Re: Carmack's Revenge

On 2025-05-14, Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:

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John Carmack once wrote about Doom, "Story in a game is like story in
a porn movie. It's expected to be there, but its not that important".
So it amuses me to no end that, with the advent of "Doom: Dark Ages"
Doom-lore has grown so extensive levels that it literally takes three
hours to describe it all.
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     The DOOM Timeline | COMPLETE DOOM Story & Lore
       https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5OdQYASIPQ&t
     (length: three hours, thirteen minutes and 59 seconds)
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(admittedly, the narrator is extremely slow. A good editor could
probably cut it down to one-third that length. But who am I to bitch
about somebody being excessively verbose? ;-)
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Honestly, one of the unspoken marvels of the nuDoom games is how they
managed to link together /all/ the different aspects of the Doom
franchise --be it the original games, the spin-offs like Doom64, or
even those awful movies-- into one cohesive (if not entirely logical)
narrative. I rather liked how they gave the demons more depth and
history than just random evil-things that you shoot, and I'm not
immune to the appeal of the power-fantasy that is the Doom Guy's
story.
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The original Doom games were fun, but too self-contained. Monsters
appear, you kill them, end of story. "Doom 2016" --and more
importantly, "Doom Eternal"-- added enough new nooks and crannies that
the we can keep adventuring on for years. "Doom: Dark Ages" is just
one such exploration of that lore.
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That said... even I have to admit it's a /bit/ much for a game that,
mechanically, is so simplistic. It's like somebody making a two-hour
Hollywood blockbuster out of a single game of Rock-Paper-Scissors. It
just seems so overboard and out of place for a game that relishes in
gore and guns.
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I'm not quite willing to admit that maybe Carmack was right... but at
the same time I'm starting to see his point. And I'm a person who
LOVES lore and world-building in my game, so my questioning that may
be akin to the Pope wondering if there's something a bit unbelievable
about the whole resurrection of Jesus thing. ;-)
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I don't recommend anybody watch the linked video (if you must, at
least up the speed to 2x to save yourself some time). You don't need
it to understand the games, it's not that well told, and the
underlying lore isn't really that exciting anyway. It's a marvel only
in its extent. That there is so much of it for such a silly game as
"Doom" deserves notice... if not respect.
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Now you'll have to excuse me, I'm fielding calls from major Hollywood
studios over my "Rock Paper Scissors" film idea...
 

Overdoing the lore takes mystery and imagination away.  Doom perhaps
could have use a little more plot, little more background, but the fact
that you had to fill in the gaps mentally, imagine what happened to the
Deimos base, what those symbols mean makes it a bit more compelling.
You don't really know the background of the demons, but you don't need
to know.  Quake definately was too sparse.

Doom 3 went a little too hard telling a story, and the later games the
same.  Make the player use their imagination, allow them to imagine what
is going on.  Give hints, but don't be explicit.  Its scarier that way.
Leave some mystery in.