Will Doom 3 be linear ala Half-Life?

[Ultraviolet]

I found it funny when that banned guy, what ever the hell his name was, said something about Fredrik being uneducated, seeing as how Fredrik always ends up talking math and/or physics...

[auxois]

Heh. Yeah. HELLO BURN WARD.

Nicely done, Fredrik. Glad we got rid of that moron.

I do have to take issue with referring to Doom as "open-ended", though. It's furthest from the sort, aside from a true "rail shooter", like Panzer Dragoon, or most light-gun games.

To be on-topic, I have to think Doom 3 will be linear, yes. At least as linear as Half-Life, and likely more. It seems to be shaping up to be very cinematic, and cinematic games can take a concept that could easily be very open-ended right away from that, making it a purely linear experience - just look at Final Fantasy X. But hey, what do I know?

[Wobbo]

Fredrik said:

I'm talking about your claims that they can't build an open-ended game because they have too little money, time and staff. That is an interesting claim seeing as id Software ten years ago was roughly the same size and had significantly less money, yet managed to produce a fairly nonlinear game.

doom wasnt open ended

[AndrewB]

I just see a lot of apathy in the attitude that games have to be linear. If a game company builds their game so that you see every little script and event they put in there the first time through the game, then they suck as a game developer. Simple as that. IF it turns out that ID pumps out a lame-scripted straight-forward linear interactive cartoon, then yeah, I will passionately conclude that ID sucks.

As vague as it sounds, I think there should be more gameplay-algorithm innovation and less content wheel-reinvention. Less pumping out GB's of textures, models, and sounds, and more simple yet highly-significant innovations such as the SodaConstructor applet.

By the way, I think that Doom was extremely open-ended for its time, and since then, FPS's in general have become a bit less open-ended overall. Considering how much technology has advanced, I think there's something seriously wrong here.

[Fredrik]

Wobbo said:

doom wasnt open ended

Non-linear then.