Anime The mistake a lot of modern boomer shooters make

[Harthwain]

And yet if we were to write it out alongside Half-Life's story, we'd find them to have a similar level of detail, and a similar span of plot beats (many of which could be summarised as "Gordon/Corvus navigates a dangerous area while threatened by hostile forces").

Uh-huh. Yet I don't recall people reminiscing Corvus' adventures as much as they do Gordon's. You can try and pretend like these stories are similar, but they are not, if only because of the presentation.

If it were a flimsy excuse for a game

Ironically enough it was John Carmack who said "Story in a game is like story in a porn movie. It's expected to be there, but it's not important". So, yeah, "a flimsy excuse" is pretty much spot on description of the story of Doom (Heretic may have a bit more elaborate story, but it works the same way in the end).

Obviously I disagree with that statement, as there are plenty of games where a decent story can elevate a game above its gameplay mechanics, but it clearly shows the philosophy behind Doom's story.

It seems like your complaints are about the way the story is presented (and the game's menu?), but to claim that it's not a "proper story" seems odd to me when it demonstrably follows a very clear plot arc, the player character's objective(s) are clearly defined, the maps represent a coherent journey, the enemies and power-ups have explained reasons to exist in-universe, and so on.

The "very clear plot arc" amounts to "demons invade". And, as I said before, you can have a theme/setting without really committing to a story. "Demons invade" is all you need to work with. Same as "Aliens invade New York" (which is the plot of Duke Nukem 3D). Neither game is really serious with their story (as some games are, as was mentioned previously). I don't really see much point in trying to present them to be more than they really are.

We could probably make a WAD that just prints the manual's backstory section as a text crawl when the player launches E1M1, if that'd make all the difference.

It would make for a better intro (for people who didn't read the manual). It wouldn't make much difference besides that though. There are really much better examples of games with a story than the ones you're trying to defend (and I admited this much).

But early 90s games expected you'd read the manual, it's a convention that I don't see any problem with.

It was just a way of saving the power of the hardware on more important things than story (read: gameplay) back then. This persisted up to a point at which it became possible to contain the actual story within the confines of a game (although manuals still remained as a source of supplementary knowledge about some aspects of the game). Now we don't even have manuals.

 

[Lemming42]

Uh-huh. Yet I don't recall people reminiscing Corvus' adventures as much as they do Gordon's. You can try and pretend like these stories are similar, but they are not, if only because of the presentation.

If people reminiscing about a game's story is the benchmark for quality, surely "Doomguy went to hell! lol rip and tear!!" is as popuiar if not moreso than Gordon's adventures.

The "very clear plot arc" amounts to "demons invade".

In the same way that Half-Life amounts to "aliens invade". The actual plot arc of Doom, as described in my OP, involves the trip through Phobos base in which the player is seemingly killed at the end, then through the partly-consumed Deimos Base which gets less recognisable and more hellish as you proceed (culminating with the Tower of Babel), and then rappeling down to the surface of Hell and moving through its twisted cities to reach the centre of Dis. Every stage of this journey has distinct and striking visuals (even if every Sandy Petersen map looks like garbled shit), enemy types logically consistent with the areas in which they appear, and so on.

If you're less uncharitable to Doom then there's also things like the UAC, the player's backstory (discharged and reassigned to Phobos as punishment for assaulting a CO when ordered to fire on civilians), Deimos Base being sucked into Hell and transformed, etc.

I don't really see much point in trying to present them to be more than they really are.

If you check my OP again you'll see that my point isn't "these games had incredibly rich stories" because they didn't (nor does Half-Life), but just that the stories were there and that the art assets and level design of the games reflected that, which is what's missing from so many newer games. The story is not the focus, but it exists and can be clearly followed by the player, and what's going on in the game pertains to that story and conveys its progress to the player. You're at least now seemingly agreeing that Heretic does very obviously have a story.

Your original assertion that 90s FPS games didn't have stories and that "stories came later" just seemed so odd to me in light of my own experience of those games, especially the likes of System Shock, Dark Forces, Outlaws, Unreal, Half-Life, etc. What you said just isn't true. But even if you boil it down to just Doom, Heretic and Quake - which I don't agree are the only or even primary sources of inspiration used by modern devs, especially since DUSK includes references to things like Thief, and Half-Life is a clear point of reference for several others - I'd argue that Heretic and Doom both display a level of setting coherency and sense of plot progress that most throwback FPS games puzzlingly lack.

 

[JoacoN]

Fuck that. Lets talk about Overload, Ashes Afterglow, Immortal Redneck, Everspace? Modern FPS doesn't have to be shit, derivative, bland and boring!

Talking bout Inmortal Redneck, does it get better after the first hour? I played an hour or so but found it kinda rough, so wanted to know

I think so. It's one of those games you come to appreciate more with time. And an hour isn't enough to see what the game is capable of. For example, you can end up with a ninja build with quadruple jump that flies through the air at 100mph tossing kunai at everyone. It's epic. Another run you'll have a pretty good build going but get a shitty negative modifier that really puts your FPS skill to the test, to survive regardless. It's just pure fun.

Oh pretty cool then, I'll check it out when im finished with what im playing rn, have it on GOG so just a quick install

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

Man would the gaming landscape look a hell of a lot different today if the Xbox bombed. But still, I can only try to remain grateful of the golden gaming years that is the 90s. Lucky we got that at all.

I think very different, yet a lot of developments we saw would still happen.
I think the age of the multiplataform release and the end of the PC/Console port divide there was, was inevitable. Things simply tended to converge, because consoles were getting more PC-like.

If Microsoft's console foray tanks, its likely they just become a second-party seller and sell games in someone's console. It might a Sony/Nintendo competition instead. Maybe Sega keeps in console dev. Or try again later.

 

[Ash]

If Microsoft's console foray tanks, its likely they just become a second-party seller and sell games in someone's console. It might a Sony/Nintendo competition instead. Maybe Sega keeps in console dev. Or try again later.

Yeah, and this would have been a fantastic alternative. There still would be overall decline absolutely: insane budgets, human greed, the rise of multiplayer and "social" gaming, short-sighted demand for more realism and graphics....definitely inevitable, but without the Shitbox & Shitbox360 it would for sure have been a better outcome. Nothing but greed machines they were. It made me sick. They were at the forefront of the decline and nosedived the quality of PC and console gaming. So glad they're struggling now.

 

[Harthwain]

If people reminiscing about a game's story is the benchmark for quality, surely "Doomguy went to hell! lol rip and tear!!" is as popuiar if not moreso than Gordon's adventures.

That's a false equivalency fallacy.

"Doomguy went to hell! lol rip and tear!!" is not a story worth reminiscing. Yes, you will have people saying that demons invade(d) (or Doom Guy goes to hell) in Doom 1, but that's pretty much the extent of it. The premise is literally the synopsis of the "story" of Doom 1. Half-Life's story is much more complex. Ironically enough there was one guy who wanted Doom to be more than its premise (Tom Hall), but he was kicked out by the same man who thought the story isn't important to focus on it.

In the same way that Half-Life amounts to "aliens invade".

Bullshit. There are many things happening in Half-Life as a result of aliens invading. Invasion alone is but a trigger to more events taking place. I can't really say the same about Doom.

If you're less uncharitable to Doom then there's also things like the UAC, the player's backstory (discharged and reassigned to Phobos as punishment for assaulting a CO when ordered to fire on civilians), Deimos Base being sucked into Hell and transformed, etc.

I am not uncharitable though. Yes, you can nominally call it a story. But in reality you don't really get much of the actual story (the most of it coming from the manual).

If you check my OP again you'll see that my point isn't "these games had incredibly rich stories" because they didn't (nor does Half-Life), but just that the stories were there and that the art assets and level design of the games reflected that, which is what's missing from so many newer games.

But even if you boil it down to just Doom, Heretic and Quake - which I don't agree are the only or even primary sources of inspiration used by modern devs, especially since DUSK includes references to things like Thief, and Half-Life is a clear point of reference for several others - I'd argue that Heretic and Doom both display a level of setting coherency and sense of plot progress that most throwback FPS games puzzlingly lack.

Like Amid Evil (also mentioned by you)? Because to me it sounds like it does exactly what the very games you're trying to defend, yet you somehow missed its story (ironically enough because of its similar presentation).

Here is an example of what you try to do with Doom, but applied to DUSK (by your own account yet another game "puzzlingly lacking a level of setting coherency and sense of plot progress", mentioned by you in the OP):

DUSK: Story Explained

Here is a fan discussion with the developer joining in

 

[Lemming42]

That's a false equivalency fallacy.

Yes, it's a silly thing to say; the intent was to disagree with your idea that people reminiscing about a game's story has any relevance on whether or not it's there.

Half-Life's story is much more complex...

Bullshit. There are many things happening in Half-Life as a result of aliens invading. Invasion alone is but a trigger to more events taking place. I can't really say the same about Doom.

Like what? The HECU are deployed, the HECU start to lose the battle against the aliens, the black ops are sent in, the Lambda lab prepares a teleporter to Xen, Gordon goes to Xen and kills a weird-looking thing. There are also some minor beats - Gordon retrieves the Tau Cannon, Gordon evades capture in the rail system, Gordon races across the surface and weaves his way between alien-vs-HECU skirmishes, Gordon sees the G-Man in the distance a few times.

Again though, this is all a sidetrack from what I raised in the OP, which wasn't "these games have deep stories" but rather "these games have consistent and striking visual themes, clear plot hooks, are designed to evoke a strong sense of place and strike a certain tone, etc".

Like Amid Evil (also mentioned by you)? Because to me it sounds like it does exactly what the very games you're trying to defend, yet you somehow missed its story (ironically enough because of its similar presentation).

Have you played most of the games we're talking about, or is this discussion theoretical? You said you haven't played Amid Evil, so are you just typing in "DUSK story" and "AMID EVIL story" and linking me the first results you find? If so, why?

Honestly I'm really confused by what you're getting at at this point because it seems like your main goal is to disagree with whatever the most recent thing I've said is. I'm not being snarky, I genuinely don't understand what your overall gist is - plus half the stuff you're asking me about was already outlined in the OP, which is why I keep trying to direct you back to it. I'm not sure I even understand what your start position was either; you said that old FPS games didn't have stories (they "came later", apparently). Even though the thread is about a range of things and not just stories in the strictest sense, I responded with a list of a dozen or so that clearly do have "stories" in the sense of written text/dialogue to convey a plot, several of which were very high profile and are direct inspirations for the throwback shooters we're talking about. We could have talked about why modern devs choose to focus on specific aspects of these games at the expense of others and what they do differently but instead I somehow wound up laying out Heretic's story so you could go from "it has no story" to "you're LARPing a story" to "the story is there, but in the manual" to "well, maybe it does have a story, but it's badly done plus the levels are maze-like and the menu works wrong", which feels like it was a waste of both our electricity bills.

Let's just focus on Half-Life and Heretic because I think that's potentially the most interesting avenue of discussion that's arisen so far both in terms of what trends were in 1990s development and what throwback devs take away from that era. I'd argue the games' plots are not entirely dissimilar and that the differences lay mainly in the way they're presented to the player. What do you feel HL and Heretic do so differently, with specific reference to each game? To go back to the examples I already used, what's the difference between Corvus being kidnapped and Gordon being kidnapped, other than that one is a text crawl and the other is a cutscene? Or the Disciples ambushing Corvus in the cesspool versus the HECU ambushing Gordon in the rail system?

 

[HeatEXTEND]

Bullshit. There are many things happening in Half-Life as a result of aliens invading. Invasion alone is but a trigger to more events taking place. I can't really say the same about Doom.

Thank god.

They typically revolve around:
In-game character progression as opposed to irl player skill progression beyond understanding the mechanics of the game.
A sense of adventure and/or exploration.
A tangible story driven goal.

Eh, I would strike down the second and the third points. You can have them outside of an RPG. In fact, I would mutate the third point into "a player-driven story". Because the story - no matter the goal - revolves around how the player(s) approach the problem, not vice-versa. Which plays into the first point (what your in-game character is capable of doing). You can also mutate the second point into "an adventure/exploration that is extremely malleable and player-centric", similarly to the second point. After all, everything is a springboard for the player(s) to serve as an opportunity to interact with (with the GM trying to somehow loop the players back into his intended story or creating something new on-the-fly).

It doesn't matter that you can find these outside of RPGs.
I'm not trying to "solve" the term, as we all should well know that's a fools errand. Notice the "typically", I'm keeping it as loose as possible while still trying to approximate.
To make things worse I forgot combat, cardinal sin right there
anyway

 

[NecroLord]

Are we seriously overanalyzing Doom's story?
There's Demons and they are a real nuisance.
See Demon - Kill Demon.
That's the story.

 

[Harthwain]

You said you haven't played Amid Evil, so are you just typing in "DUSK story" and "AMID EVIL story" and linking me the first results you find? If so, why?

To answer this:

we have... a nameless hero fighting endless waves of surreal enemies in surreal environments for no clear reason. What's the big idea here?

It also ties in very well with what you were doing for the past two pages (although in a somewhat contradictory manner).

I'm not sure I even understand what your start position was either; [...]

My position was clear and simple:

First of all - stories came later (and by "stories" I mean something more complex than a line or two to give you an excuse to shoot at things). Very early on it was all about the technology and what you could do with it. [...]

It should be obvious from this that I don't consider what Doom has to be a story. I only agreed that it can be called a story, but only nominally (I personally don't consider it worth calling it that). That's about it.

I'd argue the games' plots are not entirely dissimilar and that the differences lay mainly in the way they're presented to the player. What do you feel HL and Heretic do so differently, with specific reference to each game?

Both games play completely differently...? Heretic 1 is pretty much Doom with a different skin. It is still a shooting gallery with story contained mostly to the manual. Half-Life is an FPS, but does a lot more than require you to shoot a things and its story is not only better presented, it is also way more complex. By trying to put an equal sign between their stories all you really do here is show the gap between 1994 and 1998 (which can also be seen between other games).

 

[HeatEXTEND]

it is also way more complex

Yeah, way more than Heretic

 

[Lemming42]

To answer this:

Right, but you see how it's difficult to discuss the game with you when you haven't played it and just link me an hour-long video that you haven't watched, right? There's plenty to talk about in terms of the things that have already been mentioned in the thread - level and enemy design/aesthetics being representative of plot elements, and thematically consistent visual design, for example - but it's going to be tricky to do that if you're talking about games you haven't played.

It should be obvious from this that I don't consider what Doom has to be a story. I only agreed that it can be called a story, but only nominally (I personally don't consider it worth calling it that). That's about it.

You didn't say "Doom has no story", you said "stories came later" (later than the mid 90s, is the only way I can interpret it given that the thread covered all 90s FPS games). You even mentioned Doom 3 which struck me as really odd becuase that'd extend the scope of your claim to 2004.

Even if you're focusing specifically on Doom, though, which wasn't what you wrote, you can see in the OP that I'm talking about a number of aesthetic and creative factors. I wrote:

If you look at many actual 90s FPS games, they tend to have very clear plot hooks. They also have vivid settings with strong premises, a firm sense of place, and a bold sense of mood and tone

Which is true of Doom. I mean, the very next line of the post was me describing why I felt Doom qualified. If your definition of "plot hook" or "story" is, like, interactive NPCs with dialogue and scripted sequences or whatever, then... no, Doom doesn't have those, obviously, but nobody claimed it did and that's not what the thread is about.

Both games play completely differently...? Heretic 1 is pretty much Doom with a different skin. It is still a shooting gallery with story contained mostly to the manual. Half-Life is an FPS, but does a lot more than require you to shoot a things and its story is not only better presented, it is also way more complex.

Again, it'd really help if you'd explain what you mean by any of this. I'm drawing direct comparisons between specific elements of the two games and talking about how they're presented to the player and you're just ignoring me and repeating that Half-Life's plot is "more complex" without explaining why, or what you even mean. There's "more going on" than the alien invasion plot but you won't tell me what. I've had to try and do it myself. And what are the things Half-Life requires you do to beyond shooting? Pressing switches and platforming? It's even more baffling because you decoupled gameplay from "story" earlier by talking about Warcraft 2 and Diablo.

The only concrete things you've pointed to so far in favour of Half-Life being "more complex" narratively are that the levels are more linear and you don't like the way the menu works on Doom engine games, neither of which seem at all relevant. I don't even necessarily disagree that Half-Life's story is "more complex", I just wish you'd explain what it is you're actually saying beyond making vague statements with no reference to anything specific from the game.

By trying to put an equal sign between their stories all you really do here is show the gap between 1994 and 1998 (which can also be seen between other games).

Which seems like a good place to once again bring in the likes of System Shock and Marathon (both 1994) and Dark Forces (early 1995), among many others. Half-Life was a massive triumph in terms of how it presented and paced itself but FPS games were doing similar things and telling stories, perhaps more """complex""" than Half-Life's, as early as 1994.

The whole ethos of a lot of developers back then seemed to be how excited they were at the possibilities the technology offered to tell stories and create vivid worlds. Dark Forces is literally just a Star Wars movie presented in the form of an FPS game (and by DF2 they went all-out and filmed live action segments to replace the original's cutscenes, essentially giving you a mini-movie inside the game).

 

[Morenatsu.]

Wow so many Doom story deniers

 

[Great Deceiver]

These retro shooters all lack ambition, which to me is their greatest flaw. Even the good ones are just bottom feeders.

Gaming is so bad at the moment that even independent games that are supposedly made by passionate people (tm) are completely bereft of any character whatsoever and just scrape the bottom of whatever barrel they can find.

 

[Lemming42]

Wow so many Doom story deniers

I think it's all coming from a difference in what everyone means by "story". I'm talking about the strength of the premise, the level design relaying a sense of progress, the graphical design being thematically consistent and designed to relay the plot, the plot being forwarded by basic events and occasional text crawls, etc, but I feel like people are hearing me saying some shit like "Doom is the most intricate story I've ever seen in a videogame and I think it could be turned into a 300-page novel with no changes".

These retro shooters all lack ambition, which to me is their greatest flaw. Even the good ones are just bottom feeders.

It's by design, I think - the preoccupation is with recreating the (perceived) limitations of the 1990s, so they deliberately hamper and dilute themselves in various ways (intentional lack of the elements mentioned above being one of them). I think the reason they feel so low-effort a lot of the time is because 90s devs were often clearly trying to do more than the tech allowed, while throwback devs are intentionally trying to do less, and they do it in a way where even middling shit from the 90s like Eradicator feels far more ambitious and professional than the stuff they're coming out with.

The ones that don't do this always stand out - Ion Fury for example is really good at feeling like a modern FPS that just happens to be on the Build Engine, rather than a result of the devs sitting there thinking "what were the shittest things about shovelware games from 1996 and how can we replicate them?".

 

[Kabas]

even independent games that are supposedly made by passionate people (tm) are completely bereft of any character whatsoever

I wouldn't call something like HROT or Slayers X being completely bereft of any character. If anything having a strong character is what elevated them from mediocrity.
Granted, these two examples and many others are nowhere near as replayable as classics.

 

[Harthwain]

I think it's all coming from a difference in what everyone means by "story". I'm talking about the strength of the premise, the level design relaying a sense of progress, the graphical design being thematically consistent and designed to relay the plot, the plot being forwarded by basic events and occasional text crawls, etc,

I kept saying that premise is not the same thing as a story, so I am not sure why you're discovering this now, but at least we might be on the same page here...

Right, but you see how it's difficult to discuss the game with you when you haven't played it and just link me an hour-long video that you haven't watched, right?

Joke is on you. Unlike some people (I am not saying it's a jab at you), I do actually watch or read what I link to others. It wouldn't have much point otherwise.

You didn't say "Doom has no story", you said "stories came later" (later than the mid 90s, is the only way I can interpret it given that the thread covered all 90s FPS games). You even mentioned Doom 3 which struck me as really odd becuase that'd extend the scope of your claim to 2004.

1) How "stories came later" DOESN'T mean "Doom has no story"? I mean, if stories came LATER it stands to reason they WEREN'T there BEFORE? This is even more evident in the context of your own words (that I quoted then and now): "They have no stories, or coherent settings, or clear visual themes at all. Why is this?".

2) I mentioned Doom 3 because of its focus, which was identical to Doom 1's (on the game's engine, not on the story).

Again, it'd really help if you'd explain what you mean by any of this. I'm drawing direct comparisons between specific elements of the two games and talking about how they're presented to the player and you're just ignoring me and repeating that Half-Life's plot is "more complex" without explaining why, or what you even mean.

I don't mean Half-Life's plot. I mean Half-Life's story. Plot is "X happens, then Y, etc.". Story is much more detailed than that. Alien invasion is but the very first step of what happens in Half-Life*, with more to follow. I could and detail the entire story of Half-Life, but I don't think I need to do so, when it is obvious that neither Doom nor Heretic have an actual story (as you yourself have admitted). All they have is a premise.

* Actually, it isn't. The invasion happens later.

And what are the things Half-Life requires you do to beyond shooting? Pressing switches and platforming?

It is not what Half-Life requires you to do. It is that it isn't purely a shooter. Because that's all Doom and Heretic are: a shooter. In Half-Life you aren't even supposed to shoot at anything, because you're a scientist. You arrive at work. There are other people who, too, work there (guards, other scientists. You know, living beings you expect to see in a place like that?). There are events that happen independently from the player (both on- and off-screen) I could go on and on, but I do hope I got my point across. Trying to reduce all that to "it's just a shooter" and putting it next do Doom/Heretic is really missing the point why Half-Life became such a landmark in the gaming history.

The whole ethos of a lot of developers back then seemed to be how excited they were at the possibilities the technology offered to tell stories and create vivid worlds.

Excited at the possibilities the technology offered - yes. To tell stories - not exactly. Not all of them at least.

 

[Lemming42]

How "stories came later" DOESN'T mean "Doom has no story"? I mean, if stories came LATER it stands to reason they WEREN'T there BEFORE?

Because you didn't say Doom, you appeared to refer to 90s FPS games as a whole. Which is off-base when we can point to games like the ones I mentioned. Which is perhaps what I was getting at with the OP - some, perhaps even most, 1990s FPS games were at least somewhat interested in creating thematically vivid worlds with clear plots/stories/whatever, so why do throwback shooters so often choose not to do that?

I don't mean Half-Life's plot. I mean Half-Life's story. Plot is "X happens, then Y, etc.". Story is much more detailed than that. Alien invasion is but the very first step of what happens in Half-Life*, with more to follow. I could and detail the entire story of Half-Life, but I don't think I need to do so, when it is obvious that neither Doom nor Heretic have an actual story (as you yourself have admitted). All they have is a premise.

But again, isn't this down to presentation? Things are happening off-screen in Doom - the hell invasion is progressing and Deimos is being subsumed. Unbeknownst to the player, the demons are also attacking Earth. It's obviously true that Half-Life is vastly more adept at showing this directly to the player through scripted events and has a much greater focus on doing so, but I'm not sure if the overall shape of the plot is dramatically more intricate than Doom's. Again, this is not to say that Doom has a particularly impressive plot.

To reiterate my wider point because I think it might have gotten lost - I can tell you what happens in Doom (or Heretic) just by playing it. Whether you consider it an "actual story" or whatever aside, there's a clear chain of events that occurs, we know where we are and what we're doing at any given time, and the graphics work to convey that. Enemies are generally placed logically according to the environment. The brief text screens explain how the player moves between each of the game's stages, and relay wider events. The game represents a clear journey with memorable locations and visuals each step of the way. Yes, it's presented in a heavily abstract way, but we still know what these abstract environments are intended to represent.

When you take Amid Evil or Zortch or HROT (all of which I like), you can't really do the same thing. Zortch has a good introduction in the manual, but in terms of the game, there's no clear journey or plot arc akin to those of Doom or Heretic - you're meant to be going from an alien ship down to a planet but ultimately it's just a bunch of disconnected industrial environments that don't convey any kind of visual theme or represent a journey in the way Doom's maps do. Enemies and weapons don't really seem to mean anything either (the enemies are given brief jokey explanations in the manual, but their placement in the game is almost never logical). Same for HROT and Amid Evil, and several others like Dread Templar. Whereas Doom follows a clear journey from Phobos Lab -> Malformed Hellish Deimos Lab -> Hell, a lot of the other games I mentioned can only really be summarised as a sequence of seemingly entirely disconnected surreal environments, often with no real explanation as to how or why the player is moving from one to the next. This is of course intentional on the devs' part, but I don't get why they do it.

Excited at the possibilities the technology offered - yes. To tell stories - not exactly. Not all of them at least.

Perhaps not all but certainly a great many. Dark Forces, less than two years after Doom, was extremely preoccupied with it, and ensured that every level told a story in itself. System Shock, less than a year after Doom, had a wealth of audio logs and messages to the player that detailed the stations' backstory, the stories of the people on the station, what SHODAN was up to outside the player's immediate vicinity, and so on. Marathon, again less than a year after Doom, was some kind of attempt at a sci-fi novel condensed into a game and presented to the player with lengthy text screens on in-game terminals (and again, the levels broadly represent a journey through the ship and the Pfhor ship). Same goes for the others I mentioned - Killing Time and Realms of the Haunting are outright trying to evoke movies, Outlaws has lush cartoon scenes and styles each level around a believable-looking location, and so on. If we're going up to 1998, I think Unreal is a fascinating example of a game where the devs actually seemed less interested in gameplay than they did in creating a coherent world (which is probably why some people disparagingly call it a tech demo).

And I maintain that Heretic does definitely have a story - you can see Raven were always very interested in this kind of thing and would a few years later make "cinematic" games like Elite Force and Soldier of Fortune.

The point being that modern devs who decide that "90s fps = abstract surrealness with placeholder story or no story" are missing out on a lot of what made the era so interesting, and I believe it's a potential factor in why people seem to find them less memorable and less interesting than actual 1990s games. It's probably no coincidence that a lot of the more interesting throwback shooters, like Fortune's Run, are the ones that do decide to embrace this side of things.

 

[Hell Swarm]

Are we seriously overanalyzing Doom's story?
There's Demons and they are a real nuisance.
See Demon - Kill Demon.
That's the story.

The irony of all these posts is all of them forget a vital part of the Doom story. I ctrl+Fed Rabbit and Pet and found nothing.

Doom guy was pissed they killed his pet rabbit and it was a major motivation for him to fuck stuff up.

There's also the doom novels that made Doom guy a cuck and he freaks out because a zombie looks like his grandfather. I didn't read any further than that for obvious reasons.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Technically there is a story in Doom 1. But it - as Heretic - drops you into the game without telling you anything (you need the manual for that). There are some short walls of text that are supposed to progress the "story", but I don't really think it's meaningful in terms of story telling. If you said that Doom 1 suggests a story, then I would've agreed with you. Because that's what Doom 1 does: it is not there to tell the story, it is there to give you an excuse to shoot at things. You're literally being presented with ramblings of an angry marine that, frankly, aren't even interesting to read.

I agree with this. I think it's obvious if you played Doom and Doom 2 that you're playing a set of arenas that are supposed to be contained within chapters that may or may not actually make sense with what that chapter is. I'm pretty sure just by playing the game there were no maps kicked out of the development of Doom or Doom 2 that didn't fit well with what that chapter was. Doom was probably more concise with story driven maps than Doom 2 was, but the movie Aliens was still pretty fresh on people's minds in the early 1990s, so fighting monsters in sci-fi bases was still pretty hot back then. In fact, there were a few Doom wads once people got their hands on modding tools for Doom that were Aliens conversions.

I'd say it's pretty disingenuous to say that modern boomer shooters don't have a story, but also argue that Doom and Doom 2 did.

 

[Lemming42]

I'd say it's pretty disingenuous to say that modern boomer shooters don't have a story, but also argue that Doom and Doom 2 did.

Nobody mentioned Doom 2; I'd say it's far more akin to modern boomer shooters than Doom 1 is in that it's clearly just a bunch of random shit slapped together with no real regard given for how any of it translates into representing anything.

Comparing Doom 1 and Doom 2 is probably a good case study in what I'm talking about, and Doom 2's complete lack of regard for coherency is one of the reasons it's a worse game than Doom 1 (that and the quality of level design just being generally worse). You can't trace any kind of narrative through the maps and there's no sense of forward progress, it's essentially just random surreal area after random surreal area with nothing connecting them, in the same way as some throwback shooters. The text crawls don't appear to relate to the game at all - you're moving from the "starport" (which was a bunch of nonseniscal grey-brown shit) into Doomguy's "hometown" (which is also a bunch of nonsensical grey-brown shit) but you'd never be able to tell from the maps alone.

 

[deuxhero]

Reminder that Sandy Peterson had to make maps at a rate of more than one a month for Doom 2. The surprising thing is that they aren't all total ass.

 

[NecroLord]

How "stories came later" DOESN'T mean "Doom has no story"? I mean, if stories came LATER it stands to reason they WEREN'T there BEFORE?

Because you didn't say Doom, you appeared to refer to 90s FPS games as a whole. Which is off-base when we can point to games like the ones I mentioned. Which is perhaps what I was getting at with the OP - some, perhaps even most, 1990s FPS games were at least somewhat interested in creating thematically vivid worlds with clear plots/stories/whatever, so why do throwback shooters so often choose not to do that?

I don't mean Half-Life's plot. I mean Half-Life's story. Plot is "X happens, then Y, etc.". Story is much more detailed than that. Alien invasion is but the very first step of what happens in Half-Life*, with more to follow. I could and detail the entire story of Half-Life, but I don't think I need to do so, when it is obvious that neither Doom nor Heretic have an actual story (as you yourself have admitted). All they have is a premise.

But again, isn't this down to presentation? Things are happening off-screen in Doom - the hell invasion is progressing and Deimos is being subsumed. Unbeknownst to the player, the demons are also attacking Earth. It's obviously true that Half-Life is vastly more adept at showing this directly to the player through scripted events and has a much greater focus on doing so, but I'm not sure if the overall shape of the plot is dramatically more intricate than Doom's. Again, this is not to say that Doom has a particularly impressive plot.

To reiterate my wider point because I think it might have gotten lost - I can tell you what happens in Doom (or Heretic) just by playing it. Whether you consider it an "actual story" or whatever aside, there's a clear chain of events that occurs, we know where we are and what we're doing at any given time, and the graphics work to convey that. Enemies are generally placed logically according to the environment. The brief text screens explain how the player moves between each of the game's stages, and relay wider events. The game represents a clear journey with memorable locations and visuals each step of the way. Yes, it's presented in a heavily abstract way, but we still know what these abstract environments are intended to represent.

When you take Amid Evil or Zortch or HROT (all of which I like), you can't really do the same thing. Zortch has a good introduction in the manual, but in terms of the game, there's no clear journey or plot arc akin to those of Doom or Heretic - you're meant to be going from an alien ship down to a planet but ultimately it's just a bunch of disconnected industrial environments that don't convey any kind of visual theme or represent a journey in the way Doom's maps do. Enemies and weapons don't really seem to mean anything either (the enemies are given brief jokey explanations in the manual, but their placement in the game is almost never logical). Same for HROT and Amid Evil, and several others like Dread Templar. Whereas Doom follows a clear journey from Phobos Lab -> Malformed Hellish Deimos Lab -> Hell, a lot of the other games I mentioned can only really be summarised as a sequence of seemingly entirely disconnected surreal environments, often with no real explanation as to how or why the player is moving from one to the next. This is of course intentional on the devs' part, but I don't get why they do it.

Excited at the possibilities the technology offered - yes. To tell stories - not exactly. Not all of them at least.

Perhaps not all but certainly a great many. Dark Forces, less than two years after Doom, was extremely preoccupied with it, and ensured that every level told a story in itself. System Shock, less than a year after Doom, had a wealth of audio logs and messages to the player that detailed the stations' backstory, the stories of the people on the station, what SHODAN was up to outside the player's immediate vicinity, and so on. Marathon, again less than a year after Doom, was some kind of attempt at a sci-fi novel condensed into a game and presented to the player with lengthy text screens on in-game terminals (and again, the levels broadly represent a journey through the ship and the Pfhor ship). Same goes for the others I mentioned - Killing Time and Realms of the Haunting are outright trying to evoke movies, Outlaws has lush cartoon scenes and styles each level around a believable-looking location, and so on. If we're going up to 1998, I think Unreal is a fascinating example of a game where the devs actually seemed less interested in gameplay than they did in creating a coherent world (which is probably why some people disparagingly call it a tech demo).

And I maintain that Heretic does definitely have a story - you can see Raven were always very interested in this kind of thing and would a few years later make "cinematic" games like Elite Force and Soldier of Fortune.

The point being that modern devs who decide that "90s fps = abstract surrealness with placeholder story or no story" are missing out on a lot of what made the era so interesting, and I believe it's a potential factor in why people seem to find them less memorable and less interesting than actual 1990s games. It's probably no coincidence that a lot of the more interesting throwback shooters, like Fortune's Run, are the ones that do decide to embrace this side of things.

I wouldn't really call Soldier of Fortune and Elite Force "cinematic" games.
Nearly all the cinematics occur ingame, not through cutscenes. They are mainly a form of storytelling.
However, they are still proper shooters that are concerned with gameplay first and foremost, not "Press X repeatedly to perform an action" like some modern shooter...

 

[NecroLord]

Reminder that Sandy Peterson had to make maps at a rate of more than one a month for Doom 2. The surprising thing is that they aren't all total ass.

Barrels o' Fun.

 

[Morenatsu.]

I like Sandy