Some DOOM3 Ideas

[Guest Cthulhu Alpha]

I know these've probably been done already, but oh well, here goes : While the whole DOOM idea of "lone survivor against insurmountable odds" was incredibly atmospheric, why not add onto it a bit? Maybe a few other soldiers, NPCs or alternate player characters, that you can meet up with or maybe fight alongside you (my storyline idea was, instead of defending yourself from Hell, perhaps the opposite : Terrans finally decide the only way to stop Hell is a full-on offensive strike)? It would do wonders for the atmosphere if, say, at a certain point an NPC offers to guard the entrance of a building you're exploring. Then, as you reach the last hallway and find it's empty, you hear sounds of battle and your friend screaming over the radio, and maybe find his body ripped apart or desecrated, the door locked, and an invisible horror stalking you throught the building (maybe breathing softly or occasionally whispering taunts at you)? And maybe, if the idea of an offensive strike is used, the ability to select certain equipment in the beginning? I have also been scheming up equipment : various armors (bullet, fireproof, grounded, energy, an maybe a magical ward against demonic energies), machine guns, grenades, knives, sniper rifles, of course, the shotguns, laser and plasma rifles, a realistic rocket launcher with extreme damage and radius, but low ammo and a slow reload, cuz i'm sick of all these RL's that are no different than the other hundred, health, athletic booster kits, personal teleportation units, mines, camoflauged automatic cannons that you can rig with any of your weapons -- you lose that weapon and some ammo but can hit something with more firepower at once (imagine a cyberdemon being hit with six plasma rifles at once)-- special ammo for your basic machine gun (high velocity, AP, eplosive-tipped, phosphor tracers, hollowpoint, poison, etc), making it the lowest but most versatile weapons in the game, and maybe captured demon biotechnology, magical artifacts, and, even though the idea has never appealed to me, some well-performed vehicles (exoskeletal armor, or maybe hopping into a dead arachnotron's chassis). Yes, my wishlist is a little long and i'm setting myself up to be dissapointed, but, hey, with a list this long, using the law of averages, at least one is bound to make it in :)

Doom + Alcohol + Mindless Self Indulgence = Fun Fun Fun

[Lord FlatHead]

The idea of NPC buddies sounds cool, but would pose an even greater threat to the original "feel" of DOOM so many of us want to preserve. And if the use of side-kicks is badly implemented, we might just have ourselves another Daikatana.

[geekmarine]

Not really, in both DOOM I and II the opening stories started with squads of marines, but they were all killed but you, so even though allies were never IN the game, they were part of the game, and I think it would be cool, even as just a movie sequence, to have a group of marines being slaughtered or slaughtering demons, and I don't think it would detract from DOOM's atmosphere one bit.

[Guest Nerull]

Naw, they are talking about buddies that actually help you via AI in the game similar to Diakatana...he isn't saying that they shouldn't be part of the back-story AT ALL, he is just saying that trying to make believable characters that are controlled by AI is asking for trouble. We don't want to have to baby-sit a NPC through the whole game, or even a part of it. Half-Life was a great game, bus as great as it was, the stupid cop characters had to led like sheep through the level to help you.

[Guest Cthulhu Alpha]

Oh, I meant completely to have the one-man-impossible-odds feeling preserved, and as was pointed out, the marine NPCs would only be in levels 1 or 2.. I like the idea of marines getting slaughtered in the videos, too...one of my ideas was a video of a marine fire team being slowly surrounded by demons, running low on ammo, and slowly getting picked off (lots of arms and legs getting bitten off), and the last soldier priming a big demo charge thingie meant for some mission...before his head is bitten off. THe demons begin working on his body and the bomb does it's little BOOM thang, destroying something and blocking the 'easy' way to the next objective, making your character take the long, nasty, acid-drenched, demon-filled way... Yes i'm a little disturbed, but what can I say, i've been playing DOOM for years and since a young age...Oh, another thing, you wouldn't have to babysit the bots...they would mainly be either stationary in noncombat areas or fighting in combat situations, and it really doesn't matter if they live or die...(Idea : Shoot 'em yourself and grab their ammo and equipment! hehehe sneaky) Kind of like the NPCs in Operation : Body Count (without the switching), if anyone remembers THAT old game.