Revenant Theories

[Captain Toenail]

Once a theory, now a fact. The smoking gun we've all been waiting for. The Undead Warrior from Heretic is actually the Revenant in disguise!



How far does this rabbit hole go?

[Technician]

[GreyGhost]

Krazov said:

Yourself neither. You’re in Hell as well.

But I'm the only one there who isn't dead - I think!?

[VGamingJunkie]

GreyGhost said:

But I'm the only one there who isn't dead - I think!?

The way E1M8 ends begs to differ. =P

[Jaxxoon R]

You don't die. Your health is lowered until it reaches a certain amount and then the episode ends.

[Avoozl]

Captain Toenail said:

Once a theory, now a fact. The smoking gun we've all been waiting for. The Undead Warrior from Heretic is actually the Revenant in disguise!

But there's no muscles.

[Zulk RS]

GreyGhost said:

But I'm the only one there who isn't dead - I think!?

Nah! If you're alive, you'll die and go to hell. In other words, It's pretty much the same. Maybe you'll wake up in a different room or in a different form but you'll still be in hell.

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HorrorMovieGuy said: Imagine if the revenants actually looked like skeletal versions of Barons, Mancubi, maybe even imps?
______________________________________________________________________________________

Here's a theory, what if the revenant is actually a Mancubus? The Mancubus looks different because it's really fat and has been attached with flame throwers. It's skeletal structure actually looks like the revenant. The bones are thin but super strong. This would explain how a skeleton can take 3 hits from a rocket launcher and still not break. Sure, the revenant dies but it's bones are more or less still in one piece. It also explains why nothing else has the punch attack.

[Jaxxoon R]

Nah man, the shoulders are too narrow on the revenant, the legs too long, and the arms too short.

[Krazov]

Zulk-RS said:

Nah! If you're alive, you'll die and go to hell. In other words, It's pretty much the same. Maybe you'll wake up in a different room or in a different form but you'll still be in hell.

Yes, we call it pistol start.

[VGamingJunkie]

Jaxxoon R said:

You don't die. Your health is lowered until it reaches a certain amount and then the episode ends.

Unless the demons in there decide to just leave and the atmosphere quits hurting, I'm sure the implication is that you don't survive that. Maybe the programmers couldn't get it to lower your health all the way to 0 without causing issues so they just cut it off at a certain point.

[Clonehunter]

they probably didn't count on people 20+ years down the road analyzing it too closely.

[VGamingJunkie]

I don't think it's over-analyzing when it's a legitimately important plot point. =P

[scifista42]

^
I think that thinking that the plot itself is any important is over-analyzing. :)

Seriously, perhaps we could accept that the happenings between the end of E1 and beginning of E2 are supposed to be unclear and unexplainable with certainty.

[Technician]

MetroidJunkie said:

Unless the demons in there decide to just leave and the atmosphere quits hurting, I'm sure the implication is that you don't survive that. Maybe the programmers couldn't get it to lower your health all the way to 0 without causing issues so they just cut it off at a certain point.

John Romero stated on his personal forum (before he closed it) that the intent of the ending was for the player to die and go to hell.

[Krazov]

Technician said:

John Romero stated on his personal forum (before he closed it) that the intent of the ending was for the player to die and go to hell.

Not quite. As I posted once,

John Romero said:
The story is that the game ends just before Doomguy completely opens up on the demons and destroys them all as usual, then continues his journey in Hell.

The ending was meant to be a cliffhanger. That’s why it ends at 10% of health.

[Impie]

Krazov said:

Not quite. As I posted once,

I dig the former interpretation better, though. It's an interesting idea in a Sixth Sense sorta way. the original game coulda ended with Doomguy suddenly realizing he can't leave Hell because he's actually dead.

[Krazov]

I dig it too, far more. And it explains Episode 2 style, and “Doom II” abstraction. But the truth is it’s not what creators had in mind while working on Episode 1, contrary to what Technician wrote. But I don’t know how coherent John Romero is. Maybe he changes his mind about that from time to time. Maybe he stated that on his forum and something different on Facebook.

[joe-ilya]

And then doomguy was the revenants.

[Krazov]

That could be too agitating.

[Maes]

I kinda like the Mancubus-Revenant kinship theory, but the only thing they seem to have in common, aside from a distant human (?) genetic basis, is how freakishly long both of their arms are.

In fact, the Mancubus's arms are so long, that it needs to make an effort to keep them off the ground. Even without the flamethrower attachments, they'd still be quite long and apelike.



However, everything else looks too different. Shoulder width is an obvious difference (though in morbidly obese persons, their chest and shoulders tend to stretch out), as well as the stubby, elephant or rhino-like legs. It's also weird how the Manc's arms appear to be quite muscular, despite its obesity, but that's quite common trait in every action/adventure comic book I've ever seen, esp. in Conan: even fat/obese characters have muscular arms (and sometimes, even muscular giant flab bellies O_o)

Maybe the Manc/Revenant are really two extreme variations of the same base creature, being both obviously engineered creatures: one is as fast, tall, lean and mean as it gets (Revenant), the other is its polar opposite.

[VGamingJunkie]

That's not as crazy as it sounds, you can have defined arm muscles but also have a beer belly.

[scifista42]

Maes said:

I kinda like the Mancubus-Revenant kinship theory, [...] Maybe the Manc/Revenant are really two extreme variations of the same base creature, being both obviously engineered creatures: one is as fast, tall, lean and mean as it gets (Revenant), the other is its polar opposite.

I like the theory too.

Oh, by the way, see this: http://www.doom2.net/single/revenant.html http://www.doom2.net/single/mancubus.html (EDIT: I've noticed that the revenant link was already posted on first page)

[Zulk RS]

Maes said:

Maybe the Manc/Revenant are really two extreme variations of the same base creature, being both obviously engineered creatures: one is as fast, tall, lean and mean as it gets (Revenant), the other is its polar opposite.

Well if we consider that both the Mancubus and the Revenant were two extreme variations of the same creature and both are engineered creatures and are not (the Mancubus anyway) born naturally, then what if the base creature is an Archvile?

The Archvile is a human-like hellspawn with long arms. It also has a sort of fire magic attack. What if genetic experiments were conducted on the Archvile and the result were 2 extreme variations of it. One was the Mancubus that gained strength and better defense(?) and a powerful and tricky to dodge fire cannon attack. since it was genetically altered, it lost the Archvile's magic.

And with regards to this link scifista42 posted:http://www.doom2.net/single/mancubus.html

The Mancubi where not the perfect version of whatever the hell Hell was trying to create. So what if the other variation of the Archvile was the almost perfect version of the Mancubus. This genetically engineered species was strong like hell, had insanely strong skin, the revenants homing missile launcher, was crazy fast and had a melee attack that could do serious damage due to it's skin and bone being so hard and strong.

Although it was near perfect it was not perfect. It's skull, though still strong, was really weak compared to the rest of it's skeleton. It also had a gene problem which caused it to die in a very short time. Their skins crumbled and decayed until only the skeleton remained. This skeleton was then fitted with the armor the Revenants wear and its old homing missile launcher and brought back as Revenant.

On a scale of 1-10, how far-fetched is this theory?

[Tracer]

Even though so many of these theories are far fetched and impossible to verify, it gives a cool collection of side stories that the player can choose from for the back story of the revenant.

I'm glad I made this thread now.

[Maes]

Zulk-RS said:

The Archvile is a human-like hellspawn with long arms. It also has a sort of fire magic attack. What if genetic experiments were conducted on the Archvile and the result were 2 extreme variations of it. One was the Mancubus that gained strength and better defense(?) and a powerful and tricky to dodge fire cannon attack. since it was genetically altered, it lost the Archvile's magic.

That's make sense too, but I always thought that Archviles were evil clones of Jesus Christ (they can resurrect stuff, and when they do so their hands seem to develop bloody stigmata). In fact, they are about the only monster that truly feels hellish and sinisterly evil, and not just a zombie, a mindless beast or something straight out of a medieval bestiary or an 80s Heavy Metal band's poster.

Then again, maybe Mancs and Revenants are made from reject Archvile bodies, and all three have relatively high HP and are tough to kill, even the most fragile-looking of the bunch (the Revenant). Hmm... O_o

[Tracer]

Maybe revenants are failed or partial archvile resurrections.

[Zulk RS]

I GOT IT! No more theorizing. I know for sure the true identity of the Revenant!
The moment we've all been waiting for. Drum roll, please.

The Revenant is actually... ... ...

An undead Cacodemon!

[Maes]

...of DOOM!

[VGamingJunkie]

Maes said:

That's make sense too, but I always thought that Archviles were evil clones of Jesus Christ (they can resurrect stuff, and when they do so their hands seem to develop bloody stigmata). In fact, they are about the only monster that truly feels hellish and sinisterly evil, and not just a zombie, a mindless beast or something straight out of a medieval bestiary or an 80s Heavy Metal band's poster.

Then again, maybe Mancs and Revenants are made from reject Archvile bodies, and all three have relatively high HP and are tough to kill, even the most fragile-looking of the bunch (the Revenant). Hmm... O_o

Well, apparently, the Archvile doesn't see itself as being evil. Perhaps it believes it's doing good, AKIN to Jesus? "The Archvile just doesn't understand why anyone would want to kill him as he sees himself as only doing good for his fellow demon"

[Krazov]

This kind of psychotic view of himself might be just the most unsettling thing about Archvile.