Am I the only one that never analyzed or read in to Doom at all?

[qoncept]

There are dozens of threads with people asking "why" and talking about what the intentions and meanings behind maps, names, enemies, etc are. Am I the only one that never even considered these things?

Maybe it's because I was so young when Doom came out, but I never even crossed my mind to question anything. The architecture (of 90s maps especially) was very rarely even recognizable as anything real. The monsters fought because they were monsters.

The story to Doom is pretty well established as an unimportant afterthought. Was I keen enough to pick up on that or not keen enough to pick up on the details discussed in other threads?

The most important point I think is that pretty much everything has always looked abstract to me, and the things that didn't made it obvious why they chose that route. The "chair" in The Suburbs (er, maybe it was Monster Condo?) looked it was made as a joke and they decided to leave it in. I have a REALLY hard time trying to describe levels or locations in levels because usually I don't recognize objects as such.

[Snakes]

I didn't read analyze a damn thing for a long time, even after joining this site. Even now, I prefer a, um... minimalist(?) approach to analyzing the game, where if I can't find out what something means/is, I just shrug and say, "That's just how it is."

Or maybe not? Oddly enough, I really stretched my imagination in some cases. For example, I now have some sort of idea of what Sandy Petersen was doing when he made Suburbs. A lot of that map never mad sense to me, but I think I kind of get it now... at least the architecture in the middle area and the 'house' with the BK door. It took a good while for me to find out what certain architecture represented, but stumbling across an explanation, even a far fetched one, can be rewarding. The trick is to not let it bother you when you can't.

Oh, and I was 6 when I first played Doom, so I doubt age has anything to do with this. And the 'chair' you're referring to might be Map28.

[Hellbent]

No, qoncept, you are the Keen.

[Avoozl]

All this talk of Keen popping up lately is making me actually want to try the game for once. :P

[Hellbent]

Avoozl said:

All this talk of Keen popping up lately is making me actually want to try the game for once. :P

Oh, hell yes you should!

Download it here.

[schwerpunk]

Regarding the title: I highly doubt it.

It's just something that's fun to do, though. Using your imagination to make up little stories is a good exercise in creativity, and it adds to depth to those things one already enjoys.

For instance, what if E2M3 were an actual refinery? What would the rest of the facility look like? What areas could one add to the map, if one extrapolated from what's visible to the player?

[Hellbent]

schwerpunk said:

Regarding the title: I highly doubt it.

It's just something that's fun to do, though. Using your imagination to make up little stories is a good exercise in creativity, and it adds to depth to those things one already enjoys.

For instance, what if E2M3 were an actual refinery? What would the rest of the facility look like? What areas could one add to the map, if one extrapolated from what's visible to the player?

Do it. Now.

[fraggle]

Yeah, me neither. Doom's story has always seemed very thin to me. I didn't even notice the whole "hell bleeding through" thing in episode 2 until it was pointed out in a thread here. I tend to look at the levels in game/level design terms rather than in story terms.

[Scypek2]

Hmm. I met with doom at young age too but I did analysed and do analyse it...
But maybe big imagination isn't a mark of all children, I dunno...

[schwerpunk]

Hellbent said:

Do it. Now.

I've got, like, three projects on the go, man! You do it!

[ella guro]

i have no problem with analyzing the maps to death, as long as you don't try to make them into anything greater than they are.

i do think that Doom/Doom 2 clearly doesn't have much of a story, and trying to analyze it as such (especially when it's about "What The Designers Intended") is probably not worth it. but i guess the story was never what i thought i was interesting about Doom in the first place. it was really all about the environments, and their relationship to me as a player.

but like with movies/books/music/etc, it's always valid to have your own interpretation for something you've experienced, as long as you realize that's it's your personal interpretation.

[_bruce_]

The less story the better in such a game.
Wide open to imagination -> longevity.
Never cared for the story but after a few years of playing I began to read the intermission screens and the one from Map15 -> Map31 is pretty hilarious.

[DoomUK]

It's fun to stop and muse about what certain things in Doom's abstract world are and why they're there. None of it is really important or a requisite for enjoying the game, but my imagination has always led me to think about the stupid little things in Doom and continues to to this day.

[Platinum Shell]

DoomUK said:

It's fun to stop and muse about what certain things in Doom's abstract world are and why they're there. None of it is really important or a requisite for enjoying the game, but my imagination has always led me to think about the stupid little things in Doom and continues to to this day.

All of the this.

Let your imagination flow, qoncept!

[printz]

When I was little I could never imagine a game without a story in the manual. I came to consider the games without stories as casual, overly simple.

[glenzinho]

One of the reasons I like Doomworld is all of the analysis behind the aspects of the game, however when I'm playing Doom I think nothing about it all. When I first played KDITD everything seemed pretty realistic in that episode back in 1994. When I got Doom 2, though I enjoy the game, I was a little disappointed that places didn't look more real, especially the city levels. I think I had an obsession with playing around in realistic cities, but GTA cured me of that! I couldn't care less these days about real cities in Doom now; Dawn of Reality was fun to look at and all, but it doesn't play very well and it doesn't seem to fit well in a doom type setting. That's why my Downtown map that I'm making for this is going to be a little abstract in a Doomier way.
Keep on with the analysis folks, it's great to read!

[myk]

qoncept said:
There are dozens of threads with people asking "why" and talking about what the intentions and meanings behind maps, names, enemies, etc are. Am I the only one that never even considered these things?

The answers to these questions don't necessarily imply answers related to mimicry of reality or a narrative, and also include playability or technical considerations. The game doesn't necessarily "make sense" due to the consistency of the story or the realness of the levels, but can do so as a game mechanic or as part of a game genre. Many threads don't just stick to intentions and "meanings" (a retrospective of intention) but also consider practical applications, game balance, historical game influence or limitations. But even then, in any analysis of the game, the story, references from (pop or otherwise) art and mimetic aspects will pop up where they apply.

Through the years I've seen many "lol, ur going too deep into this" comments, but those were more valid against speculations that obviously went off on a limb with the story or representational considerations, rather than against a general familiarity with the game from which you start tying the ends of different aspects you notice, filling in the gaps of what's not so obvious at first sight.

[Eonfge]

fraggle said:

Yeah, me neither. Doom's story has always seemed very thin to me. I didn't even notice the whole "hell bleeding through" thing in episode 2 until it was pointed out in a thread here. I tend to look at the levels in game/level design terms rather than in story terms.

I agree on this. Although I knew the game from a early age, I never look much into the themes. Doom to me is the essence of abstract shooters: Military complexes, the tower of Babel and hell is all the same to me.

That said, modern maps often do have at least some kind of settings that makes sense in a larger narrative.

[qoncept]

The devices that advance the story in a game almost always pull you away from it to some degree, and I very rarely find a game that 1) does it smoothly enough to enjoy, 2) has a good enough story to care and 3) has good enough voice acting (in later games) to pull it off. I don't want story in a game and I'm not going to impose it myself.

[TwinBeast]

qoncept said:

I don't want story in a game and I'm not going to impose it myself.

You wouldn't want to play... First Person Story Chess 3000D!!?

I think last night I was thinking about what Soul Spheres were, but other than that, I've not analyzed the stories, concepts behind the things. I've been more interested in analyzing the gameplay side.

[fraggle]

Jimi said:

I think last night I was thinking about what Soul Spheres were,

Leftover "extra life" artifacts from when Doom had a limited lives system like Wolfenstein.

[Maes]

Yeah qoncept, what's your problem, why can't you obsess over Doom trivia like every other no-lifer here?

[TwinBeast]

fraggle said:

Leftover "extra life" artifacts from when Doom had a limited lives system like Wolfenstein.

I was thinking more like Divine Intervention, or some Divine artefacts stolen by the demons. They don't look exactly demonic. And I don't see them containing a soul, and why would Doomguy want another soul to exist in his body, that would probably result into some internal fight about who gets to control the body.. and while Doomguy is fighting the other soul, the body's movements are all confused, the demons kill the body.

Then I started thinking what would Megasphere be.. and started to stuff my mouth with some cheese bread because it was too much thinking and I was hungry.

[schwerpunk]

Agreeing with Maes: You don't think like me, therefore you think like wrong.

But seriously, I love obsessing over pointless minutiae, like, what is a SoulSphere, anyway? (Good catch on that one, Fraggle - makes total sense). It also makes sense how it adds +100 health, because, as we all know, that is the standard HP count of a marine, fresh off the teleporter pad. So 1 Life = 100 HP.

But from a lore perspective, my mind is still working on those other possibilities. Like, maybe the demons collect them to fuel something? Eh? Let the wild speculation BEGIN! :D

EDIT: like Jimi here, who's off to a fine start.

[printz]

There's this writer nicknamed Demon! who has posted at the Planetdoom forums a lot about Doom – the monsters, the artifacts, the levels; even two huge fan fictions detailing everything that has happened throughout the Doom saga (I can call it that after reading that fan fic :) ), occasionally crossing over elements from other Id games to spice things up.