My Map Talk Corner (most recent: Eviternity 2 map11 by Guardsoul)

[baja blast rd.]

Felt like starting a thread to talk about whatever maps I feel like talking about. So that's what this is.

 

Adding a ToC for my convenience:

 

Spoiler

- "I Should Quit Mapping" by Brendondle, D5DA3 map28 (link...no that's this post, silly)

- "Crimson Manse" by Snaxalotl, Stickney Installation e3m3 (link)

- "Point Zero Reactor" by Guardsoul, Break//point map03, "The Sound of Muzak" by Roofi, Mayhem 2022 map03, and "Iced Sanctuary" by Stormcatcher.77, Bloodspeed map29 (link)

- Junk Food map06-map07, map32 by Billa, Phoenyx, and dashie (link)

- "Titan" by Guardsoul, Eviternity 2 map11 (link)

 

("I Should Quit Mapping" by Brendondle, D5DA3 map28, 2023)

 

 

The D5DA series -- Dubzzz's 5-Minute Design Assembly -- is both a pun on DSDA (Doom Speed Demos Archive) and a forced acronym, and the core idea behind it is that every map was made in 5 or so minutes (plus some grace period for testing). D5DA3 is the biggest one yet with 99 maps, which mathematically speaking makes it about three times better than most megawads. I'll be covering at least another map from this wad, because it is 'good'. I might cover some maps from other goodwads too.

 

"I Should Quit Mapping" by Brendondle is a map in the newly re-enlivened category of Disorientation Doom (also see Her Love Just Washed Away by Maribo, which among other things uses untextured walls and the resulting HOMs to obscure your awareness of where enemies are). "I Should Quit Mapping" relies on rendering rules associated with a fake-underwater effect that seem to be port-specific (GZDoom and Eternity break the effect, DSDA-Doom doesn't and neither does prBoom+, although the latter is not compatible thanks to UMAPINFO use. You can only see enemies in the sector you are currently in, provided line of sight does not pass through some other sector.  It just so happens the center of the map has a giant hurtfloor sector, so for 90%+ of the map you can't see what you are fighting, which includes a huge horde of revenants and hell knights and also eight cyberdemons you probably want to rush directly at, some time or another.

 

If that sounds super fucked, it is -- although it's not particularly extreme for how fucked D5DA3 gets, which you come to expect when you see Dubzzz on the mapper list of a project multiple times. 

 

Here all of these factors take what might be an entry-level slaughter setup and turns it into a very thrilling crowd control and awareness exercise. 

 

While playing it I noticed quite a few unique mechanics, such as: 

 

- using the plasma rifle or rocket splash as 'sonar' -- where plasma balls disappear tell you where the horde or a cyb is
- using your brief glimpses at where everything is to try your best to simulate where the enemies are 2-5 seconds in the future from that point
- using the superfluous green armors in the corner as guide rules for the edge of the map 
- noticing cybies that you can't see by paying attention to what the mid-tiers you can see are doing (if they're walking at some odd angle from you a cyb must be alive) 

All of that is rewarding to do, so although it is a crude-looking horde setup in a standard Amongus layout, it has a good amount of Gameplay to it. 

 

The key to beating the map is trying to save one mega to divebomb each cybie closet with. It's not pretty but that buys you essential cushion against getting wiped out if you a rocket hits you. You're likely to take at least one. That constraint shapes the rest of what you have to do, like finding a good movement scheme for getting past the initial crowd without using every mega. It's easy to exhaust the megas and try to hold out at the top, but since the number of cybs is well calibrated thanks to Mapping RNG (every decision in a five-minute speedmap is luck), that leaves you with cybs scattered around the map and not enough enemies to kill them, making that a questionable approach. I went with a zigzag (light blue) -> horseshoe (blue) -> loop-around (purple) pattern for that first stretch. This drawing is probably not at all precise since the automap is completely hidden during play and it's hard to even tell what the shape of the layout is.   

 

 

There are some points of visual interest too; it's actually a pretty map in a weird way.  A looping conveyor belt combined with a deep water effect changes the texture of the liquid you're submerged in every second. The evil eye switches go together well with the uniform water, and this "pure color with decorative props" style is an impressionistic look that has surfaced from time to time around the community, in one-texture restriction projects and in maps like Alien Vendetta's "Killer Colors" and JPCP's "My Fav."

 

Here's a whatever first exit. Not pretty but I don't want to spend too long on this. 

 

 

The beauty of five-minute speedmaps is when they end up fun, which happens, you can spend 30+ minutes playing them, which is an amazing ratio of time spent to enjoyment produced. More people should try their hands at it. It doesn't seem reasonable that you can make anything in five minutes, but the learning curve is quick because each iteration is very quick. I a lot of appreciation for low-effort maps (on the scale of minutes to a few hours) and unreasonably high effort maps (years+). Both allow you to go places that the middle ground does not -- and the mindset that a map generally "should" take a certain amount of time, like a week to a couple months, is very limiting. 

[baja blast rd.]

("Crimson Manse" by Snaxalotl, Stickney Installation e3m3, 2022)

 

 

Stickney Installation e3m3 is a cool take on the Tyson genre. Punching is commonly associated with fragility, but Crimson Manse turns you into a juggernaut, offering up a soulphere without foreplay, and a blue armor without much hesitation, eventually building tp a V-sphere you can use to plow through a third of the map's 60-odd enemies. Even before the invul though, it's impressive just how durable Doomguy is, and how reckless you can get away with playing knowing that there's no archies lurking, no mancubi to clog up an entire path, no PEs to set loose accidentally and start a lost soul orgy. Good Ultimate Doom pwads often play into the limited feature set (Return to Hadron's sheepdog evasion game happens because the only Doom mid-tiers, cacos and barons, are shitty at infighting each other so all the tanky enemies are super persistent). But you can arbitrarily restrict yourself in Doom 2 to match that. So the real potential edge comes in also playing into the player's knowledge of the limited feature set by allowing and cultivating play styles that a Doom 2 player would never confidently pull off without foreknowledge.  

 

The invul-berserk combo is something I've thought about doing before, and what I like about Crimson Manse's application of it is that the invul is out back for you to stumble on yourself. And when you do there's this flash of excitement, like, "Fuck yeah I get to use this." When you find it, it's your idea, rather than one the experience spoon feeds to you. Realistically, before that, you're going to be playing a half-potshot, half-evasion game. Because the flood of enemies that springs to life from the word go overwhelms you in these cramped spaces -- including sergeants, which are dangerous to punch, cacos, which are awkward to punch, and barons, which are tanky and against which not everyone will have punching technique down to a science. So the invul is a perfect table turner, and it adds to the rush that you have to sprint back around into the house to use it. It also adds a lot that the cacos and barons can be roaming in any of the mansion's numerous rooms, so during that early window you have to make educated guesses about which room to set up shop in. The invul makes the rocket launcher sort of a rocket fist in this map. The secret BFG is a BFG fist. Both Tyson weapons. Still counts. What? 

 

Visually, Crimson Manse looks sordid and soiled, like it has been lived in for a thousand years and at no point did anyone order a cleaning service. The texturing is impressionistic -- lava on ceilings, marble and wood with loose vertical alignment, quick shifts between bullet-riddled pipes and vine overgrowth and techwall and all sorts of wood/metal, with the consistent support-strip design and underlying house shape being the underlying constants that keep everything parseable. In this way it has Stickney Installation's signature approach of confidently leaning into chaotic design rather than cleaning up the rough edges (modern DTWID), and without taking it to more extreme, hyperactive levels (like Monti has made his signature). Props are everywhere: firesticks, impaled humans, skull shish kabobs, legs, those triangular floating fireskulls that always look to me like frog heads. Unlike the more atmospheric levels of Stickney Installation, lighting is done with a softer touch here, with 128 being the sustained bottom (112 the absolute lowest), and a lot being a uniform 160 -- which might be to avoid interfering with the frenetic gameplay. While it's not a Looker by any means it's instructive because the base assets chosen are pretty traditional and as a result, a utilitarian focus could easily look boring or bland -- but Crimson Manse's doesn't. And the main reason seems to be a mix of that chaotic texturing and not playing it entirely by the book with its design choices. There's enough weirdness and griminess to keep it fresh. The lava that doesn't hurt you, that strange composite crusher, the eye in the middle always watching, the legs always...

 

 

Bonus playthrough: 

 

Spoiler

 

[baja blast rd.]

Have been thinking about Point Zero Reactor (Break//point map03) lately, which with the set's Supercharge weapons and its vibrancy and foliage, reminds me of the early parts of Tango's Paradise despite being made 90% out of concrete. One reason it's been on my mind is Guardsoul's imposing architecture, which has the Hell Forged ethos of monumental structures that feel like they're out of a more advanced engine. He builds these structures on more modest floor plans than the hyperambitious layouts of authors like RJD and Bridgeburner, and it reminds me of the ZDoom design approach of 2010 and had me thinking he'd be someone I really want to remake e2 maps in ZDoom, like The Shores of ZDoom once planned to do -- and then I remembered he's actually doing a bit of that! Another reason is how the big central open yard is populated with a zoo of turrets and ledge-based enemies, and progression flows through this space several times (especially if you fall off) so the way I play it is I just pick off what I feel like picking off each loop through. Been cherishing that because it's a metaphor for chipping away at a big goal, bit by bit, instead of being overwhelmed by it.

 

 

 

~

 

Roofi's The Sound of Muzak (Mayhem 2022 map03) surges with bold, confident gameplay design choices that you only make when you're either a raw beginner or have aged into an expert: namely the huge glut of arachs and sergeants early, obviously way too many to be "normal" but it works and is fun (normalcy is overrated). Something I've taken away from Roofi's maps that I'm going to steal is how decorating a very function-first layout is about representation via lo-fi design as much as it is hi-fi detailing and small little bits of Doomcute. You see it in this map with the way that the crusher area feels like a very industrial space thanks to shape and texturing and crates and the crushers alone (and thanks to how it resonates with the rest of the map). You see it in the pressure plates connected to bars with wires, all the boxes with gear around them (which are better than your usual crate stacks because the textures are so fresh), and some other large pieces of equipment. Some spaces are vaguely garage-like despite having nothing resembling a vehicle. You can think of this as the layer one level above Doomcute: a whole area's construction represents something, rather than only small details. And yes, there's a really neat record player at the end and I love how that does very little else but closes the loop created by the map title and bgm, fourth wall breaking in a stylish way -- and in my mind adding unreality to the experience we just had, like was it real or was it mediated? 

 

 

 

~

 

I was going to write something long about Stormcatcher.77's Iced Sanctuary (Bloodspeed map29), and weeks back I took lots of notes for fun, but I don't feel like sharing it. Pay me. The most powerful moment in this map comes after wending through the shadowy complex of storage facilities and temples amid the icy mountains, which is a beautiful, tense slow burn. The scale is on the tighter side. The place feels vaguely haunted and symbols of death abound -- not in a really obvious, on the nose way, either, but it's just the very somber, Eternal-like, Russian grimness, and apart from some striking views of nature that are mostly unreachable, Stormcatcher rarely is tempted away from his intended mood to depict something unusually pretty, despite of course being capable of Infraworld: Coma Moonlight. In these parts, the hues are intentionally dull and grimy. The fights when they pose a bigger threat are about eating up your space (either directly or with strong area denial enemies). After 20-30 minutes, you come out of that feeling covered in dirt, despite the combat not being all that difficult. It's intentionally weighty.

 

 

 

And then...there's this scene, where the scale just explodes; it's all bright; an icy valley that towers above you; you can move freely, you can explore the wilderness that's been teasing you. Though the map is full of environmental storytelling and little bits of cleverness (like how 'turret pinkies' are not silly but actually hint at places you should look to get to), this is one of those maps that reminds you that the pure experience of setting and scale can be a story in itself. These days most maps tend to flesh out one location, and the mapping meta has shifted to valuing compactness and interconnectivity, which, fine, but there's something powerful about stringier, linear adventures that regularly change where the map takes place. Bloodspeed map29 does both, because every setting in the map is very layered and interconnected too -- although a lot of the effect here is how even this is hidden from you at times, so that you're surprised to find out, "Oh I can get up to all these towers too? They looked like scenery!" You hardly feel the map is trying to show off that aspect...it just happens. So it's like the stringy oldschool adventure is coiled up all around itself, like a ball of yarn, becoming the very layered world of Iced Sanctuary.  

 

  

[baja blast rd.]

I'm mapping for Junk Food 2 so I've been playing some BFG spam lately. This time I'll write about some. Playthroughs will probably be silly. Don't watch for actual BFG spam play tips.

 

Also it's generally fun to write about smaller, more playful maps like this specifically because I know there are people, who probably have sticks up *sequence of Dario Casali sound effects*, who think maps like this are not worth writing about, but I'm really not a fan of that snobby attitude. Besides, Big Serious Maps can learn a lot from smaller, less ambitious ones too.

 

~

 

Junk Food map06 by Billa, aptly titled "Dorito Quarry," is an unfolding arena map made of triangle-shaped wedges full of enemies that lower through as the map progresses. It's not a timed fight, but in the chaos of battle, it might as well be, because you're just running around desparately grabbing supplies and BFGing stuff and moving over tripwires that release more enemies.

 

While the whole map is loaded with more cells and megaspheres than you can realistically use, the horde constantly threatens to box you and completely prevent you from getting to those crucial supplies. (The arithmetic model towards balance of "supplies the player will use vs. supplies the map gives" doesn't work all that well even in regular maps, imo, but it fails pretty spectacularly in BFG spam maps.) These resources are placed only at the corners and edges of triangles rather than scattered around so that you can easily run over them, which has a cool effect of allowing supplies to be everywhere yet feel exclusive too, as if every triangle is a 'healing zone' but stranded at the same time. 

 

When the outer ring opens up, I like to pick one of the three cubbies and BFG the cybs there while U-strafing it. There are a few dozen cybs in this map and they will win infighting by a mile, so you might as well start whittling them down early. Being able to push to the outside doesn't trivialize the rest of the map because you still have all the other two closets' worth of cybies that are making their way towards you. Part of what's going on is that while the final unfolded arena is big, the circleable part of it is surprisingly small, thanks to the negative space of triangles not drawn -- so it's only during pure cleanup at the very end when most of the enemies are dead that you can run an easy loop around anything. It's a sign of good enemy composition and emergent gameplay that enemies plopped down onto the map retain a lot of danger until you've cleared everything out. And yes, it's okay if you have to use a ridiculous number of cybies to make that happen. This is Junk Food after all. 

 

Visually "Dorito Quarry" is pretty simple and shows that a map can get a surprising amount of affect from its title essentially telling you how to interpret it. Also I like how the COMP recolors (an old mainstay of CC4-tex) are reinterpreted as chips here. COMP is used quite a bit as Doomfood, the most famous example being "my fav" ... which is the second time in four posts I've said something about that map.

 

 

~

 

Phoenix's "Sunday Bloody Sundae," like "Dorito Quarry," takes a relatively simple arena and gets a lot of mileage out of pouring enemies directly into it without using teleporters, composing the horde so that they all show up when needed to be dangerous, with the right density to it, and ending on a final wave that is a shit ton of cyberdemons that can be scattered out in unpredictable ways, which makes cleanup more dangerous than the moments leading up to it.

 

Where "Dorito Quarry's" layout uses three-sided symmetry, "Sunday Bloody Sundae" mixes up the monster species quite a bit in its two structurally (but not geometrically) symmetrical closets. One closet has a sandwich of imps, revenants, more imps, and then cyberdemons; the other has pinkies, HKs, mancs (the mancs all infight with the cybs and die lol -- I didn't realize they were even there until looking at the map in the editor), and cyberdemons.

 

The asymmetrical enemy use gives you a surprising number of strategic options if you're looking for those. Do you use pinkies/HKs as meatshields? Do you try to clear those out quickly -- there are far fewer HKs than revenants -- and try to take out the six cybs on that side (the other side has seven)? Do you leave the slow-moving imps alive to box in the revenants for longer?
 

You get a lot of megas, which you want to use to go on the offensive, since you can easily survive carving through the horde of revenants when you are at full H/A right now and are about to be again in a handful of seconds. 

 

 

~

 

I was going to keep going with dashiefrickintyan's map08, "Knee-Deep in Tomato Soup," but maybe because I'm sleepy I felt sad BFGing so many relatively harmless cacodemons. So, to be fair, I wanted to play another map by the author but...

 

Spoiler

MAP32   : Cac'n'Cheese

 

What a monster lol

Okay, a little idea that I'm going to consider stealing from this is the marriage of yellow-black and FIREBLU's offsetting cool colors. It's a combo that is only vaguely hinted at here but I immediately thought of a cross between those red/blue "inside a cacodemon" maps (yes that is a mini-genre), maybe with a lot of FIREBLU, and the yellow-accented look here that might remind some people of Sunlust. 

 

 

The yellow highlights in black relief look is something a lot of people associate with Sunlust, but the look here is a lot more interesting than "cheap Sunlust clone," because there's so much here that Sunlust would not do, from the FIREBLU cylinder start, to the cacodemon layout, to the lower ceiling (Sunlust loves really proportionately tall areas), to texture choices like the repatterned METAL1 and COMPYELLOW that are very not Sunlust even as the colors are, and the bordering schemes are completely different relying less on clearly delineated sharp lines and more on a strong contrast of brightness between adjacent materials. 

 

I'm reminded a lot more of the JPCP-type maps that are heavy in void and highlights, the late '00s and early '10s "CC4 gothic highlight" look, the artsy feel of stuff like Old Still Life and Temporal Tantrum, even wads like Disjunction's later stretch, but this map is also really light-hearted compared to even the more playful examples of that, like a lot of Junk Food when it takes the look of familiar challenge wads -- making it a neat exercise in taking a style commonly associated with one mood (cold abstraction) and having it reflect a completely different mood. In Junk Food's world, Sunder would have monumental stacks of Kit-Kat architecture. Benjo's Toilet of the Gods would be...a giant salad. Even the flashing light effects, which are fast and frenetic, are not the slow ominous glows or the trippy sequences commonly associated with the style. It's more like we're in a big concert hall. 

 

I've been talking here mostly about the "Cac" part of the map. The Cheese refers to another part entirely and you're best off seeing that for yourself...

[Roofi]

On 7/3/2023 at 8:15 PM, baja blast rd. said:

 

Roofi's The Sound of Muzak (Mayhem 2022 map03) surges with bold, confident gameplay design choices that you only make when you're either a raw beginner or have aged into an expert: namely the huge glut of arachs and sergeants early, obviously way too many to be "normal" but it works and is fun (normalcy is overrated). Something I've taken away from Roofi's maps that I'm going to steal is how decorating a very function-first layout is about representation via lo-fi design as much as it is hi-fi detailing and small little bits of Doomcute. You see it in this map with the way that the crusher area feels like a very industrial space thanks to shape and texturing and crates and the crushers alone (and thanks to how it resonates with the rest of the map). You see it in the pressure plates connected to bars with wires, all the boxes with gear around them (which are better than your usual crate stacks because the textures are so fresh), and some other large pieces of equipment. Some spaces are vaguely garage-like despite having nothing resembling a vehicle. You can think of this as the layer one level above Doomcute: a whole area's construction represents something, rather than only small details. And yes, there's a really neat record player at the end and I love how that does very little else but closes the loop created by the map title and bgm, fourth wall breaking in a stylish way -- and in my mind adding unreality to the experience we just had, like was it real or was it mediated?  

 

 

I looked at this thread out of curiosity and didn't expect to see one of my maps! Very interesting analysis to read! I don't even know if I could analyse my own maps in this way!

 

In keeping with the Mayhem theme, "The Sound of Muzak" is a cross between 2 easy and somewhat unmemorable maps from Hell Revealed: Map 04 "Garden Terminal" and Map 08 : "The Jail". Just after finishing map, I did some compareason screens. 

 

Quote

 

"The Sound of Muzak" , directly named after this excellent Porcupine Tree's song  , and which uses the same track by the way. illustrates my desire to create fairly realistic environments while maintaining a moderate level of difficulty, without condemning the player to killing zombiemen and imps with a single shotgun. As a Hell Revealed Fan boy, I preferred to give a powerful SSG and RL, lot of box of shells and rockets boxes and several soulspheres as well so that the player can slaughter hordes of enemies with confidence.

 

You may also have noticed that there are no revenants or arch-viles despite the fairly extensive equipment. Similarly, some monsters can be killed behind bars to reward patient players.

 

And the music encouraged me to create a fairly wild and slightly dangerous environment, while maintaining a relaxed rhythm. A construction site with an industrial feel fits the bill!

 

Translate bands' song into level design is a trope I really enjoy.

Edited July 7, 2023 by Roofi

[Phoenyx]

4 hours ago, baja blast rd. said:

Phoenix's "Sunday Bloody Sundae," like "Dorito Quarry," takes a relatively simple arena and gets a lot of mileage out of pouring enemies directly into it without using teleporters, composing the horde so that they all show up when needed to be dangerous, with the right density to it, and ending on a final wave that is a shit ton of cyberdemons that can be scattered out in unpredictable ways, which makes cleanup more dangerous than the moments leading up to it.

 

Where "Dorito Quarry's" layout uses three-sided symmetry, "Sunday Bloody Sundae" mixes up the monster species quite a bit in its two structurally (but not geometrically) symmetrical closets. One closet has a sandwich of imps, revenants, more imps, and then cyberdemons; the other has pinkies, HKs, mancs (the mancs all infight with the cybs and die lol -- I didn't realize they were even there until looking at the map in the editor), and cyberdemons.

 

The asymmetrical enemy use gives you a surprising number of strategic options if you're looking for those. Do you use pinkies/HKs as meatshields? Do you try to clear those out quickly -- there are far fewer HKs than revenants -- and try to take out the six cybs on that side (the other side has seven)? Do you leave the slow-moving imps alive to box in the revenants for longer?
 

You get a lot of megas, which you want to use to go on the offensive, since you can easily survive carving through the horde of revenants when you are at full H/A right now and are about to be again in a handful of seconds. 

Thanks for the write-up! 
Yeah, everything about Map 07 was an accident born out of panicked and rushed development because I spent two out of my three hours relearning how to use UDB and then trying to fix a bug with the resources that caused a ton of HOMs (it was because it was in the wrong folder lmao). For a first map ever though, can't say it's the worst anybody's ever made haha.

[baja blast rd.]

("Titan" by Guardsoul, Eviternity 2 map11, 2023)

 

I'm outing myself as a Guardsoul fan, this being the second map of his featured in this thread after Breakpoint map03.

 

 

"Titan" has a couple of very cool contradictions. One is that it is the most grandiose mainline map to this point in the megawad, but the underlying layout structure is relatively simple, which is not obvious until you look at the automap (or read about it here lol). This is done not through building a simple arena of enormous proportions -- which is a much more common way to do that -- but through blowing up a layout that is about as complex as a small Scythe 2 map, meaning it's still a full layout, into immensity. Along with this, there's heaps of contrast in vibrancy of "Titan's" two types of settings: the buildings are cold, gray concrete bunkers -- very Winter's Fury in their particular layered-radial architectural makeup, but almost incomprehensibly tall, like something out of Sunder. The "concrete bunker" theme usually doesn't do anything special for me, but scale of it all, and more importantly the breathtakingly colorful wilderness around it, changes that entirely. (Also have to compliment the rock texture here. I tend not to mind tiling that much, but avoiding it entirely with a 512x1024 texture is even better.) Eviternity 2's natural foliage really pops, reminds me of something prehistoric, even though the pink trees are cherry blossoms lol.

 

 

What I also like about "Titan" is how the monster deployment matches the local setting around it -- which seems more coincidental than some deep scheme, but that counts too. The bunkers all have a mind of their own; they dispense memorable events like the big lost soul swarm and scripted, multi-phase fights that seem wired into the underlying pneumatics of the place. By contrast, the incidental combat in the wilderness regions is very, very simple: a lot of cliff imps (not being an obligate 100%-er, I don't mind skipping these) and roaming spectres and pinkies. The indoor sections that mix foliage and concrete bunker lie at more of a mid-point between those extremes, with simple traps and also one-shot designed setpieces that are part encounter, part freeform combat. A thought I've had about this approach to design is that even though it seems like an extra constraint, it's easier to pull off. If you're knowingly designing around that sort of theme-gameplay consistency, you can build different regions of the map knowing exactly what sort of gameplay they might have ahead of time, which in turn allows you to take certain liberties with how you shape areas. The wilderness portions of "Titan" don't really need to be designed for sophisticated combat, for example. 

 

As grand as the map actually is, the implied scale is far, far larger. The design suggests that we might be on the top of a large mountain, or at least an especially tall hill. The layout is split into a low part and a high part, connected with silent teleporters to simulate fake 3D, and what gives me this idea is how the low part gives us a view of rocky cliffs obscured by mist, implying that you can keep going down quite some vertical distance before finally hitting the ground. 

 

 

Another of my favorite parts about the structure is the penultimate area, when you've ascended to the top of the massive building you see from the early stages of the map. The mountains and trees I was noticing around me felt like scenery, like one of the vistas that we get to glimpse many times before. This would make sense because a designed encounter wouldn't let you simply hop off and escape, right? Then I realized -- you can just hop off. We've come full circle and that's the whole start region again. This is another pretty coincidental thing, but sometimes really enjoying a map comes down to those unexpected accidents that can't realistically have been designed for. (They can be noticed by the author and cultivated -- but this one feels really personal to my own perception.) 

 

 

Overall, the half of Eviternity 2 I've played so far goes beyond the "Great Synthesis" model of the prequel, and feels creatively innovative in many ways. But "Titan," with its medley of settings and all the different hints of influence that are present in it, is one of those maps that shows it isn't abandoning its "synthesis" roots either.