual fidelity on top. If that is not good enough, nothing will ever be. I feel like you just have imposibly high and honestly contradicting standarts.