What if ID went low tech, for a bit.

[EraserheadBaby]

TLDR:

Spoiler

I don't want a trip down memory lane.  I'm wondering what the ID folk would do if they were given virtually no direction from corporate and allowed to just make a new IP without all the baggage that comes with modern expectations of overblown hat on a hat features, insane graphics, orchestral music, etc...  Just a pure creative endevor.

 

That probably sounds like saying "What if Jimmy Hendrix played Guitar Hero".  But there's a real charm to that old school visual style. Things don't get lost in overly complicated graphics and bright colors seem less out of place. Even though I LOVE the viscera in new DOOM, it's also overstimulating and after a while I just numb out to it.  I don't care about cutting edge graphics anymore.  I'd rather have Red Faction style world destruction than glory kills. The Meathook is my favorite thing about nuDOOM.  I want some kind of new gameplay.  (I watch Civvie11.  I am aware of and enjoy the indie scene)

 

I don't know exactly what I expect and that's the idea.  I just know there are a lot of talented people at ID and I wonder what they would make if some of the chains were taken off and they were allowed to just explore their creativity more freely.  Not DOOM or QUAKE, or RAGE.  A new, old school style, ID IP.  Something that doesn't cost $100 million to make so they could take some chances. So they could do whatever they want and try to reinvent the wheel without the baggage of DOOM and super demanding graphics.  Maybe start a sub studio. Take 9-12 of their best programmers and designers, lock them in an office building with coffee and MRE's, and give them nine months to make a new game.  I think they did something like that once.  (Maybe abduct John Carmack if they can get past his sentry guns and robot dogs).

 

 

 

Edit: Had to change the thread name because it was putting forth the wrong idea and seemed to confuse people (primarily those not reading the op)

Edited June 11 by EraserheadBaby

[Doom-X-Machina]

We can dream...

 

I'm very old-skool myself. 90% of my gaming time is devoted to retro gaming... 90's FPS, Diablo, Dawn Of War, Red Alert II etc. Old-skool classics that still offer a fuck-ton of replay value even 30 years later. Modern games I find are very uninspiring and simply don't have that "videogame charm" that so many retro games have. I would love it if a LOT of developers (not just id) just got back to basics, trimmed the useless fat and bloat that so many modern games carry and get back to the core of what a game should be. Pure, addicitve fun.

 

Doom Eternal failed to really capture me. Too much other shit that takes away from good ol' running and gunning that it became a chore. Just because you CAN pack stupid amounts of shit into a game, doesn't mean you actually SHOULD. Sometimes less is more and that seems to be the issue with all modern entertainment these days, not just gaming. Music, cinema, TV and gaming have all gone down the quantity over quality route over the last 2 decades... Terminator for example. Every successive movie was worse than the previous and now after 4 dumpster fires in a row (that weren't needed because the story was finished at the end of T2) the franchise is dead, possibly forever. No emphasis on quality cinema, just more and more of the crappy same. I feel Doom is skating the threshold of that with the Doom movies, Mighty Doom mobile game and other questionable decisions that threaten to dilute the Doom brand with quantity that isn't of great quality.

 

So TL:DR... basically yes, I agree. Go back to basics, get back to what the core of a videogame should be. Good, simple, addictive, quality fun.

 

And +1 for destructable terrain. That shit is 1000x more impressive than any glory kill.

[Shepardus]

There is precedent for this sort of thing working at other studios. That's essentially how Hearthstone was created at Blizzard, and IIRC Child of Light and Valiant Hearts from Ubisoft are a similar story. Both of those are much larger companies than id Software, though, so I can't blame them if they want all hands on deck to focus on Doom. Besides, indie games already have us covered pretty well.

[EraserheadBaby]

6 minutes ago, Shepardus said:

Besides, indie games already have us covered pretty well. 

I get that, but they aren't ID.

[WASFDDDDD]

1 hour ago, EraserheadBaby said:

I get that, but they aren't ID.

They can be just as good, even better at times

[Kinsie]

They did (with a little help from some friends over in bright, sunny Sweden).

[Daemonic Synergy]

I love old school games, I love the trend of throwback styled games, pixel art, and I love metroidvanias.

 

So on that basis, my absolute dream of a game would be something that marries the gameplay style of DOOM Eternal; as far the movement and platforming mechanics. Especially the latter iterations we saw in DLC and horde mode (traversal sections) but with the exploration, interconnectedness, and replayability of something like Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night or Castlevania SOTN.

 

Already we do much of what metroidvanias involve in bite sized form via DOOM.

 

Just scale everything up. Imagine a gorgeous pixel art game with that same medieval fantasy style we saw recently in DOOM: The Dark Ages, but in a huge interconnected game world, and incentives to replay, take different routes, encounter different enemies, hidden bosses, bosses with multiple forms, etc etc. I would go absolutely nuts with joy. 

[Lila Feuer]

2 hours ago, Daemonic Synergy said:

Just scale everything up. Imagine a gorgeous pixel art game with that same medieval fantasy style we saw recently in DOOM: The Dark Ages, but in a huge interconnected game world, and incentives to replay, take different routes, encounter different enemies, hidden bosses, bosses with multiple forms, etc etc. I would go absolutely nuts with joy. 

So Elden Doom then.

[aboyes1989]

I think it would be great. I've been playing Carnal recently and it plays very much like Quake, but with late 90s aesthetic. It pulls off gibs and violence with a vibrant colourful sheen.

Edited June 11 by aboyes1989
Missed a word

[Murdoch]

5 hours ago, EraserheadBaby said:

I get that, but they aren't ID.

 

id isn't id. The indies making retro-styled FPS games have far more in common with old id than id itself does. The id that made Wolfenstein, Doom and Quake is long dead.

[LuciferSam86]

7 hours ago, EraserheadBaby said:

I get that, but they aren't ID.

IMHO some of the new retro shooters are better than "id style". For me it's dusk and Turbo Overkill. 

[EraserheadBaby]

3 hours ago, Murdoch said:

 

id isn't id. The indies making retro-styled FPS games have far more in common with old id than id itself does. The id that made Wolfenstein, Doom and Quake is long dead.

I get that too.  It's not like Carmack, Romero, and Sandy work there anymore.  Even if you rounded up what's left of the original team, they won't be the same people anymore and might not even be able to work together.  But DOOM 2016 and Eternal are both just amazing and the company still seems to have solid design principles.

 

1 hour ago, LuciferSam86 said:

IMHO some of the new retro shooters are better than "id style". For me it's dusk and Turbo Overkill. 

Exactly.  So I'm kinda wondering what ID would do if it didn't HAVE to be "id style". 

 

[Chezza]

I want to point out that not even classic id software wanted to keep making "old school" games. John Romero expressed this in a Q&A and John Carmack goes without saying. Quake and any potential future installments of Doom would have evolved or taken a different direction if circumstances permitted. The original developers were driven innovators who existed in the right time (games not requiring large number of staff, lots of potential ground untouched, great engines can be built by a single genius, giant corporations didn't dominate the industry etc).

The original id team and the passion for developing "old school FPS" no longer exist. They moved on or would choose to if they could.

Innovation is good and I hope id continues to evolve their gameplay.

Edited June 11 by Chezza

[D4NUK1]

https://store.steampowered.com/curator/40645616/sale/IndieFPSSummerShowcase?l=latam&%3Bsnr=1_2300_4__salesmartsaleeventsonly

 

Take a look at what could be a good Doom Classic id formula game and try to check if there it's a Demo and help to grow the game.

[EraserheadBaby]

14 minutes ago, D4NUK1 said:

https://store.steampowered.com/curator/40645616/sale/IndieFPSSummerShowcase?l=latam&%3Bsnr=1_2300_4__salesmartsaleeventsonly

 

Take a look at what could be a good Doom Classic id formula game and try to check if there it's a Demo and help to grow the game.

Thanks for the heads up on the sale.  I'll pick some stuff up.  I like the indie scene.

[D4NUK1]

3 hours ago, EraserheadBaby said:

Thanks for the heads up on the sale.  I'll pick some stuff up.  I like the indie scene.

With the new title, you idea it's more likely like this 
 

Like, Warhammer games are always high tech 3D Stuff, but this it's like a indie FPS with a good game studio behind. So Something like if a small division of iD Software was to made their own original FPS without needing iD Tech 9 or something for example, as they could use olders iD Tech or other engines to make the games like they would do on the old days.

That's could be cool, and it's something like Ubisoft it's doing so maybe it's possible if the price to make a game still goes up on the trillions dolars

[EraserheadBaby]

@D4NUK1 I try to play anything Civvie 11 recommends. 

[TMMMS]

i totally get you op

 

these days i find myself more excited by the prospect of discovering forgotten or lesser-known doom mapsets - notably thanks to the likes of elf-alchemist and devalaous - than paying 100 dollars or so for a much more bombastic yet much less sustainable iteration of the doom formula

 

not that doom 2016-eternal and now doom the dark ages dont look like they have some good ideas of their own but unlike classic doom i just dont see myself playing through them more than once or twice as i already feel exhausted just looking at them...

[dasho]

I just want them to make a Dangerous Dave/Redneck Rampage crossover is that so much to ask

[EraserheadBaby]

Just now, dasho said:

I just want them to make a Dangerous Dave/Redneck Rampage crossover is that so much to ask

Ha ha ha.  I don't really want a trip down memory lane.  I'm wondering what the ID folk would do if they were given virtually no direction from corporate and allowed to just make a new game without all the baggage that comes with modern expectations of overblown hat on a hat features. 

 

Remember when Portal came out?????  Remember how that felt?

 

That is what I'm wondering about. If the people at ID were given more creative room, what would they make?  Damn, maybe I should have just said that to begin with, but it's been difficult for me to verbalize this for some reason. 

[xdarkmasterx]

I think that market is a tad saturated at the moment :p

[LadyMistDragon]

Id is a AAA, not even AA. studio. It's just not something I can conceive of in any manner. Like it or not, they are entirely at corporate beck and call at this point. If they were to do some kind of No Rest for the Living/Call of the Machine expansion for an older game, that would be one thing but iirc, they were basically prompted by things like special releases and anniversaries. Cameos of maps in non-id games like even Dusk would probably be the very best that can be hoped for.

[ICID]

If you'd like to play some new Doom content with modern design sensibilities and classic-style graphics I have great news about the website you're on.

[EraserheadBaby]

13 minutes ago, ICID said:

If you'd like to play some new Doom content with modern design sensibilities and classic-style graphics I have great news about the website you're on.

I see you writing, so I know you're not illiterate.  Yet, you did not read the OP.  Some people think they are being smart asses but fail to remember the smart part. 

[DNSKILL5]

I always wished they had made something like how Capcom did megaman 9 and 10 for Doom or Quake. Sort of happened with the official expansions like Sigil and DOTM, etc, but a full fledged game. 

[Koko Ricky]

id Software doesn't do the same game twice. Each Doom feels different than the previous; even Doom 2 has a level design philosophy that feels very different to the original. If they were to go back to an older style of graphics for a new Doom or Quake, it would have to be because there was a motivated reason for doing so. And what would that be? If they want each game to be different, what would make Doom or Quake different to return to their original visual style?

[EraserheadBaby]

@Koko Ricky From the OP:

"Hell, it doesn't even have to be a DOOM game. It could be a totally new IP.   IT SHOULD BE, so they could do whatever they want and try to reinvent the wheel without the baggage of DOOM and super demanding graphics.  Maybe start a sub studio. Take 9-12 of their best programmers and designers, lock their asses in an office building with coffee and MRE's, and give them nine months to make a new game.  I think they did something like that once.  (Maybe abduct John Carmack if they can get past his sentry guns and robot dogs.  Oooo, that'd be a fun movie.  Really, just having Carmack as a supervillain would be fun in a movie, but I digress)."

[Jayextee]

Clearly the time for a retro-styled Smashing Pumpkins into Small Piles of Putrid Debris is now.

[EraserheadBaby]

Just now, Jayextee said:

Clearly the time for a retro-styled Smashing Pumpkins into Small Piles of Putrid Debris is now.

You know what, if it was a trick or treat themed stealth game, it might work

[Jayextee]

Lost me at stealth. <vomits a bit in mouth>