How id resurrected Doom and then ditched it again in the Ancient Gods – Igromania

In the heading “In plain text” the authors express exclusively their own opinion, which may not coincide with the opinion of the editorial board (or may coincide). They are free to do it as they please and in any format convenient for them. Everything is possible here.

Lay the foundation of

Having abandoned the failed prototype of the fourth “Doom”, named Call of Doom for being too similar to the Activision franchise, id returned to the prototyping stage with the baggage of experience and understanding of how not to do it. It was decided to put the fan at the head of the table – that is, to maximize the player’s involvement and his pleasure from what is happening. This is reflected in the philosophy of the game: “make the player think, make the player move.”

Based on this thesis, the developers have filtered out a lot of mechanics. So, a double jump increased mobility and allowed you to be more active and more aggressive. But they refused to reload: it forced them to stop attacking, reducing the dynamics of the battle. To motivate the player to be on the move, enemies were forced to frequently miss a moving target. But the most important decision of the developers was to turn opponents into sources of two main resources in the game: cartridges and first-aid kits.

Doom 2016 got rid of all those old sores in one fell swoop. Unpretentious “trash” enemies constantly participated in the battle, while at least one major rival was alive; one swing of the automatically reloading chainsaw – and ammunition of all sorts spattered from them a fountain. One shot (or even a couple of pokes) was enough for them to go into a stunned state, opening them for brutal finishing off, and it already gave the hero health. And the more dangerous the enemy was, the more generously the reward poured from him.

Thanks to this, in Doom 2016, the player always tried to stay at a medium distance from the enemies: they were too dangerous close up, and from afar one could not have time to finish off – in this case, the enemy would come to his senses and regenerate. A simple murder of a stunned one with a weapon was not rewarded with anything, but during the animation of the “fatality” the hero was invulnerable.

Having fully charged the chainsaw, you could use it as a cheating “one-shot” of any enemy in the arena. Since there was no shortage of ammunition in Doom 2016, such a use of it seemed optimal.

The three pillars of gameplay are constant movement, aggressive behavior and improvisation. The first two points were necessary for survival: if the player stood still or did not run up to the enemies for finishing moves, his chances of survival were rapidly decreasing. But, besides this, Doom did not restrain the user in the choice of means in any way and did not indicate how to play it.

At the same time, it contained a knowingly profitable exploit: switching between guns took less time than rolling back before the next shot. It was possible in a couple of seconds to make a powerful shot from three types of weapons in a row, giving out colossal damage. It looked, of course, like a ridiculous masturbation with metal barrels, and, fortunately, it was optional. Many in general, instead of experimenting with different types of weapons, limited themselves to their favorite reliable double-barreled shotgun.

On the one hand, it left the player free to choose their own style. On the other hand, for many (especially those who have mastered juggling with trunks) the game seemed too simple. And the developers themselves were clearly not satisfied with this situation – and they decided to fix something in the sequel.

Unscrew to the limit

A popular reason for criticism of Eternal was the lack of a sense of proportion in Hugo Martin, the head of development: yes, there was more of everything, but perhaps it was worth stopping earlier, the disgruntled said. Some were too strained by platforming with obstacles, others did not like the almost cartoonish diversity of the game, while others were upset by the emphasis on narrative (and the canonization of an old stupid comic about “rip and tear”). But most of all the indignation was caused by the constant lack of ammunition: by severely limiting the ammunition of each barrel, the developers tried to motivate players to switch between different types of weapons. In my opinion, this did not particularly damage the fundamentals of the gameplay: in the end, Doom 2016 already forced you to constantly finish off enemies for the sake of health, and the fact that now they had to be cut a little more often did not change the state of affairs much.

But other innovations could already be regarded as an encroachment on freedom of improvisation. A number of enemies had weak points – aimed fire made it possible to deprive them of their combat effectiveness. I preferred not to do this: instead of gnawing a piece off the demon, it is better to kill him as soon as possible. Other enemies had vulnerabilities to a specific type of attack: the cacodemon opened up for finishing off after one grenade, and kicks even died with one fist in the face. Although both of them could have been killed in the old fashioned way with anything, the ineffectiveness of this was all too obvious: why waste valuable ammunition when you can feed a round one discharge from a grenade launcher?

With the introduction of vulnerabilities, some gun modifications have become clearly more valuable than others. For example, a grenade launcher on a shotgun or an aimed shot on a rifle: he skillfully demolished vulnerable points and killed drones from one headshot. But customization with the help of runes still gave enough freedom, and if you wanted to, you could go through most of the game, ignoring the wishes of the developers. For example, the “Cultist Base”, the first master-level available immediately at the start of the game, I easily ran on “ultra cruelty”, using only a double-barreled gun as a weapon and nothing else. All three pillars of Doom 2016’s gameplay were preserved in Eternal – but there was also one enemy in the game who seriously attempted on them.

No, not tentacles. But they, of course, also tried to ruin everything: why do we need such a dislike at all?

Give to the marauder

It’s about the marauder, of course. Never before in Doom was it that shots did not pass at the enemy. Yes, the kick had an armored forehead, and the soldiers hid behind energy shields, but they were easily punished from behind, and if you wanted, you could even drill through their defense with your damage. The Marauder is not like that: no matter how hard you try to outsmart him, he will get his shield out of nowhere and block your attacks. Even from the BFG.

The Marauder makes you play by his own rules. If you are close, you will get a shot in your face and you won’t be able to do anything. If you are far away, he will throw a beam at you, and you still cannot do anything. If you are especially lucky, he will also lower the dog on you, and you will have to deal with it – and he will still be invulnerable. And only if you find yourself at the right distance from him, then he may swing with an ax – and give you a whole second so that you shoot at him and stun the reptile … for another couple of seconds. Which is just enough to quickly switch to another weapon that gives out powerful charges. In a fight with him, juggling with trunks becomes necessary: ​​the window for dealing damage is too small for anything else. Goodbye, improvisation.

Yes, splash damage works on the marauder, and theoretically you can kill him by shooting not at him, but around. But this will still require all your attention and all the ammunition of explosive shells.

All three central ideas of the new Doom – constant movement, aggressive gameplay and improvisation – are destroyed by the marauder. It is contraindicated for you to be at any distance, except for the one at which he brandishes the ax. You no longer play aggressively – you humbly wait for the AI ​​to deign to launch the animation you want. Improvising is also unprofitable: any mistake – and the second window for dealing damage will close.

When developing Doom 2016, id identified four factors for the failure of an aggressive playstyle: if the player runs away from enemies, keeps them in the doorway, shoots them from afar, or drags them around the arena. There are no doors in the Eternal arenas, but drones are killed exactly from afar, and thanks to looters, the first and last points have become a reality. The Marauder requires the player’s full attention for quite a long time – and if there are still some serious opponents in the arena, this does not go unpunished. This means that you have to run from the marauder until the space is free of unnecessary obstacles, and then carry out the same combo on it. This is the most stifling enemy in Doom Eternal, and it’s a good thing that he only appears three or four times in the entire game.

Drive into a dead end and hammer against the wall

The Ancient Gods, an add-on to Doom Eternal, fell into the same trap as many other DLCs: since it is designed for people who have already completed the game, then the difficulty in it should be higher. How can you easily raise the difficulty without introducing new enemies? Spam old. No brakes. Previously, the developers tried not to release more than one pursuer into the arena at the same time. It used to be that they made the arenas spacious and wrote the word “move” in the basis of the game. Now you can forget about these principles. It’s DLC!

Visit us at The Ancient Gods! Here, in the first hour and a half, you will find:

• a small arena, half of the floor in which deals damage, and an archville in a narrow dead end;
• a tyrant who locks the player in a tiny room;
• enemies shooting the hero while he climbs up and cannot fire;
• two marauders at once;
• a marauder reinforced with a totem that cannot be destroyed;
• a five-meter patch of earth and a thirty-meter tentacle, hammering exactly into it;
• and even more marauders with or without reason.

This is unbearable stuffiness. And it concerns not only the first part of the TAG: in the master-level “Bloody Supernest” that came out after it, exactly the same thing occurs. When you see two tyrants and a hunter (and a few more carcasses) on a patch of meager size, you want to grab Hugo Martin by the scruff and poke his nose at the words spoken by his wards about the Doom 2016 concept. “Always think, always move” by the end of 2023- It degenerated into “nowhere to run, switch weapons as quickly as possible or die.”

But there are also new opponents. The developers threw their old dogmas in the trash can and instead of the guidelines that guided them when creating Doom 2016, they chose the marauder as their new guiding star. Because all fresh enemies also force the player to dance to their tune.

The turret is only vulnerable when it shoots at the hero. It is worth looking at her for more than a couple of seconds, and she disappears – only to shoot in the back a second later.

The bloody drone is also always invulnerable, except for the moments of its super attacks. And he does not make them close up – so you need to move away, get a rifle with a scope and wait for it to swell. Yes, he, fortunately, also dies with one headshot, but what if you don’t have time to wait for him? Then the drone will pollute the arena with wide area attacks (yes, the very ones that were deliberately refused in 2016) – and they not only cause damage, but also slow down the hero. You see, he decided to move! Stop and sniper!

The boss of The Ancient Gods Part 1 both slows down with shots and creates some kind of flying eyes that also shit around them with AoE attacks. And then it starts releasing endless bloody drones

Stone imps exist solely to force the user to change the attachment on a shotgun. Since Eternal made the grenade launcher necessary against cacodemons, it means that we need to introduce such enemies that will only die from the automatic firing modification. In short, the developers give the player motivation with the subtlety and grace of King Kong.

Against soldiers with shields, maneuverability, and the blast wave of grenades and missiles, and plasma that exploded the shields previously helped (however, any other damage was also good). DLC soldiers have become impenetrable. They still do not pose much of a danger, they are still easily demolished by a blast wave – it’s just that there are even fewer options in battle.

The armored baron is invulnerable in uniform. His armor can be either long and painfully gnawed with plasma, or demolished with one counterattack when he swings – yes, just like a marauder. The choice is obvious, which means that all attention will again have to be paid to the AI ​​tricks of one enemy. But this is half the battle, because his armor is restored in a matter of seconds, and everything must be repeated again.

The spirit possesses the demons and strengthens them, in addition to speed and vitality, giving them immunity from stun (which was used just when quickly changing guns for endless combos). After killing a reinforced demon, the spirit becomes available for killing … for five seconds. Only one modification of the plasma jet. Everything else doesn’t work. If you did not have enough plasma to kill the spirit, you will not have time to cut the nearest zombie and return to him – he will move into the next demon, and everything will go down the drain.

Moreover, the microwave beam – the only thing to which it is vulnerable – makes the player actually stand still and, as a result, shovel away from everyone around. And killing all the other enemies first is probably not the best solution, because reinforced demons are extremely nimble: even their shots fly faster – and, as a result, it is more difficult to dodge them. The spirit prevents the player from thinking, moving, and improvising.

The enemy, invulnerable to all types of weapons, except one, has previously met in Doom only once – this was the last boss of Doom 3. Excellent landmark, Hugo!

Единственный новый противник из DLC, которого не хочется ругать, — хилый зомби, усиливающий окружающих врагов в случае своей смерти. Он не мешает импровизации никак, лишь ставит условие: не задевать его. Но и в случае провала усиленные враги все равно не запрещают играть так, как вам захочется. В отличие от всех остальных новичков.

А завершает печальную картину финальный босс, представляющий собой всё того же мародёра, только растянутого на пять фаз. На протяжении всего боя нужно мучительно ждать, пока оппонент не сделает единственную атаку, которую можно парировать, после чего обязательно надо продлить его оглушение и потом уже вливать урон. Но вот только если вы пропустите его удар, он вылечится. Сильно. Делает ли это бой сложнее? No. А вот ещё более затянутым — да.

Отдельно хочется отметить последнюю фазу, в которой он начинает постоянно призывать не только хиленьких мародёрских собак, но и духов злейших противников — тирана, барона, элементаля и манкубуса одновременно. Поскольку они призраки, на них не работают механики обычных врагов: они не дают здоровье, броню или патроны. Под конец разработчики выкинули на помойку последний кирпичик из фундамента игры. Как показательно.

Для сравнения вспомните финального босса самой Eternal: полная свобода передвижения и выбора оружия при постоянном давлении со стороны полчищ врагов, которые при этом оставались источниками ресурсов. С боссами серии всегда не везло, но именно в Eternal у id хоть что-то получилось как надо

У разбитого корыта

Долгое время Doom Eternal была для меня главным претендентом на звание игры 2023 года. А вот после DLC подобные мысли пропали: негатив от первой части The Ancient Gods отравил впечатления и от основной игры. Та Eternal, за которой я с удовольствием отдыхал, сменилась набором откровенных издёвок уровня невидимого моста из «Плутонии».

TAG1 была настолько садистской, что с выходом TAG2 её сложность ретроактивно уменьшили, сократив число противников и понизив их агрессивность. Теперь её можно пройти, не чертыхаясь каждые пять минут, хотя от сниженной сложности геймдизайнерские решения лучше не станут.

Критики Eternal, с которыми я рьяно спорил до выхода DLC, всё же были правы: разработчики не знают меры и не понимают, когда остановиться. Только если в Eternal они перешли грань лишь однажды — с мародёром, — то в TAG оторвались на полную, продемонстрировав презрение ко всем идеалам, которые сделали Doom 2016 и Eternal столь любимыми мной шутерами. Я всё ещё считаю, что Doom — игра про постоянное передвижение и менеджмент ресурсов, а вот для них она, очевидно, уже про передёргивание трёх стволов в секунду. Нам явно не по пути.