What is actually the "essence" of doom?

[Cutman 999]

Doom as a franchise changed a lot in tone and approaches on how the games are made to a point of what originally tom hall write in the doom bible completely unreconcilable. Since i fucking hate the argument of "X is a bad Y, but a good Z Y" i want to hear what you think have all the doom properties in common in terms of tone, gameplay and atmosphere.

[openroadracer]

For me, the essence of DooM boils down to something simple:

Running around like a maniac while blasting demons in the face, with an intense metal soundtrack keeping me revved up for battle.

[Mr Masker]

They're all fps games about shooting demons, that's the basic level of it. There's probably some sort of research facility where you fight the demons too, and the monsters are probably ranked from lil stupid demon guy to big tough demon guy. Music can be basically anything at this point, from Midi guitar to metal to atmospheric sounds.

 

Really... Doom's "essence" seems to just depends on the game you're most familiar with, usually between the Classic Dooms like 1,2, Final or the New Dooms like 2016 and Eternal. But even then you can find a divide between 2016 and Eternal, especially in either game's tone and some gameplay, with Eternal being more cartoonish and tongue in cheek in nature, while 2016 tries to keep a bit more seriousness and groundedness.

 

Really at the end of the day, Doom is broad enough of a series that basically anything can "technically" count as in the spirit of Doom, from an atmospheric horror shooter to a metal blasting, head popping, hookshotting fps.

Edited September 21, 2023 by Mr Masker

[Gougaru]

Gun go boom bad monsters die

[Maximum Matt]

Plus, the scarynicity

[Osmosis Bones]

[OniriA]

3 hours ago, Cutman 999 said:

What is the essence of...

 

SHOOT THOSE MOTHERF**KERS!!

 

Grab that f*ckin health man!

 

TAKE COVER MOTHERF**KER!

 

*duuduu duu dunf dunf duuduu*

 

"aaaahh, oohh my god maan, that was fuckin' crazy, wooh! *cracks open a can of coke* "gluck, gluck, gluck,gluck!".. "aahh, on to the next one." *click, clack*

 

[Repeat]

Edited September 21, 2023 by OniriA

[TheMagicMushroomMan]

I think pretty much anything is fine, with even DOOM RPG fitting in great with the rest of the series. I think it takes something like Mighty Doom for me to say "this isn't Doom anymore".

Edited September 21, 2023 by TheMagicMushroomMan

[Cutman 999]

5 minutes ago, TheMagicMushroomMan said:

I think pretty much anything is fine, with even DOOM RPG fitting in great with the rest of the series. I think it takes something like Mighty Doom for me to say "this isn't Doom anymore".

what is about that weird game to not be like that?

[TheMagicMushroomMan]

7 minutes ago, Cutman 999 said:

what is about that weird game to not be like that?

The idea of using the toys from Doom Eternal could have made for a charming game, but the fact that the game was just a reskinned Archero complete with microtransactions and energy meters really made it the total opposite of charming. What I don't want Doom to be is some other unrelated game wearing a Doom-related skin asking for my credit card number just to play.

Edited September 21, 2023 by TheMagicMushroomMan

[INfront95]

Technology and Demons, nuff said.

[MrFroz]

Killing hordes of demons so that you end up literally knee-deep in the dead. To that effect, it was nice that in the first two games the corpses of the monsters you killed remained, whereas in Doom 3 they disappeared a short while after dropping dead. While understandable from a technical point of view, it still lost some of the essence.

[OliveTree]

i want to say something like "personally doom is at its doomiest when it uses groundbreaking technology to make me feel threatened and powerful, and when the creative conflict between technology and demonic imagery is on full display" but that would be missing the mobility aspect.

 

doom 3 is still about mobility by the way. thats actually why the shotgun works the way it does. all those mods that choke the spread actually make the game less doom-y

[Maribo]

Strange, icy things, long dreams, most violence, monochromatic love stories, cuteness, goofiness, big screen blockbusters, pure mud, silly tributes, incomprehensible nightmares, sketchbook drawings, personal gifts, thinking outside the box, getting lost in the world.

 

I think that thanks to the nature of Doom being open source, its essence was able to evolve into much more than "killing demons to the tune of midi-fied metal music". From a more commercial perspective, the prevalence of certain nu-Doom (especially Doom Eternal) design choice would suggest that the essence of Doom is summed up as "RIP & TEAR", but I can't really subscribe to that after playing so many fan works that aren't aligned with that view in the slightest. Doom's essence is whatever the person who paints the WAD file chooses it to be. Sometimes it's an E1 tech base homage, sometimes it's a brutalist slaughterfest, sometimes it's walking in the void with nothing but yourself and your thoughts. It's all Doom in the end, just thrown into a kaleidoscope.

[OliveTree]

2 minutes ago, Maribo said:

the prevalence of certain nu-Doom (especially Doom Eternal) design choice would suggest that the essence of Doom is summed up as "RIP & TEAR"

ive always thought this was a kind of effective piece of brand revisionism. Doom 2016 and Eternal are REALLY good at promoting a specific player attitude and I think it harkens back to Doom. But there's a reason most people made fun of the comic "Rip and Tear" is from, including Doom fans...because its like, a ridiculous simplification of Doom

[Murdoch]

Doom was lightning in a bottle. The right elements of design and technology melded together almost perfectly, at just the right time in the development of gaming. The core of it though, is how how it feels while playing it. The movement, the pace of the combat, the rhythm of it all.
 

3 minutes ago, OliveTree said:

ive always thought this was a kind of effective piece of brand revisionism. Doom 2016 and Eternal are REALLY good at promoting a specific player attitude and I think it harkens back to Doom. But there's a reason most people made fun of the comic "Rip and Tear" is from, including Doom fans...because its like, a ridiculous simplification of Doom

 

I actually think Doom 2016 came about as close as possible to replicating the feel of classic Doom as one could in a modern engine. For me, anyway. Obviously, everyone reads things differently. They grossly overthought Eternal in every conceivable way, but Doom 2016 still had that kind of simplicity and purity to it.

Edited September 21, 2023 by Murdoch

[LoatharMDPhD]

SHAMELESS SELF PROMoTION/Play testing requests...

 

Doom2.IWAD Boom cplvl 9, no crouch/jump, freelook ok. MAP25... {NPDmk26.wad}

 

think this distills the core of the schism...

DigitalCharnelHouse.zip

[Dreamskull]

The essence of Doom is fighting against and overcoming Hell itself within a futuristic science fiction universe, An Iconic Demon Beastiary vs Advanced Military Arsenal. Since the premise is laughable, considering you cannot realistically fight against and overcome Hell, there are concept variants. 

 

Doom 1 and 2 

3 and 64,

16 and Eternal.

 

Story is loose, but humanity dooms itself with its own advanced technology in the future via demons

 

There are 3-6 modes

 

"This is a cerebral experience that attempts to make me unsettled as I lose my bearings as I delve deep into Hell - NoOoOoOo, I am going insane!"

"Im already insane! I like to slowly fight monsters that teleport in and around a dark environment every 10 feet with bad weapons" 

 

"How bad is humanity? Bad enough to want to work with demons? There is an experimental technology? Lets go find it and sightsee"

"I am stranded, with limited arsenal, in space or in the bowels of hell, with the desire to go home, without any inkling where to go next"

 

"I am an 80s Action packtion hero on mission to save humanity from a demonic invasion"

"I am a warhammer 40k Primarch"

Edited September 21, 2023 by Dreamskull

[Sena]

Probably a lot of bones, metal, and blood. May contain traces of nuts.

[LoatharMDPhD]

1 minute ago, Dreamskull said:

"I am stranded, with limited arsenal, in space or in the bowels of hell, with the desire to go home, without any inkling where to go next"

 

[OliveTree]

11 minutes ago, Murdoch said:

I actually think Doom 2016 came about as close as possible to replicating the feel of classic Doom as one could in a modern engine. For me, anyway. Obviously, everyone reads things differently. They grossly overthought Eternal in every conceivable way, but Doom 2016 still had that kind of simplicity and purity to it.

I dont disagree with this, I actually think Doom 2016 is on balance probably my favorite mainline Doom game, just because of the convergence of tone and gameplay and etc. But my observation was about the whole superpowered "rip and tear" stuff, specifically. I tend to think it makes the game too much about how awesome and unstoppable this guy is, when Doom was never about being a superhuman, it was about being a paraplegic maniac on a rocket powered wheelchair holding a chaingun any more than wolfenstein was about that. That's a memory we transpose onto every old fps game because they focused so much on speed and novelty. But Doom was kind of pre-novelty in some ways, it's not very Duke Nukem 3D like. Doom imo requires that sort of purity that a focus on the technology behind the game and the aesthetics and the emotion presented by the game champion, whereas all this fluffy naval-gazing characterization feels, to me, a bit overwritten and moreso nostalgic for boomer shooters at large than Doom, in specific

 

Edited September 21, 2023 by OliveTree
hit enter too early

[LadyMistDragon]

I'd rather not say and make any definitive statements on how Doom is nothing more than techbase and hell. I can say though it works as a restrained power fantasy, which is to say, not really like nu-Doom at all when it comes down to it. Perhaps a touch of horror adds something but it isn't needed. It's like Maribo says though: it's basically a canvas from which you can make some very un-doomy sorts of wads.

[Dreamskull]

The experience is based on player's blind proficiancy. Classical horror at the start with limited firepower into an all out slugfest against hard odds. You grow out of the campy horror as the bodies pile up. There ought to be a progression of proficiancy into aptitude, but the sheer size and magnitude of the later fights can be its own brand of horror when it becomes overwhelmingly complex. Think of it as a noob into standard into veteran experience.

 

When all hesitatiion is gone, the horror element doesnt exist. Doomguy can punch a cyberdemon to death IN THE DARK WITH THE LIGHTS FLASHING.

Edited September 21, 2023 by Dreamskull

[Dreamskull]

People who like the horror element are trying to impose something unnatural. Yes its there, but its nothing to do with the aesthetic or theme or portrayal of anything. Its literally just you and your ability to maintain under pressure and eventually, you dont buckle anymore, regardless of scare tactic.

Edited September 21, 2023 by Dreamskull

[Mr. Freeze]

Doom has three "pillars" that comprise its core gameplay: Action, Exploration and Suspense. Combined, they are the essence of Doom. 

["JL" was too short]

You go into a place with lots of blood and pentagrams everywhere.  It looks really awesome and you'd love to just soak it in, but the current inhabitants have absolutely no chill so you need to shoot them before you can sightsee

[LoatharMDPhD]

40 minutes ago, Dreamskull said:

The experience is based on player's blind proficiancy.

 

// To be Fore Warned, is to be Fore Armed...

[LoatharMDPhD]

2 hours ago, OniriA said:

 

"aaaahh, oohh my god maan, that was fuckin' crazy, wooh! *cracks open a can of coke* "gluck, gluck, gluck,gluck!".. "aahh, on to the next one." *click, clack*

 

[Repeat]

// im not walking over that {The Chasm} idc....

[fai1025]

What makes Doom Doom to me

• First Person
• Always about those god damn teleporters
• Demons of course
• Gore, Caroonish or not, whatever
• BFG whatever K included

[Wo0p]

It's funny.. as a child when I first got introduced to Doom the theme or concept or "essence" that stuck with me when I had to tell someone else about it was "Demons in space" because usually up until that point in my young life, demons belonged to medieval settings and aliens to sci-fi, so my little smoothbrain nugget was blown by the melding of those two "genres."

 

And I guess I kept that view up until 2016 (Mostly because I didn't think anything deeper about it) when Doom 2016 was introduced with the words "Badass demons, big f'ing guns, and moving really really fast" - Marty Stratton

I was like... wait... is that what Doom is about? And that's when I began to ruminate on what made Doom Doom. So what are my thoughts today on what the essence of Doom is?

Well it's still "Demons in space." But I'll internally accept "Demons in a sci-fi setting" too :^)