Doom, Dammit! - lunaran.com

# Lunaran.com Matthew Breit Level Designer | Texture Artist

## Doom, Dammit!

#### Wed, Aug 23rd, 2000 | 7:00am

I am getting really really tired of constantly reading articles about how the new Doom is doomed to fail. Random people who think they have something new to say sit down and rehash the tired arguments that nothing is better the second time around, that people's expectations are already higher than any game could ever achieve, and that no matter what id does with the new Doom they aren't going to please someone, be it the old school Doom community that expects a pure Doom just like the last one or the people who expect Doom to be Half-Life with slow gameplay and little in-game movies to watch that really aren't that important to the plot or the people that want Doom to be anything equally stupid.

To quote the mighty Gestalt, Shut The Fuck Up.

Any person with sense would recognize this, not just these editorial "authors." Any person who writes some article proclaiming the death of a game before it has even begun development based purely on logical extraction of what they think people expect will write an editorial that is doomed to fail.

Doom is not going to fail, god damn it. id software can make very good games, and you know it. Just because they have Devine instead of Romero, Reznor instead of Prince, Willits and Jaquays instead of McGee and Peterson does not mean they can't make a good game. It does mean they can't completely reproduce Doom in every possible hidden nuance, unseen style, and artist's hand, but that is NOT WHAT THEY ARE GOING TO DO.

Anyone who expects the new Doom to "live up to the original" is an idiot. The notion is utter trash. Duke3D didn't have to live up to Doom, Unreal didn't have to live up to Quake, and Half-Life didn't have to live up to Quake2. The new Doom is going to be a new game. That's why it's unofficial development name is "The New Doom Game." Note the very clever use of the word NEW in there. id is "remaking" doom, not "reproducing" it. That means they are taking the idea of Doom, the idea of Aliens meets Evil Dead II, and treating it to the kind of development, engine, and content that any game gets today.

If you expect to play something just like the old Doom except in higher resolution you are a complete moron. Some things are going to change, some things are going to be added, and some things are going to get better. A game as simple as the original Doom just won't hack it for the market and audience of today, let alone in 2002. Just look what happened to Quake 3 "Hardly a Tremor" Arena.

If you expect Doom will be updated with neat stuff like scripted sequences, sidekicks, RPG stats, and a railgun, then you are also a complete moron. id software knows what they're doing, and you can be sure they aren't going to completely "betray" the original Doom. Some things are going to change, some things are going to be added, and some things are going to get better, but you can bet that whatever comes out of that box, even if it's not exactly like the original, will still sure as hell be Doom to the core.

If you don't expect that id software will meet your expectations, whose fault is that? If your expectations are so high that you expect id software won't meet them, the problem is yours, not id's. It means the two halves of your brain are not communicating with each other with the goal of realizing your expectations are too damn high. Doom isn't going to meet such an array of conflicting and impossible expectations in one fell swoop, so why expect it to?

If you expect nothing more than the new Doom to be a revolutionarily good game, then you're absolutely right.