Squilookle said:
Doom is like Mario.
People aren't here for the story. They're here for the gameplay.
That isn't an unreasonable statement to make. If it was a statement made on the series based purely from Doom 1 to Doom 64, I'd agree with you personally. I'd even agree with you if extending it to the original run of Doom novels.
Problem is with Doom 3, we're at the point where story can't be ignored. Whatever one thinks of Doom 3, both in it and its EU, there was a clear focus on worldbuilding. I can't call D3's story anything more than decent, but it was at least congruent. Mars City felt like an actual Martian base (which is why Hell 'spilling over' works so well atmospherically), and the worldbuilding, while nothing spectacular, was congruent, and revealed at an appropriate pace. Also helps that the novels were much better than their predecessors, and fleshed out the setting even further.
So that leaves us with Doom 2016, and if I'm comparing it to Doom 3, it's so bizzare. On one hand, its worldbuilding hints at more interesting cosmology than D3 (ages of Hell, Argent D'Nur, the Seraph, etc.), yet presents it more poorly. I've already pointed out the gaffs in how it's done, but the difference is that in D3, I could tell that the writers at least cared, whereas in Doom 2016, I don't get that. And I get that this is Doom, where one of its founding fathers compared story in gameplay to story in porn, but John Carmack isn't part of Id anymore, and even when he was, D3 at least partly rejected that ideology. Doom 2016, on the other hand, simultaniously wants to hint at a larger setting, yet also mock the very idea of trying to get engaged in that setting, given how even if the player is interested, the Doom Slayer sure as hell isn't.
Is that a pun? I don't know. Just like I get the sense that the writers didn't know what they wanted either. Which is why I'm a bit more hopeful for Doom Eternal because it's at least introducing something new in terms of context.
TL, DR, even if story isn't the point of Doom, Doom has nevertheless offered story since D3. It's legitimate to evaluate that story be it good or bad.
Meiam said:
I mean, you didn't have to read those tablet, could have just zoomed right past them.
Um, yes? I get a choice between poor story and no story. That isn't a point in the game's favour.
The story is essentially, corporation is using hell for energy, they opened a portal on mars, now demon are pouring out. I don't know what more reasons you need to kill demon than the fact that they're killing every human they come across. Kinda self explanatory
Motivations aren't the same thing as worldbuilding, nor the be all and end all of plot.
Of course, the fact that this is the same old shit we've done over and over (D1, D3, D 2016, and other games if you replace Mars with other locations) is another matter. D3 at least had the excuse of going for realism and being a hard reboot, while D 2016 doesn't. It's a soft reboot that does the same thing as its predecessors, and that it even WAS a soft reboot wasn't confirmed until after the game was released (unless I missed something).
(I'm so glad the doomslayer doesn't have some sappy backstory about demon killing his wife or w/e, really really really hope eternal doesn't insert one).
Oh don't worry, he's still torn up over Daisy.
The backstory of the doomslayer is playable. It's doom 1 and 2. That's the whole point. The entire legend you can learn about in hell is literally about the previous games(it's also the confirmation that he's the same character).
No. It isn't.
What does the backstory describe? It describes the Slayer tearing Hell a new one, especially after being visited by the Seraph. It details him felling the Titan, before finally being defeated and imprisoned in the tomb. It also describes the Night Sentinels, Argent D'Nur, and the Sentinel who lost his son and somesuch, which, prior to QC, led me to believe that the Slayer was that same person - a former Sentinel, and Argent D'Nur...ian?
Point is, nothing in the backstory mentions the previous games. It doesn't mention a different Mars, or Phobos, or Deimos, or a different UAC, or a different Earth, or Doom 64 (which leads into D 2016 better than Doom 2 IMO, but whatever), or anything like that, and the Doom Slayer doesn't seem perturbed at all that apparently more than one version of Earth exists in this multiverse. You might be able to leave it to interpretation, that we're meant to assume that everything in the backstory happened after the original series, but I have three problems with that.
1) The Seraph. He gives the Slayer a power boost of some sort. This isn't bad in of itself (I like this idea actually), but it means there's a disconnect between the Slayer and his old "Doomguy" persona. If you need to be powered up by an angel to do the things he does, then how was he able to accomplish similar feats in the old games? I get that there's a difference between defending Mars/Earth and rampaging through Hell, but he does rampage through Hell, at least three times. He defeats Cyberdemons 1v1 FFS!
2) There's clearly some kind of connection between the Slayer and Night Sentinels, or at least, it's heavilly implied to be. But by this chain of events, there can't really be. By the timeframe of D1, Hell will have already absorbed Argent D'Nur and gone about destroying everything else. So that moment where the Sentinels walk up to the Slayer is thus removed from a lot of its pathos...and this is a game where pathos is in very short supply already. Which isn't bad if it had gone fully comedic, but replaying that scene in my mind, it goes from something like "you have avenged us and Argent D'Nur, and we give you our silent thanks" to "hey, wassup, nice demon kill" Christ, even D3 did this better with the carving of the original Martian hero who used the soul cube.
3) I highly doubt there was some concrete attempt at ambiguity, because again, the Slayer was confirmed as the Doomguy later on...in a different game...in an obscure lore blurb...
If Id was going for ambiguity, then they screwed up. Either in the game itself, or in Quake Champions. However, the more likely scenario for me is that they left it ambiguous because they hadn't decided. Yes, they hadn't decided one of the core features of their main protagonist until after the story featuring said protagonist was released.
And I don't know why you think 2016 was an uninteresting part of the doomslayer story, his story has pretty much always been the same, demon show up, he rip and tear them.
Well, for starters, we didn't know that 2016 was a continuation of the story until after it was released. That, and it's a continuation that's based on doing the same thing we did in D1, D3, and arguably other games. And okay, fine, Doom isn't story-heavy, but it spends all this time describing far more interesting material, such as the Seraph, and Argent D'Nur, and yet we see nothing of it. And, fine, maybe we don't have to see something, but what we're left with is so lacklustre that it's hard to care.
Personally I think doom 2016 story is far better than 90-95% of games story.
Um, okay...
Look, to each their own, but Doom 2016's story actively irritates me. It isn't that it's lacklustre, it's that all the pieces were there for something interesting, yet it feels like it's also mocking the idea of getting invested in it at all. Like the writers were split into the old Carmack philosophy, and those who remembered that it's the year 2016, and that games have evolved from the days where plot boiled down to "demons are bad, shoot them." That, and Doom 3, which managed to tell a decent, if not great story.
Might not have minded so much if the gameplay didn't have its share of problems as well, but that's another issue.
