What If: Alternative endings for E1M8

[TotalTS]

It's already been around 27 years since the release of Doom. Romero had already did the E1M8 Remake.
But the final teleport and the final text always remained the same since the Shareware release, no matter if you had the Registered version.

I know it's a bad ending, but I was thinking... What if we change the final teleport to:

Skill level 1-3. Good Ending:
*The big fat reward we didn't get for finishing the First Episode.
*A direct conection to The Shores of Hell.

 

Skill level 4-5. Ultra Good Ending:

*A possibility to prevent Daisy's death and the demons arriving to Earth.

 

Skill level 1-3. Bad Ending:
*Vanilla Ending.

Skill level 4-5. Nightmare Ending:
*A possibility to an even worse ending.

And other ideas are welcome. I could do it myself you know, but wanted to know what other people think about this.

[Boaby Kenobi]

1 hour ago, TotalTS said:

*A direct conection to The Shores of Hell.

 

The PlayStation edition of Doom features this as it's not episodic. As that was my first experience with Doom I thought it was the same on PC, despite the fact that the game tells you to continue by selecting episode 2, so when I first played the original PC version I thought you could continue on like on PSX and I tried to "beat" map 8 several times before I realised I had to start afresh with E2.

[seed]

No need to really hypothesize about an alternative ending honestly, mainly because it's not really needed anymore. Romero already presented his own take a few years back on how this and E1M4 would look like if they were designed by him, and various console ports which turn the games into a continuous experience such as PSX Doom already provide a different answer, in addition to different intermission screens, which are also voiced.

 

But I do wonder why id Software never bothered to change the intermission screen for E1M8 at the time, it was kept exactly the same as it was in the original Shareware and there's been so many updates and re-releases since + Ultimate Doom itself, yet it forever stayed unchanged. I can't believe they were this lazy so I'm thinking they simply wanted to keep it this way for some inexplicable reason. Maybe they thought it was funny?

Edited July 11, 2020 by seed

[TotalTS]

22 hours ago, Boaby Kenobi said:

 

The PlayStation edition of Doom features this as it's not episodic. As that was my first experience with Doom I thought it was the same on PC, despite the fact that the game tells you to continue by selecting episode 2, so when I first played the original PC version I thought you could continue on like on PSX and I tried to "beat" map 8 several times before I realised I had to start afresh with E2.

I wasn't aware of this, just checked out in Youtube, is kinda what I was aiming for but no intermission screen is a little weird.

 

20 hours ago, seed said:

No need to really hypothesize about an alternative ending honestly, mainly because it's not really needed anymore. Romero already presented his own take a few years back on how this and E1M4 would look like if they were designed by him, and various console ports which turn the games into a continuous experience such as PSX Doom already provide a different answer, in addition to different intermission screens, which are also voiced.

 

But I do wonder why id Software never bothered to change the intermission screen for E1M8 at the time, it was kept exactly the same as it was in the original Shareware and there's been so many updates and re-releases since + Ultimate Doom itself, yet it forever stayed unchanged. I can't believe they were this lazy so I'm thinking they simply wanted to keep it this way for some inexplicable reason. Maybe they thought it was funny?

Yeah I know there's no need since in the last 25+ years no one (even Romero) changed it, but some people complained about it. That's why I wanted to open the possibility of an alternative ending/timeline.

Still have no idea why never changed the intermission screen. Also the final line "To continue the DOOM experience, play The Shores of Hell and it's amazing sequel, Inferno!" it's totally intended for the Shareware release.

[seed]

52 minutes ago, TotalTS said:

Yeah I know there's no need since in the last 25+ years no one (even Romero) changed it, but some people complained about it. That's why I wanted to open the possibility of an alternative ending/timeline.

Still have no idea why never changed the intermission screen. Also the final line "To continue the DOOM experience, play The Shores of Hell and it's amazing sequel, Inferno!" it's totally intended for the Shareware release.

 

Yea, exactly.

 

Honestly, I think I'd just keep it the same, but only change the final part with something along the lines of "going deeper and deeper into the plague", and remove the Shareware reference.

[xttl]

On 7/11/2020 at 2:33 AM, seed said:

But I do wonder why id Software never bothered to change the intermission screen for E1M8 at the time, it was kept exactly the same as it was in the original Shareware

 

They actually did change it a tiny little bit after 0.99 (the first shareware version): any newer exe will say "play" instead of "buy" here (near the bottom). :-)

 

[Solmyr]

On 7/11/2020 at 6:33 AM, seed said:

But I do wonder why id Software never bothered to change the intermission screen for E1M8 at the time, it was kept exactly the same as it was in the original Shareware and there's been so many updates and re-releases since + Ultimate Doom itself, yet it forever stayed unchanged. I can't believe they were this lazy so I'm thinking they simply wanted to keep it this way for some inexplicable reason. Maybe they thought it was funny?

Probably they didn't care enough, as having a story was considered superfluous, and Sandy Petersen wrote all of the "story" of the text screens, he once said that he couldn't understand what was all the fuzz about Doom when it was released, as he considered it nothing more than a virtual version of whack-a-mole. 

Maybe it's an oversight, just like the shotgunner stuck in a wall next to a barrel on map 02: "Underhalls" in Doom 2, that shotgunner wasn't stuck in the early beta versions.

Edited July 12, 2020 by Solmyr

[Gifty]

I always thought the ending of E1 was really cool in the context of the full 3-episode game. You're finally cornered, the demons absolutely destroy you, and then... you come back? Except, from that point onward things start getting truly weird. The game starts getting increasingly surreal once you've come back from the dead. I always had the idea in my mind (Which Quake 3 seems to support) that whatever happened to Doomguy at the end of E1M8, it sentenced him to an eternal half-life of murder and interdimensional vagrancy.

Edited July 12, 2020 by Gifty

[seed]

4 hours ago, Solmyr said:

just like the shotgunner stuck in a wall next to a barrel on map 02: "Underhalls" in Doom 2, that shotgunner wasn't stuck in the early beta versions.

 

No, the Shotgunner was also fine in version 1.666 and, if I recall correctly, version 1.7.

 

Then 1.8 borked it pretty badly and 1.9 fixed most, although not all the issues. The shotgunner was not lucky.

Edited July 12, 2020 by seed