Doom Eternal E3 2019 Thread

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neoworm
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Re: Doom Eternal E3 2019 Thread

Post by neoworm »

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.
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.
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.
Last edited by neoworm on Wed Jun 12, 2019 3:07 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Doom Eternal E3 2019 Thread

Post by TheMightyHeracross »

Quoting what I said in a DW thread:
I think you guys are looking way too much into this. Doom has never been a franchise for social commentary (well besides Doom Comic guy's little rant about environmentalism I guess).

I just interpreted it as shit is so fucked up that even Heaven's being invaded, and you gotta save it. Simple and in line with the Slayer's role as a defender, no edgy New Atheist nonsense.
You'll notice that in what appears to be the Heaven levels you're still fighting your typical demonic cast of zombies and imps and mancubi and whatnot, and indeed he does say "bring down the heavens' wrath," not "bring down the heavens". I don't really see any reason for this "God is just as bad!!1!" stance that some people seem to be taking from it.
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Re: Doom Eternal E3 2019 Thread

Post by dpJudas »

neoworm wrote: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.
And yet after game studios switched from engines like UE3 to UE4 none of them seem to do it at all anymore. I also question how good most of the early 2010's engines really was at it since their graphical budget seemed to limit 9 out of 10 games to boring linear games with invisible walls. Nevertheless, the video showed me graphics and gameplay of the type I don't like, so that's why it got a yawn from me. And that's why I wouldn't do the same if I was part of their team. Is every other part of the game different? I don't know, but I can only comment on what they showed in the video.

As for Doom 2016, I only played the open multiplayer beta. I don't want to comment too much on that game as it would require me to acquire a copy or watch playthrough videos. My general impression of it is that it probably has a good single player campaign, based on what other players say.
I feel like you just have imposibly high and honestly contradicting standarts.
Perhaps. I did after all live through the 1980-2010 games where almost each year had something amazingly new stuff.
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Re: Doom Eternal E3 2019 Thread

Post by Matt »

Heracross: Re: your first sentence in that quoted post: to not examine and think about this stuff is to just default to your worst vices when such issues are inevitably raised. I have a lot more complaints about the direction these new games is going in that respect, but they're definitely the sort of thing that belongs in the political rant container on my discord rather than ZDF.

If we were just looking at the gameplay I'd agree that doomguy is still just fighting the same monsters in a different setting which implies no more than that the monsters are even there too, but if that were the case all the talk about bringing down the heavens' wrath, etc. is just incomprehensible gibberish.

That said, maybe it is, but that would assume there are layers of unreliable narrator meta that would definitely go against that whole "don't think about it doom is dum lol" take.
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Re: Doom Eternal E3 2019 Thread

Post by Drake Raider »

I thought it looked fantastic, like a logical progression of the previous game. And like Neoworm rightly said, Doom on it's own has alot of sluggishness in the execution compared to modded. Honestly, when I play it, I have alot of problems with how bullet-spongy the enemies are starting with episode 2. Doom 2 corrected alot of this with the SSG, but when you just have a horizontally spreading shotgun as your most efficient weapon, and the majority of the enemies you face take more than one point blank shot, it hasn't aged well for me.
One thing I loved about the new Doom was that the Glory Kill function gave me a way to skip the ammo sinks on those occasions I got sick of spending ammo. And the higher weapon power meant (usually, at least) that I wasn't required to solve that problem nearly as often. There were definitely things I missed, like larger groupfighting and infighting, which DooM 2 did so well, but if everything else works it's certainly not necessary, and the on-screen monster count certainly seems alot higher than 2016.
Ironically, I have been progressing into a DPJudas' perspective of the first episode being the best, but more due to the non-linearity and responsiveness of combat. And the last new one definitely suffered from linearity, so it's a valid concern. As they didn't eliminate freedom completely, though, it still worked, and the new one does seem to have more alternate routes and side exploration than it did from what I saw (Like secrets on the other side of impassible obstacles, implying round-about access, and occasions where paths for forward progression seemed ignored by the players.) I could be wrong, but I'm super optimistic.

When it comes to the religious themes, it's always been something I loved about the series. Episode 4's biggest appeal to me was the names and artstyle, and I love how they're drawing from the KJV writing style in elements like the Slayer's Testament. I'm okay with someone being creative and artistic with my religion, even if the worldview is different. Matt said something about being more fantasy themed, and all the best fantasy is built from things people really believe. Like Morrowind, Tolkien, or Star Wars, a constructed world is much more believable when the question of "could it be?" is still there. (For the record, I'm a traditionalist orthodox Lutheran. Just so anyone who understand the implications of that can compare and contrast the setting with my worldview and see both the things I hold true, and how some things have always been wildly different in the series. It's just a lot of fun for me, I live for the creativity.)

Fun fact, DPjudas, the last thing I hated about 2016 (besides monster arenas) was not enough outdoor areas. XD It's also why it took twenty years for me to fully understand why the first episode was so good, because I didn't understand why anything that was all techbase could be good at all. Your taste is completely valid, of course, I just thought the contrast was funny.
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Re: Doom Eternal E3 2019 Thread

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Matt wrote:to not examine and think about this stuff is to just default to your worst vices when such issues are inevitably raised.
I'd say the opposite. If you try to read into things that someone never said, you end up using your own vices and biases as the basis for interpretation. Doom has been about dumb fps fun, the gaming equivalent of a summer blockbuster explosion-fest. It's not trying to say much more than that. Humans are pretty good at seeing things that aren't there, finding patterns where there may be none. When you see something that isn't really there, what are you actually looking at?
If we were just looking at the gameplay I'd agree that doomguy is still just fighting the same monsters in a different setting which implies no more than that the monsters are even there too, but if that were the case all the talk about bringing down the heavens' wrath, etc. is just incomprehensible gibberish.
"Bringing down the heavens' wrath" isn't incomprehensible gibberish. It's a colloquialism that means "I"m gonna mess shit up for you like you've never seen." Demons invaded UAC bases, he fought them. Demons invaded earth, he went after the big bad itself. Demons now invading heaven? Time to step it up and show them vengeance like never before... to bring down the wrath of heaven upon them.
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Re: Doom Eternal E3 2019 Thread

Post by Matt »

But it has to be thought through to get to the point of being able to say that a given thing is "just" that thing.

Catch is, it never is "just" that thing. The specific aesthetic choices and backstory of the original Doom make no sense without the context of the American experience and disillusionment in numerous military conflicts in the decades leading up to it,* as well as the entire cinematic storytelling tradition implied by "summer blockbuster explosion-fest". It's hardly "seeing what isn't there" to acknowledge and even explore that, without ending up in something that's actually really out there like saying Doom is really a hero's journey to overcome the repressed feminine or that the new games are a Russian psyop to get Trump re-elected.

And sometimes the other thing really is there.


The "colloquialism" interpretation still makes no sense given we're actually seeing a bunch of stereotypical "heaven" sort of imagery including a humanoid figure in white with wings and a glowing bearded man on a throne.

And it's very obviously not the doomguy, or someone trying to support the doomguy's mission, who's saying all this. In context it's clear that this narrator is talking to the doomguy saying he will "bring down the heavens' wrath" on him, the doomguy, if he continues this crusade against the hellspawn.

For the first part it could be interpreted as someone talking to the hellspawn, with doomguy as the vehicle of that wrath, but "you are but one man" makes that interpretation impossible.


*EDIT: Just for the record:
Spoiler:
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Re: Doom Eternal E3 2019 Thread

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Matt wrote:But it has to be thought through to get to the point of being able to say that a given thing is "just" that thing.

Catch is, it never is "just" that thing. The specific aesthetic choices and backstory of the original Doom make no sense without the context of the American experience and disillusionment in numerous military conflicts in the decades leading up to it
There's a difference between using context to convey a setting, and making a statement specifically about said context. Doom wasn't telling you to be disillusioned about military conflicts that led up to the game's creation (nor telling you not to be), but still used it because people would either consciously or subconsciously understand the kind of setting the game took place in. We're not talking about something like First Blood, which was saying something about the trauma of war and the PTSD suffered by soldiers after they get back home, while being portrayed with well-done action scenes.
In cases where writers/creators actually made a point to put it there, sure. There's a difference between people missing a point that a creator specifically tried to make, and people not looking for a point that the creator didn't have to begin with (and a yet another difference with people who can see and appreciate the point made, but still enjoys it for the "cool robot").
The "colloquialism" interpretation still makes no sense given we're actually seeing a bunch of stereotypical "heaven" sort of imagery including a humanoid figure in white with wings and a glowing bearded man on a throne.
I don't see how that discounts it.
And it's very obviously not the doomguy, or someone trying to support the doomguy's mission, who's saying all this. In context it's clear that this narrator is talking to the doomguy saying he will "bring down the heavens' wrath" on him, the doomguy, if he continues this crusade against the hellspawn.
It's ambiguous. Trailers are notorious for splicing scenes or lines out of context to give the impression of something that's not actually in the game, and clearly we don't see who's actually saying these lines or what's going on when they're said. A trailer is for marketing, to get an audience excited for the kinds of things they''ll experience (blasting demons as a defiant anti-hero, in this case), not to 100% accurately portray elements of the game.
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Re: Doom Eternal E3 2019 Thread

Post by Kinsie »

Story-wise, the word from Hugo Martin in a Giant Bomb interview is that they're aiming for a similar tone for their Doom stuff to the original Robocop (and very pointedly not the sequels): "A ridiculous premise, sincerely executed". They'll be telling it in much the same way as they did in the previous game - lots of lore about their heavy metal comic book universe which you can pointedly ignore if you don't care, but you can get deep into trying to filling in the blanks of if you do.
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Re: Doom Eternal E3 2019 Thread

Post by NeuralStunner »

Matt wrote:the new games are a Russian psyop to get Trump re-elected
thats it beth youve lost a customer :evil:
Kinsie wrote:They'll be telling it in much the same way as they did in the previous game - lots of lore about their heavy metal comic book universe which you can pointedly ignore if you don't care, but you can get deep into trying to filling in the blanks of if you do.
Even as someone who tends to be very lore-focussed, I understand there's a pint where you need to rememberBellisario's Maxim and move on. Action games usually go in this pile because, well, they're about action. Storytelling usually goes on the backburner.
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Re: Doom Eternal E3 2019 Thread

Post by Enjay »

OK, been dwelling on this, I've read this and other threads, discussed it at work and I think my attitude has hardened.

I guess I'd sum up my feelings by saying that there is very little in those videos that say "this is inherently Doom" to me. So, I'm really just not that interested in it.

Sure, it's got all the Doom themed bad guys and hell tropes yadda yadda. However, judging it on what I can see of the play alone, it could just as easily be a reskinned totally different FPS game in the same way that a sprites and textures only replacement of Doom would still be Doom and not Dark forces, Wolfenstein, Daggerfall, whatever. The gameplay looks horribly generic and un-Doom-like and while the enemies do look pretty decent - so what? It really strikes me as the kind of game that would have me reaching for god mode very quickly so that I could blast through it to quickly see the cool stuff and then quit, never to play again.

And, if it is just a series of staged "skate park arena" battles in a fake-open mystic-bullshit-themed world, honestly I can't imagine anything much more tedious. This is not the game that will break my boycott of Steam.

It also really underlines to me that id has most definitely gone (we've known this for a long time now) and is just a badge on a changeable, characterless division of a much larger company. As I said, there is nothing I see here to say that the game is inherently Doom and there is nothing here to say that it is inherently id either. Even though I was harsh-ish about Romero's Sigil, there is far more individuality in that map set for a 25 year old game than I see in these videos.

TL:DR Doom Eternal looks like a standard modern shooter wearing a Doom-themed skin. Boring.
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Re: Doom Eternal E3 2019 Thread

Post by Nash »

Sounds like what people really want is "Doom 1 / Doom 2 but with triple A graphics". You want Doom 1-style levels, 7 - 8 weapons, a good mix of closed/tight spaces, tech bases, and some outdoor areas, key hunting, and high monster count (50 - 100 per level).

Someone should just make this game in GZDoom. :P
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Re: Doom Eternal E3 2019 Thread

Post by Enjay »

I mean, yes, to a certain extent. The things that I really enjoy about Doom seem to be mostly absent from this one. But more than that, I want some originality and not just generic rehash #2187.
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Re: Doom Eternal E3 2019 Thread

Post by Matt »

Enjay wrote:It also really underlines to me that id has most definitely gone (we've known this for a long time now) and is just a badge on a changeable, characterless division of a much larger company. As I said, there is nothing I see here to say that the game is inherently Doom and there is nothing here to say that it is inherently id either. Even though I was harsh-ish about Romero's Sigil, there is far more individuality in that map set for a 25 year old game than I see in these videos.

TL:DR Doom Eternal looks like a standard modern shooter wearing a Doom-themed skin. Boring.
Heh, this reminds me just now: "Hey I got you that demon-shooting game that starts with a D that you like"

Someone on Tumblr (was it IMX?) summed it up very well: remember that Doom started as a sci-fi horror game. D3 for all its alleged faults lived up to that. D4+ tried way too hard to be everything D3 wasn't and the sci-fi horror baby got thrown out in the bathwater.
Last edited by Matt on Thu Jun 13, 2019 1:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Doom Eternal E3 2019 Thread

Post by Enjay »

Matt wrote:Someone on Tumblr (was it IMX?) summed it up very well: remember that Doom started as a sci-fi horror game. D3 for all its alleged faults lived up to that. D4+ tried way too hard to be everything D3 wasn't and the sci-fi horror baby got thrown out in the bathwater.
I think that really does cover what I'm seeing and feel. Much as I have ragged on Doom3 over the years and I really still feel it was an incredibly mediocre game with serious flaws, I do see far more in it that appeals to me in the basic style and premise of the game than what I'm seeing with Doom Eternal.


BTW, I'm not sure if I've seen it explicitly stated anywhere. Is there any chance the name "Doom Eternal" is any kind of reference/homage to the original 1996 Eternal Doom mod (and sequels) or is it just coincidence?
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