How long was episode one?

[thelamp]

No, I'm not talking about playtime. I mean this in terms of canonical story, how long do you think it took Doomguy to get from the lobby of Hangar, to the atrium of Phobos Anomaly? Depending on your answers, this may mean Doomguy must've needed to eat along the way, and maybe even find a safe spot to hunker down and take a nap for a while. Maybe he had to leave his weapons behind at each location in order to travel more quickly (this could be an explanation for pistol starts?) Feel free to post your own ideas on how long it might take to traverse episode one's crater, and any other complications of the journey you think Doomguy may have had!

[Captain POLAND]

Well if the medkits work anything like real life, he would have had to take time to apply first aid to himself.

 

And the soulspheres and stuff probably can serve the role of nutrition like food and drink... of course there are also the health bonuses

[DavitW]

I'd say a solid ten hours of work, maybe give or take an hour or two in either direction.

[out_of_service]

I'm gonna say Phobos and Deimos was a 1-2 day kind of deal. As for hell...timelessness.

 

 

Edited October 30, 2022 by Piper Maru

[Dusty_Rhodes]

I feel like it was about a week. My reasoning:

 

1. If we look at the map of Phobos in the intermission screens we see a large and well - developed military location. There are multiple structures that are a good distance apart. Since the story is about UAC experiments with teleportation, we can assume that teleporters aren't a well spread out device for transportation. So the Doom Marine is probably hoofing it. 

 

2. Demons are dangerous and require time to fight. Fighting is hard and requires recuperation. Doomguy probably has to scrounge for food and forage for a sleeping place to camp out in. So if he spent a while sleeping that significantly adds to the time. 

 

3. Doom 1, especially Knee Deep seems slower paced and horror focused at times, I bet the Doom Marine was being careful and taking it slow.

 

 

[XLightningStormL]

45 minutes ago, Dusty_Rhodes said:

1. If we look at the map of Phobos in the intermission screens we see a large and well - developed military location. There are multiple structures that are a good distance apart. Since the story is about UAC experiments with teleportation, we can assume that teleporters aren't a well spread out device for transportation. So the Doom Marine is probably hoofing it. 

 

 Originally Doom 1's exit areas had two doors, representing airlocks before it was later settled to just remove the second airlock doors (likely due to a mix of optimisation and to prevent confusion) so it does add credence to your theory.

 

However, realistically bases and colonies are interconnected so most likely Doomguy's downtime is spent hiding in underground tunnels and such, and due to obvious game design reasons (you shoot demons in dark halls) these moments of downtime aren't represented.

[LadyMistDragon]

3-4 days, probably, if we take into account how much time is spent on healing and such. Although that would depend on the player's individual skill. Hitscan isn't a thing in real life so that would probably be not as large of an issue.

[Maximum Matt]

I'd have to base it on that mod of E1 where all the levels flow one after the other, like all the bases were right next to each other

[Nevander]

Casually play through the episode at a relaxed pace, getting 100% stats. Probably takes a few hours. Add an hour or so for walking between map locations. There's your answer.

[SPG]

I voted for "a few hours" because I think we're lead to believe the Doom marine is an action-hero badass who plows through things (and takes on increasingly tougher challenges) but I could see it taking closer to a day -- approx. 7-14 hours, or no more than under an hour per each 'mission' as well as any respective downtime, and at maximum a few days. My reasoning:

1. Giving the benefit of the doubt that the Doom marine is taking his time per map, if you take more than an hour in the original for a given map, the time shown is "TIME SUCKS" -- I presume the Doom marine canonically "doesn't suck" and would not take longer. Keep in mind that the Doom marine would be familiar with the base layout (except for perhaps the secret map "military bunker"), so he would know where he's going. Even if we presume he acts like a first-time player, aiming to never die, never pick up medkits (for 'realism'), playing continuous but somehow need to dump everything besides your pistol between maps, playing the equivalent of UV with fast monsters enabled and never using the run feature or mouse (for 'realism'), and we assume he's playing Call of Duty style sniping every enemy from afar he can an taking an average of a minute per enemy, that would total less than 16 hours -- adding the time for rest below, "a few days" seems the reasonable maximum we could consider.

2. Folks have mentioned needing "healing time" and I think this can only be factored so much. Actual healing can range wildly from "trivial" cuts and bruises and such, which Doomguy would, at best, be taking pain relievers for and move on, to "never healing quite right" even after months/years. Any damage that requires addressing that he could do to himself (not counting sci-fi tech the med kits might be providing) would be things like bandages and splints and such, applying which would not take long. Attempting to wait until naturally and fully healed is too much of an unknown.

3. Folks have also mentioned eating and sleeping. Eating is not much of a time sink in this context (half-hour per break) and sleeping is only a factor after 14+ hours. Exhaustion could well be a factor, but sitting to rest for more than an hour isn't likely going to be much different than resting for the rest of a day. While I'm a pansy-ass who would need to stop and rest after every zombieman who so much at looked at me funny, I'm pretty sure the Doom marine is someone who would press on.

EDIT:
4. Some folks have talked about travel time between maps too. Here are my thoughts on that.

1. If there's no mass-transit between areas at all, it'd be designed for folks to get around on foot. A university campus would be a good comparison if that's the case. If there IS mass-transit, then we're talking the size of a small city. Either way, walking from one end to the other is anywhere between 15 minutes to a few hours -- it's not walking from the Shire to Mordor.
2. If we take the map as approximately to scale, the distance between areas is about the distance across a given mission area. If you generously presume an hour to walk a given mission area, then it's another hour to walk to the nearest next mission area.
3. To presume "a week" I think would require to presume that each mission area is the size of a city and the distances between them are akin to distances between cities (a bit of an extreme), something designed for need of mass transit but our Doom marine has to hoof it, where basically each area and travel to the next area (plus rest/sleep/etc.) requires a day each. That would have us presume that the things represented in the game are severely under-represented in scale.

Edited October 31, 2022 by SPG

[Somniac]

Assuming a reasonable distance between the buildings and a bigger scale than what's shown in game, plus assuming that Medkits and Berserks are loaded with dodgy stimulants, and the fact that Doomguy probably only gets a few brief power naps in whatever safe spots can be found (due to being wired + the constant threat of demons), I'd say around 72 hours.

 

The question of scale is the biggest one, I think. Stickney crater is 9KM in diameter, so we can assume the different buildings are spaced fairly well apart and that there's some way of getting from place to place - a monorail like in Doom 3, perhaps. Or maybe that's out of commission and he just walks between them, either across the surface or through underground tunnels. 

[spineapple tea]

13 hours ago, Dusty_Rhodes said:

1. If we look at the map of Phobos in the intermission screens we see a large and well - developed military location. There are multiple structures that are a good distance apart. Since the story is about UAC experiments with teleportation, we can assume that teleporters aren't a well spread out device for transportation. So the Doom Marine is probably hoofing it. 

 

Counterpoint: Mars cars. The UAC can build teleporters that summon literal hell but can't afford little dune-buggies down there?

 

As for your second point (which I can't figure out how to quote on mobile), and this does tie in actual gameplay length, you can easily finish E1 hitting a good chunk of the secrets in under 15 minutes. Yeah, killing demons would probably take a while, but Doomguy seems to be really good at it. Assuming he does kill demons with such proficiency in the 'canon', then he wouldn't really need the time to sleep.

 

I doubt that you actually see all of Doomguy's journey during the game, and we could assume that when we're not controlling him in between maps he eats in cafeterias and sleeps in lounge areas.

 

Conclusion: accounting for demon killing proficiency and in between level time, that 15 minutes in game may translate to a day or two at most (and if he did sleep, I believe it to be in very short power-naps).

Edited October 31, 2022 by Spineapple tea

[AbeAwesome]

Assuming that Doom Person™ uses vehicles, or is well conditioned to marching/hiking; and given that Phobos has a circumference of about 70 Kilometers—Doom Person™ could easily travel the around the entire moon, by foot, in half a day (much less using a vehicle).

 

Add playtime (assuming a decent player represents canonical events), even taking an extended rest or two, Doom Person™ would be at the Anomaly in about a day.

 

 

However, from the map it's clear that the events of Knee-Deep in the Dead take place in the confines of conjoined craters. I'm not sure if Adrian (I'm assuming Adrian did the intermission screens) had specific craters in mind; but having a look around maps of Phobos, I think the best candidates are 1-2 Kilometers from end-to-end. The biggest potential candidate location is about 8 kilometers from end-to-end. I think a couple of kilometers across makes sense if you assume the buildings on the intermission map are drawn to-scale (as opposed to iconographic representations), in which case, the whole ordeal could take mere hours! 

 

I think my vote is 1 day (or under).

[Dusty_Rhodes]

18 hours ago, XLightningStormL said:

 Originally Doom 1's exit areas had two doors, representing airlocks before it was later settled to just remove the second airlock doors (likely due to a mix of optimisation and to prevent confusion) so it does add credence to your theory.

 

However, realistically bases and colonies are interconnected so most likely Doomguy's downtime is spent hiding in underground tunnels and such, and due to obvious game design reasons (you shoot demons in dark halls) these moments of downtime aren't represented.

This is put much better than when I said it, but I totally agree. Kinda like how Half Life has downtime, I like to think Doom does too - it just isn't shown.

[slugger]

Canonically, he isn't healing because he always ends up on the next level in the exact same state. Doomguy values the safety of others above his own convenience.

Edited October 31, 2022 by slugger