Replaying D3

[Maximius]

Its interesting, I'm messing around with D3 again but its really a different trip from the first time I installed it. Not the gameplay, but whats really different are all of the things I'm taking notice of, like materials and particle effects and such. Whats really coming through strong is the powerfully spooky atmosphere D3 can produce, its a glove like fit for TDM. Everytime an imp or zombie attacks me, I just tell myself "Be patient, soon it will be a member of Lord Bummstickers palace guard coming at you."

 

 

One thing that I have found jarring is how they used incidental noises in the game. As you are all familiar with no doubt, as you progress through the maps, you hear screams and demons snarling and big heavy pounding footsteps on metal walkways. This surrounds you, the one guy screaming "Hold em back boys!" and the desperate pleading and all. But here is the problem, when you get to the next room, there is nothing there, only the AIs set to spring on you from above or below or whatever. (Bog knows I love and respect ID but man, can you come up with a different scenario than See the medkit/ammo, grab, get attacked?)

 

So after awhile, this incidential noise, which started out as a great atmosphere maker, became an atmosphere breaker. I kept hearing pitched battles all around me but never found any evidence of the fight it supposedly came from. Now, when I hear it Im like whatever.

 

So this got me thinking about how something as simple as incidental noises can add or detract from a map. In my opinion, the incidental noises in D3 would have been much more effective if they had started out loud and all over the place, but tapered off as time went on with occassional outbreaks along the way. Basically, less here would be more.

 

I was going to post this in off topic, but then I thought its really more about the Mod than D3, and how little stuff like incidental noise and similar things can be tweaked for greater gameplay "value." Nothing needs to be drastically altered with the inci. noise in D3, it just needs to be used much more sparingly.

[sparhawk]

So after awhile, this incidential noise, which started out as a great atmosphere maker, became an atmosphere breaker. I kept hearing pitched battles all around me but never found any evidence of the fight it supposedly came from. Now, when I hear it Im like whatever.

 

I did not exactly find this an immersion breaker. But it gave me always the feeling being to late. The noise added to the feeling that I'm not alone there, but only one of many struggling with the problems that arose (which is good). But going through the maps, you always see that something happened, because of all the blood and stuff lying around, so the feeling usually was more like "I just heard them but I'm late again."

[Gildoran]

In my opinion, the incidental noises in D3 would have been much more effective if they had started out loud and all over the place, but tapered off as time went on with occassional outbreaks along the way.

I may be misunderstanding what you mean, they they did this in the course of the game... When you first start out, there's battles all around, but as you progress through the game, there's fewer and fewer, until the bravo team gets blown up and you stop hearing other people fighting, and scientists start being few and far between. By the time you get to the delta complex, you realize it's pretty much just you and the demons left.

[Maximius]

I may be misunderstanding what you mean, they they did this in the course of the game... When you first start out, there's battles all around, but as you progress through the game, there's fewer and fewer, until the bravo team gets blown up and you stop hearing other people fighting, and scientists start being few and far between. By the time you get to the delta complex, you realize it's pretty much just you and the demons left.

 

 

ahh, I guess I haven't played it through long enough to notice that, G-Money. I didn't play it through the first time I got it, I lost interest about halfway through the first map and then just finished it in God mode to see the sights. Sparhawk has nailed it though, the feeling of always having just missed the big battle by a couple of seconds is a better description. I still find it lacking though, the noises are definitely detracting from the experience for me.

[sparhawk]

To be honest, I played it through but only rushed it in god mode. I found the gameplay quite boring but I wanted to see it to be sure that I didn't miss any effects that might have been usefull for our mod.

[Maximius]

To be honest, I played it through but only rushed it in god mode. I found the gameplay quite boring but I wanted to see it to be sure that I didn't miss any effects that might have been usefull for our mod.

 

 

Why the hell can't ID come up with some kind of different "flow" for their Doom games? They excel in so many other areas but I've played every Doom game for eons, including Wolfie I, and I recognize it in a second. Even when the story is fairly interesting, its like you have two realities in the game, the story and the gameplay, they don't gel well. This is one of the strengths of the Thief series, story lines seemed so much better embedded than in other games, I cannot think of one that beats it except for the Baldurs Gate series and maybe Sierras "Homeworld" series at times.

[sparhawk]

Personally I don't care so much for the overall storyline. I liked the cutscenes in Thief and the gameplay, but each on an individual level.

 

As to Doom, I don't see a point in having a story anyway. Painkiller was great and it also had a story, but I would have liked it also without a story. And I played Doom I and II without ever being aware that there actually was a story. At least a story that is worth the name.

[Order of the Hammer Bureaucrat]

I played Doom without cheats until the point where I get the soulcube. Since the beginning the sounds seemed to me like taped messages programmed to play at certain intervals, and the arrangement of bodies and blood I found in the next rooms always seemed pre-arranged. The only thing contributing to the immersion was the fear dying in a battle with demons and the continuous demon voice whispering something.

[Gildoran]

I played through D3 without cheats first on normal, then again on hard. What I found creepiest was the bloody cancerous growth spreading and taking over the base. I just wish that they had done more with it to make it seem less static and more menacing. It would have been cool if on a few occasions it started to crush a hallway you were walking through.

 

Actually, I really enjoyed D3's storyline. I always looked forward to getting a new PDA. Hearing about the accidents and how the base seemed haunted even before the catastrophe really helped get me immersed.

[SneaksieDave]

Yeah, I'm not sure how jaded everyone is, but I had a good time. The whole way, no cheats. Since it was Doom, I expected simple gameplay, and the whole monster-closet thing is overcryed - it wasn't that frequent, but pretty much every fight was initiated by something you couldn't first see. That's the point of being startled, I'd think, but yeah, it would have been cooler if sometimes the only advantage a monster needed was that it could beat your ass top to bottom. Think about it though; if you can spy the thing from another room, and just lob grenades or rockets - or worse, BFG pulses - into the room before it can reach you, people would be complaining about that instead. It's a gameplay problem, either way.

 

The only thing I was "disappointed" with was that it wasn't sick/dark/evil enough. There should have been hallways with crucified upside-down gutted flaming bodies over lakes of blood and demonic hell shit everywhere, not just here and there. I remember that first blood room, early on, with the walls drenched and the hanging upside down corpse who said "help me" - I swear I stayed in there and just looked around for 15 minutes. It gave me chills. I had real hope for just how wicked the game was going to get, given that early foreshadowing, but it didn't, so much. Hell was more "neat" than horrifying or gruesome. It's almost like they were afraid of getting flack from fanatic religious groups again like they did with the first one. Fuck'em! Bring on the hell. That's the whole point of the story.

[Capela]

Well i liked Doom3, in fact Doom3 was more than i was expect, as many others players a rushed the last levels in god mod, but at least i was having fun playing something diferent from last games. No matter people say, for me Doom3 raised a level for other games to beet, not im game play, but in a general way, as a all. I intend play some doom3 mods if they haver been release.

[STiFU]

So you demand more complex gameplay in a doomtitle? But you know that we are talking about doom here, right? Honestly, Doom 3 fulfilled all my expectations. A really stupid(in a good way), fast and atmospheric (sometimes shocking), evil shooter... Kind of Serious sam, only less sick, but more evil! In my oppinion, Doom should always remain a classic shooter. The PDA and the soulcube were already enough new features... But I can understand your concern. We tend to demand more froms the games of today than from the early ones.

 

Lets get to those background sounds: In quake 4 you got way more integrated into the whole action compared to Doom 3, so we see that ID software is actually capable of scenes like that. So I'd rather ask, why did they not do it that way in doom 3? Perhaps they were following an aim. Hearing these sounds without actually seeing what is going on there. The intention of that might have been to show the player how helpless he basically is against these evil forces. He hears about all those bad things, but can't do shit about it. I guess this adds a lot to the overall atmosphere and catches the title very good. The player is "doomed"... But I might be interpreting too much into this, like I always do. After all, I really liked those sounds (especially with 5.1 surround they just rocked), so my oppinion is very subjective.

Edited February 8, 2007 by STiFU

[Capela]

I remember they promisse something diferent with Doom3 than they hade in the other titles, more atmospheric and scary gameplay, the atmospheric part is all there but the scary one i have my doubts about it, after the first levels you dont fell scary anymore, thats the fail i point when i talk about more complex gameplay.

[Domarius]

It pisses me off to no end to hear "backround noises" that you eventually discover are just that. It's an immersion breaker for me too. I hated it in D3, and I hated it in T3.

 

Mainly because it excited me in D3, but as the realisation dawned on me, it felt cheap... and cheapened the experience...

[sparhawk]

As a game Quake 4 worked much better for me. I haven't played it through yet but I intend to. Q4 made me go on, which D3 didn't. It just became boring because of it's repeatedness. Maybe I'll give it a try again some time, but the first impression was not so good. Well, the ver first impression was pretty good actually. The atmosphere was great and it was really frightening when the actual game finall started, but it simply became to repititive after that. Q4 didn't suffer from that problem. Prey was even better than that, but it was a bit short. Still as a game Prey was the best of the three IMO.

[STiFU]

All in all Prey was very intuitive, but since you didn't play quake 4 through yet, I'd rather not judge. Have you played it 'till the part where you become a strogg? Becuase from then on it's damn much fun... You move a lot faster... But I see your point. After some time Doom 3 really wasn't too frightening anymore, but still a good shooter if you like it the simple plain way! :>

[Gildoran]

There's a part right towards the beginning/middle of D3 where the gameplay stagnates with no apparent end in sight. But when you finally reach the monorail, the game really starts to pick up again, you can see yourself progress, and things start to get very interesting again.

[Domarius]

Oh yes, Quake 4 is a totally different game. Doom 3 is essentially just a showcase of graphical effects. Quake 4 is like being thrown into the middle of a bad action movie, with cheesy scenes where a guy walks into a room all alone while the music builds up, and of course he gets hammered by some monster from the shadows, etc. and the best part about this game is that there is humans all around 90% of the time, provided you look after them of course. And you don't want to let them die because they provide important functions. And there's always something happening, it's like Call Of Duty - its like you're playing through a movie. Yes it's linear, but that's how a movie-like game works - lots of scripted things.

 

Quake 4 is a huge amount of fun to play. Doom 3 is just a shooting gallery when you get down to the game play; a sort of "satanic duck-hunt".

[bob_arctor]

The TDS city ambients got crap after a while, sounds of horses and carts etc which you never saw.

 

Mind you the TDS city was for the most part a mistake.

[Capela]

I like TDS, im replay it right now, almost at the famous cradle mission, but the principal reason, to get some inspirations for lights. As Maximius i intend to play some levels of Doom, again for the light atmospheric ambiance, and to compare textures quality.

 

I forgot talk about Quake 4, i have to say that i was expect a better team work in the single player campaign, i was a little disapointed with the AI team, i dont know maybe we expect to much from games.

[demagogue]

On that last point, I like the quote "Nobody ever lost money on underestimating the public's intellegence." (PT Barnam, I think?).

TGGP, a user at ttlg, used to quote it.

[STiFU]

That's exactly the problem in the gaming industry right now. There are so few gamedevelopers trying to create something really new. They prefer to fake some of the old good-selling games just because of the money... I mean, I understand that it has become a lot harder for them nowadays because of all that software piracy and publishers cuting the money off, but meh?! Even Bethesda, the one company I always trusted in, released a very good PC-series to the xbox as well and what turns out of it? The same crap that happened to Deus Ex and Thief. (I guess you see that I am talking about Oblivion, which is nothing compared to the complexity of Morrowind. Just way too simple!!) Consoles are making games stupid!! Don't get me wrong here. Most of them are still fun, but neither as challenging nor as interesting as the really good games.

 

Kinda highjacking the topic here, but I thought this thread is nearly dead anyway, so why not going for it?

[Crispy]

Kinda highjacking the topic here, but I thought this thread is nearly dead anyway, so why not going for it?

So your excuse for committing thread hijacking is that you're also committing thread necromancy at the same time? Two wrongs don't make a right, you know!

 

(I jest, I jest...)

[Domarius]

There are so few gamedevelopers trying to create something really new.

NO!! Developers are the ONLY ones trying to create something new! It's the publishers and licence game companies that the developers develop for, that only care about the usual thing - sticking to the same formulas because its safe, dumbing down... Publishers want to stick to what's safe, and licence companies - by that I mean, when a cartoon gets made into a game - all they care about is that their charater's face is in the game and its on the shelf ASAP.

 

You can come up with cool ideas but its your publisher who will have the ultimate say.

 

It's probably all the same to you, but working in a development company, just had to have my say

[Maximius]

I've made it as far as the Spider Lady with the Bald Dude Growing out of Her Ass type of Demon at the end of Alpha Labs 4 and I have to say my opinion of D3 is changing. Im actually having fun and getting the beejeebers scared out of me along the way. And boy, you got to love the combat shotgun in close quarters fighting, I had like 8 spider demons on me and I wasted half of them with one shotgun blast.

 

But man, D3 really is the best choice for the Mod, its so freaking spooky and moody even with a sci fi setting. I actually find myself hiding in shadows, even though I know it doesn't do me any good. The constant squeaking and whining of machinery really starts to eat away at your sanity after a while too.