The skies, hell and outdoor areas of Classic Doom

[Chernobog The Exalted]

I don't have any better words to describe this, but when i look at the skies in episode 2 and 3... i have an unexplainable feeling, it's certainly not a real place - but the red sky, red mountains and distant hills evoke in me a desolate and lonely feeling. Doom Eternal's hell sky is a little bit orange and that ruins the whole vibe for me, it's kinda generic and bland, but that's just imo. I don't see much people talking about this, but well, the thing that matters is the mountains, and the colour red, like, pure red. The mountains make me feel isolated from civilzation, not cities, not even a sign of humanity, just the old natural rocks at the distance that you gaze over. The red sky makes you feel like "hell", hopeless, it makes you feel like you've done nothing but kill a few hundred demons while there are possibly octillions or decillions of them. Writing to this point also makes me wonder - how big is hell? That I think is interesting, not considering Doom Eternal's lore at least. Looking at Inferno's intermission map also makes me prophesize that it's like as big as the Earth, definitely bigger than Phobos and Deimos for sure and, shit, I can't even explain what I feel anymore, it's... like, abstract, very abstract, why is there a grassy plateau in HELL? And a desert? And I don't see any grass or sand! Makes me thinks it's some sort of dimension!(foreshadowing)

It's... uh, very undescribable. Wait a minute, I didn't even describe doom 64 yet! Well, to summarize it, let's just say the differently colored sky and clouds makes it stand out.

I feel like i'm yapping too much now, but surely, I ain't the only one to think about it, right? Come on... :(

[Chernobog The Exalted]

Also, I like the choice of the setting of DOOM, it's a sci-fi shooter, shouldn't you fight aliens? Why hell? Why demons? id is creative, and I'm glad that they went with the choice, it's the thing that made me like doom in the first place.

 

Edited February 28 by ChernobogTheExalted
grammatical error

[idbeholdME]

3 hours ago, ChernobogTheExalted said:

Also, I like the choice of the setting of DOOM, it's a sci-fi shooter, should you fight aliens? Why hell? Why demons?

Doom demons might as well be considered aliens - beings from another dimension that happens to be Hell.

[Zulk RS]

41 minutes ago, idbeholdME said:

Doom demons might as well be considered aliens - beings from another dimension that happens to be Hell.

 

Yes but I personally really like the idea of demons being these weird thing that you wouldn't expect. Like usually "Demon" has a certain aesthetic to it and while the Hell Knights and Barons and Lost Souls (to an extent) fit that aesthetic, most of Doom's Bestiary doesn't. Even thinking of aliens make you get a certain idea in your head and while the Arachnotron and Archivile does fit it, the others do not. Doom's bestiary is just weird and I love it for it.

[Stupid Bunny]

Inferno has my favorite sky texture of any Doom episode (even more than the TNT space sky).  I agree there is something to both the sky and the map that make Hell seem like a desolate, grim, forbidding, vast place--the image of Doomguy crossing this ashen dunefield, beaten by hot acrid wind, under a dull, dim sky lit by the fires of endless distant volcanoes, always impressed a lot on me.  I always say it but just having that map really tied the game together and made it feel like a place and not just a sequence of disconnected levels to beat.  The mountainous columns off on the horizon are dark and labyrinthine and unlike anything on Earth, and make the entire landscape feel more impassable and unfriendly.

 

The hell skies in the other episodes are fine, I guess--Doom II's is cool although the barren rocky mountains feel somehow less alien and isolating than the volcanic towers (actually limestone columns of course) in E3.  Final Doom's final skies are both kinda underwhelming, Plutonia's maybe gets extra points for freakiness at least.  

 

Whether the monsters are "demons" or "aliens" feels like a semantic non-issue but I do think it matters in the same experiential way that the map does.  The "demon" distinction implies an unfathomable, otherworldly magic at work alongside the blood and guts and machinery that they are made of, and suggested by things like the archie's spellcasting, the pain elemental exploding into nothingness, imp fireballs etc. that don't feel a part of the biological or technological realm that aliens typically occupy—hence the Doom novels' rather tortured attempts to explain such things as flaming boogers or whatever it was.

Edited February 28 by Stupid Bunny

[Chernobog The Exalted]

5 minutes ago, Stupid Bunny said:

Inferno has my favorite sky texture of any Doom episode (even more than the TNT space sky).  I agree there is something to both the sky and the map that make Hell seem like a desolate, grim, forbidding, vast place--the image of Doomguy crossing this ashen dunefield, beaten by hot acrid wind, under a dull, dim sky lit by the fires of endless distant volcanoes, always impressed a lot on me.  I always say it but just having that map really tied the game together and made it feel like a place and not just a sequence of disconnected levels to beat.  The mountainous columns off on the horizon are dark and labyrinthine and unlike anything on Earth, and make the entire landscape feel more impassable and unfriendly.

Yeah, that's what I thought too, I always wonder what he does after and before levels, does he go on a long trek to wherever he thinks best to go, not even considering how he passes between those treacherous terrains? And the hellish but techbase-y architecture does really add on the atmosphere.

[Doom-X-Machina]

12 minutes ago, Stupid Bunny said:

Inferno has my favorite sky texture of any Doom episode

 

^ this.

This is no Stupid Bunny.

[Chernobog The Exalted]

id probably didn't try their best with the overall feel, but the skies were brilliant, that saved the whole thing.

[Xaser]

Something that struck me when seeing the screenshot in the OP: E3M1 might not be the strongest map, but damn does the opening room do a good job at putting the sky texture front and center. "You're in HELL now, motherfucker!"

[Catpho]

^ Sandy visuals can get crass on a level that Romero and McGee would not often stoop to, but stuff like this shows he can step up the drama when it is required of him. Funny how he almost always ends up as the episode opener in the id campaigns (to varrying degrees of success).

[Mystic 256]

The final section of TNT Map21 gives me that feeling too

[Yousuf Anik]

I always liked this sky of TNT. And the red sky from Doom 2 as well, that always looked cool to me.

Edited February 29 by Yousuf Anik

[drygnfyre]

Episode 2 and Episode 4 have my favorite skies. I think Episode 2 is myoverall favorite, because I love how it blends hellish environments with tech base, which I think is better than just being in Hell itself. Plus I just like seeing distant mountains, especially with snow. They always look close but never are.  As for Episode 4, I just like the sky. Have always liked late afternoon/dusk, they usually produce nice sunsets. So the sky in this episode reminds me of that.