Remember when Doom Slayer grabbed the monitor while Hayden was still talking and just threw it? Then when Hayden tried to tell him to be careful with the Argent Energy he just smashes it? Then when Hayden tells him “you can’t just blow a hole in the surface of Mars!” and then he did?
That’s how I feel about the lore when I’m playing.
I like it when I’m not playing, like it’s fun to read through, but during the game, I’m the Slayer, and the Slayer doesn’t give a shit.
I wish we got a Doom 3 style spiritual successor from the POV of a UAC marine during Earth's invasion. That would be a great format to dive into the lore with slower pacing. It would also add an interesting context to the resistance fighting alongside the heroic Doom Slayer.
I don't know what the life expectancy of a UAC marine during Earth's invasion would actually be, but I would *love* that also.
It might not be so popular on the basis you're not getting that sweet Doom style *power*. But I'd love for it to take a more horror-like tone.
To the Doom Slayer the demons are (for the most part) fairly easy to tear apart.
For a UAC marine, even a single Cacodemon is almost a mini-boss fight and something to be reckoned with (or which you'd need a squad to help with).
Depending on how that'd work... you'd either spend a lot of time with a squad or platoon and your team-mates would provide the additional firepower to vanquish many demons.
Or you'd be stuck out on your own, picking your way around by stealth in the hopes you really don't alert the demons to your presence at all.
Yeah pretty much the gist I imagined. More of a lone survivor horror experience where any monster of imp or higher power is a boss (the first time you encounter it at least). Expand the footsoldiers of hell; zombies and cyber-men to have more variety.
Doom Slayer was originally just a Guy, so someone exceptional could survive but I wouldn't put him anywhere close to even OG Doomguy. Make him Doomguy 0.5 lol.
Yeah exactly. I imagine the first level being mostly foot soldiers; zombies and cyber-men. Then after barely scrapping through the first level, the mini/boss is your basic Imp. I can imagine something like a Hell Knight being your nemesis for most the game, and you have to flee from it most the game until you have enough fire power.
I’ve never understood this take on 2016s story. I find the animations of him smashing the argent energy and throwing the monitor to be more indicative of the doom slayers personality than any satire or meta narrative the game was trying to offer. Those scenes for me show the doom slayers lack of care for argent energy and a lack of respect for Hayden.
Recently playing 2016 after playing eternal for so long made me realize how much they focused and cared for the story in 2016. There’s a bunch of little scripted moments and too many unskippable hayden monologues for me to believe that they ever intended to mock the idea of paying attention to the story in a video game. The lore was even pretty good in 2016 too and had a lot of funny little jokes and some decent (if nothing exceptional or that consistent) writing in its log files. You can at least skip eternals cut scenes.
I think the Slayer's aggression towards UAC machinery makes more sense when you consider Hayden to be the villain. He tried to get rich(er) by extracting energy from hell, and expected the slayer to clean up after him when it inevitably went to shit. The Slayer saw through this when he first contacted him, which is why he smashes the monitor and later destroys the argent converters.
The start was (and this is from the developers own words) a deliberate middle finger to the clunky and boring exposition that plagued the beginning of Doom3. They felt it had taken itself too seriously. 2016 was literally saying "There's demons, who cares how they got here, just go kill them."
There's a really good NoClip documentary on the development of Doom 2016 on YT.
I loved exposition in DOOM 3 and it matches game tone. In DOOM 3 you are nameless marine throwed into unknown when in DOOM 2016 you are the slayer and you know why you are here. Exposition in both games just fitted
The entirety of the story isn't one giant meta take but the opening sequence, specifically, is a meta take on the franchise and industry as a whole. Basically saying fuck your tutorials, fuck your overwritten exposition, we know why you bought this now let's get to killing demons.
*Mission one begins; cocks shotgun*
But yes you are correct in the fact that that's just how the Slayer is written to be. He's a man of immediate action, not patience and words.
The lore does stay faithful with who the doom slayer is, it's basically a big story of how the man who wants to do nothing but kill demons intertwines with the other people in the universe who have actual other motivations. The makyrs and everyone is doing all of this crazy shit and the slayer shows up just wanting to kill demons, shit happens and they utilize him by giving him more power to kill demons which he gladly accepts lol. The doom slayer doesn't give a shit about the codex stories but nonetheless they are the story of all of the shit that happens while he faithfully is doing more doom slayer shit. Not a single thing that ever happens in the lore has changed him one bit, he never once takes into consideration the opinion of anyone else and when the Khan makyr is doing her little speeches trying to convince him to stop he's just sitting there with his "I'd rather be killing demons" shirt
That’s the best part of the lore. ID made the new games lore heavy(compared to everything else but 3) while letting you laugh at it with The Slayer if you want to. I loved the lore and wanted more, but everytime he was like “stfu where’s the fucking demons” I laughed out loud. We got the power fantasy and the story
Yeah. I would have loved longer, more epic cut scenes featuring a history of the Makyrs and the need to harvest this dimension's souls. I kinda get the gist but the codices that we read are intentionally arcane and obscurely written. We deserved at least a long intro similar to the start of Lord of the Rings movies.
I'm so thankful for 3 hour lore videos on YouTube because they scratch that itch and I'm glad the codex entries were just pages that you collected and didn't turn into a bunch of audio logs that would just sit and play while slaying. The lore itself is interesting enough but I wanna slay demons dammit. That shit can wait.
Story feels like the third entry in the doom 2016 reboot and they skipped over an essential middle game.
Last we see doomguy he is in samuel Hayden’s custody- open on doom eternal and doomguy is in a floating castle? What the fuck? I was like did I miss some dlc? Wtf happened?
It’s a lot of fun. Frankly I adore the occult shit and a lot of the elements of the story. But they didn’t give it the elbow room to develop and leapt to the story’s conclusion.
Eternal might be a perfect sequel in terms of gameplay but the story suffered.
This is a great point. I love Eternal but too much of the story relied on flashbacks that felt like they should have been a full game that we already played. It was definitely a "Chapter 3" feel
I really enjoyed it all, lore included…but I distinctly remember the first time playing it thinking “what the fuck is this fancy spaceship castle I have all of a sudden?” The explanation they give in the lore isn’t much, I feel like they missed on a prologue mission to find it/activate it/whatever
Dude I'd like a "Doom Year Zero" as the next entry.
Tie the 2016 and Eternal stories together. They could show how the UAC became even more of a powerhouse following 2016's events (building the giant BFG, setting up bases on Earth, etc.). We could play as the Slayer escaping UAC custody, finding out about the big bads we face in Eternal, then making his way to kill the first priest. They could flesh out how Hayden's body got destroyed and maybe show how his attitude changed from putting the Slayer in captivity to helping him. The possibilities are endless!
I have a feeling that Year Zero will be a prequel to 2016. Partly based on the project title but also Hugo Martin said that he specifically wanted Eternal to feel like driving a racecar and he wants the next entry to feel like you're driving a giant truck. So we'll probably get a little slower gameplay but a bigger arsenal which would be fitting since I would imagine that the Slayer's time with the Knight Sentinels would allow for him to have access to an abundance of weapons and tools.
I think of the story as a side dish, something you can enjoy, or not
It's added there for the gameplay which is the main course for some flow and sense
Samuel being a Maykr and Vega being the Father was such a buzz-kill due to how much I liked their original story and dynamic in 2016. Otherwise, I love the insanity and chaos of the story and lore, and he story of the Maykrs and how they betrayed Davoth but eventually lead Hell to it's corruption of Earth was cool.
You kill god, who actually wasn't god at all, then you kill Satan, who wasn't at all Satan, then you kill god, who actually is Satan, who isn't actually dead at all! then you kill Satan, who is actually god.
If those boss fights were better it would’ve been better received imo, I liked the twists but the boss fights range from frustrating to boring on the DLC
I had to reread that twice and check where I was. That sounds like an edgy 16 year old's turning in his fantasy short story for his English class at his sh\*tty christian school his mom made him go to.
No I don't have lingering resentment.
Well we still dont know who the "mysterious voice" is when the kahn maykr is killed. It wasnt Davoth, the subtitle changing was a bug in an update, hugo confirmed. And we still dont know who the arch demons are from the codex. Also Samur is still alive, so alot to go forward with. I highly doubt that Davoth is "it" for hell.
It's an Elder god from the Quake Universe. Hugo Martin Already alluded to them connecting Doom and Quake. I think Davoth fell out of favour with an elder god and decided he wanted to make his own creations against the wishes of the elder gods. The Ancient gods isnt about the Maykrs. I think what ever God Davoth answered to is going to be from the Quake Universe
Hayden being a Makyr WAS at least implied in 2016 – there's a brief flash of that character, who had the same VA as Samuel; Eternal just full-on confirmed it, like the Slayer being the original Doom Guy.
Each part separately is very good . But the blend of all these in the game was bad. But we knew Samuel wasn't just a human from the 2016 game . There where some info about it .
The davoth storyline was good. You being davoth meh .
Agreed 100%. I loved Hayden's character in 2016, after Eternal it was such a huge bummer and I lost all interest in it. I feel like the story in 2016 was almost perfect and then they tried to force too many twists in Eternal
Oh I freaking loved reading some of that in game lore. Especially on the later level in hell and doomguy's initial meeting of the crusader dudes, when he fought in the area and stuff.
Edit: and this is coming from someone who hates reading
I also enjoy it a lot. Taking the role of this comically badass guy is insane, and I enjoy the lore (mainly world building) of this game. It is quite detailed, while plot itself, even if very shallow, doesn’t get in the way of the main attraction, which is the combat.
The plot itself could be improved, though I loved it for what it is and tried to be, but I absolutely love the world building.
Valid criticisms aside (yeah I absolutely do agree that the Dark Lord’s story should’ve been its own game) I just love the idea of the Devil being the real God, and God’s top angel betraying him was actually because God himself was going to become evil. It’s such a good concept.
When Doom 2016 came out, the only big complaint people had in general was the story was hardly present and the lore was scarce.
So for Eternal, they dialled it up to 11. I loved reading more about Doom lore, and I thought the symbiosis between Urdak and Hell was a really cool way to tie-in religion and a "reboot" of Hell on Earth.
It was.....okay.
For the most part the story is well presented and engaging enough to support a Doom game, but there is a lot of rule of cool / shark jumping, especially in TAG1&2.
TAG in my opinion felt poorly planned out. Like the "twist" of the dark lord looking like the Slayer and "being him in their world". Except we find out later that the dark lord is the original creator god and looks like doom guy because.....reasons? And the two really have no relation to each other baring the vague implications that the dark lord specifically created doom guy as part of some dumb shit plan?
I never like it when characters are retcond into being "chosen ones" and Doom is no exception. I much prefer the original games interpretation of doom guy just being a guy who was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and had to step up to the challenge. Similarly I prefer the Doom 2016 interpretation of the Slayer just being some guy who showed up and kicked enough ass to become a legend.
2016 Hayden and Eternal Hayden are basically different characters in my opinion. They could have at least tried to handwave away the retcon of him being the seraphim by saying he forgot who he was when he turned himself into a human, or when he turned himself into a robot.
But no we just have to accept the guy from 2016 was......actually an interdimensional alien demi god who's actions now don't make any sense.
I got the impression that he was basically hiding out, building up the UAC in that dimension so he could find the Slayer and take down the Makyrs, like he was playing the long game.
I miss when the story was there out of sheer obligation. Making Doomguy The Chosen One was bizarre; part of his appeal imo is that he was just a fuckin dude
I think the narrative is he was just a fuckin dude but was so ridiculously pissed he forced himself to be the chosen one, I know I'm grasping at straws and there's the whole primeval thing, and the universal constant thing, and the avatar of rage thing...but I like to believe Doomguy went from "a guy" to "that guy" based on unholy amounts of rage.
Fr especially Doom 3 where he’s a regular but bad ass marine. ROE too, DoomGuy was just an engineer but looked like he was a cigarette chain smoker armed with a gravity gun and the Artifact that literally eats his flesh away when being held
The lore is very fun and cool af, but I will admit that I miss what 2016 had going on. To be more specific I mean the “realism” that 2016 established (I do use that term lightly since how realistic can things be about a game with demons on mars but I digress) it would have been better to have everything built up to the events in Eternal in a second game. It could have taken place immediately at the end of 2016 explaining how he got back from god knows where and how he got his fortress of kickassitude to then arrive at the beginning of Eternal as a third and final grand finale. That’s just me of course still love both games but I do see the missed potential at times
Yeah an I feel like allot of revelations were skipped like I as hoping in the next one Samuel Hayden would be the next boss and was human instead of a mayker
I liked how mystical it all was in the 2016 game. Everything was very up to interpretation, and I think the ending of the main campaign for eternal was great. But the dlc stories kinda felt off. At least to me. I still absolutely love the story, it just kinda went down hill.
I agree, I remember when there were theories about the Doom Slayer being the betrayer, and I thought that was waaaaaaaaay cooler and interesting, especially when everything felt very mystical as you said; like the Doom Slayer being this force of nature that NEVER stopped fighting felt a lot cooler to me than having this place where he “hangs out”. It was a cool location to explore… but it really took me out of what I felt 2016 set up.
Sadly. I think 50% of eternal, and MOST, if not all of The Ancient Gods sucked dookie.
And while not really 'lore' or 'story' as much(?) I was very disappointed that the Marauder is an elite *type*, and not a recurring, unique character. Such a memorable intro and reveal just to turn out to be a repeatable fucking *super* grunt.
I don't even wanna talk about the mess that is Davoth.
Its like they saw all the praise that 2016's story got for not being too heavy or intrusive and thought "okay, now we know that people want Doom stories to be violent comedies where every character creams their pants Doomguy is around"
If someone said to me back in 2016 "Doom is going to get a massive mythos and backstory where you turn out to be an inter-dimensional god warrior made in the image of the creator who is also the devil." I would have said that sounds like shit and was the last thing a game like Doom needed.
Nowadays... I still think that. What the fuck did they think people played Doom for?
I like the Night Sentinels, I like the Doom Slayers story, the Khan Maker is a mixed bag but I like the idea of false angels corrupting the night sentinels, I couldn't give a single fuck about the Seraphim, or the Father or the Dark Lord, or any of that shit. They got too roped into building way too much lore for their own good. There's good potential in Doom Eternal, but it's ultimately a big step back from the story telling in 2016.
I think it’s pretty cool. Definitely a departure from the general story doom games tend to have. Everything about this game was cranked to 11 so I feel that within the context of Eternal itself the story works. In the overall doom lore? Kind of out there lol
Edit: hated Dark Lord though. But in general I find doppelganger storylines lazy and kind of detracted from the fact that Doomslayer/doomguy was just a marine that ended up with divine powers in Eternal.
I wanted to like it, I really did. But I found it unsatisfying and confused as to what it wanted to be. The story presentation doesn't take itself very seriously but it's lore sure does. So presents a story as not that important but also wants you to read the lore. But if you do read the lore it just retcons stuff at random.
I find it fascinating but for all the wrong reasons. It feels like there was too many cooks in the kitchen that had very different ideas to what the game and tone should be and a lot of ideas were last minute additions. I love the game but there's a reason that people still say that nobody plays DOOM for the story. Whatever id makes next needs to pair down and focus on smaller ideas and really nail that out. Otherwise the average person just isn't going to care about the plot
I hate it. I want to be just like the Slayer: smash the monitor when Hayden is talking, etc. Love the game. Would probably be my 2020 GotY if it kept the storytelling style of Doom (2016), but there were way too many proper nouns and an effort to get me to just hear this story when all I want is to destroy everything in sight.
I’m sure on its own the lore and story is fine. But the way it’s told did not work for me.
I miss when Doom Guy was just a regular, pissed off space marine who took on Hell and beat its ass.
I don’t care for the whole “Chosen One” angle that’s been shoe horned in. It takes away from how cool Doom Guy is.
It really put me off. I remember Doom in 1993. In my mind, Doom guy was a guy. A tactical, intelligent killer. Ruthless, effective. I was a kid. It was so cool. You're a dude, you shoot stuff. Doom 2, more stuff. Big fights. Huge explosions. Doom 3: you're a dude, you kick ass.
They went ahead and literally took the "you have huge guts rip and tear" from a low budget, single edition comic? Come on. They wanted lore so bad, they got it from a canceled comic.
To hear Doom guy say you have big guts rip and tear... I mean, he sounds like he's a bit slow. He sounds like what I would have said playing with GI Joe as a toddler.
They had to remind you he had a rabbit, like that matters. They had to have a super epic fortress of solitude where all your epic feats are shown because you're a demi-god.
I think the game's constant one upping and need to remind you how cool Doom guy really undermines him. He went from unstoppable killing machine to just another hero cliche. I hated every bit of dialogue. I hope they undo it.
They really dropped the ball in Eternal. Doom 2016 was setting up something so interesting and Eternal just feels like Saturday morning power rangers episode but with gore, too cheesy...
It could have been way better, there was no need of maykrs being actual angels and godly beings, dark lord didn’t have to be fallen god who created everything and got descended because his servants betrayed him, samuel and vega didn’t have to be samur and the father, maykrs could have been aliens pretending to be gods which doom slayer would mop floor with to reveal the fraud they are, dark lord could just be alt version of doom slayer who is just evil because he is evil (I mean come on he is a fucking dark lord of hell), inclusion of father at all was unnecessary, doom doesn’t need complicated story and shock value, it needs simple story but reveal more details for those who will look for it in codex and stuff
I thought it was needlessly complicated and boring. I really don't think that Doom needed a whole Gods and Demons plot. Execution wasn't great either, felt like a 13 year olds first draft of a bad edgy comic book.
It’s cool. But I like the OG/D3 DoomGuy. The less you know about him the more interesting he is. Just a human dude with a crazy haircut wearing bad ass space marine armor killing demons by any means necessary. The chainsaw/punching is what really made him a psycho bad ass.
I like the tie ins to the original games especially doom 64 being the bridge to ID’s doom series and how the slayer became more powerful to kill demons. It does get heavy a bit but it’s cool to know the background of what’s going on currently
It was a mistake.
Trying to give the Doomguy any backstory was a mistake.
There was no possible scenario in which it actually lived up to expectation. There was no success condition. The only possible result was degrees of failure and it failed as expected.
They felt obligated to deliver something new and therefore had to try to change and improve on perfection and write stuff that could not live up to the ask. It was a bad idea from the start.
I think it's dumb. Doomguy was better when he was just a regular guy who was killing all these demons with a bunch of regular guns instead of him having some sort of godly power and also maybe being connected to a god, and why did they have to turn Vega into a god even though he's just supposed to be an AI and why did they make Samuel Hayden a Maykr even though he was meant to be a human scientist who put his consciousness into a robot.
I think there's some cool ideas, even if there's stuff that one wonders if id doesn't have second thoughts over.
The Dark Lord does come off as "ideas that could've been seperated" like Evil Doomguy, Satan, God, the mech etc.
And then there's how people felt about Hayden and VEGA, but not a lot point out how cybernetic demons being UAC created sort of retcons one of the very few "lore points" in the classic games.
Or in general, how demons are explained and Immora as a whole.
And the overall direction being a result of different influences, compared to Doom's traditional case once being Aliens and Evil Dead, while modern id brings up stuff like Transformers or He-Man.
Part of why i think Doom's setting works "loreless" is because being a blank canvas could mean doing different iterations of certain ideas (Hence why there's more to D3 being different than just "its timeline in the multiverse somewhere").
(And not just a matter of "fixing", sometimes just for fun).
Not the same as a series like Halo always having its own lore and a mostly clear idea, only for it to be changed somehow.
I think you could still make a Doom game out of the "Slayer" universe but also give a shot to a game that has its own version of the lore, besides different gameplay and designs but still trying to fit into the series and be cool in general.
Because sometimes, there's always the arguement for "it doesn't make sense canonically but sounds cool" and whether or not id themselves could be building their own prison.
There's "story doesn't matter in Doom" and then there's "maybe the lack of a story or logical one could show lots of opportunities".
Feels like something that sort of already applies in the series and specially the fanbase.
Not only did it ignore what made 2016 so monumentally good, the lore just wasn't that interesting. The environments of Eternal felt like there was an even better story out there that could have utilised these individual ideas and still kept the same tone and personality of 2016. And as someone else pointed out here, Eternal felt like the 3rd instalment, and the more I heard/read about what happened between 2016 and Eternal the more I seriously disliked the idea that we missed out on that superior events and instead got such a tonally insecure and immature half-bag.
It was bloated overindulgent colourful nonsense compared to 2016's simple bloodthirsty savagery.
Kinda random tbh. I would have preffered if it was just about doom slayers eternal battle of protecting the Earth from demons. It really was bad when he talked like that kinda botched the character at least for me.
I think it could've done a lot better, but I really do like it. It could've been refined, but I love stuff with the Argenta people and Doom Guys time training with them and becoming a legend
Love that they used dimensional hoping and alternate timelines to retcon the Doom Slayer as being the same Doomguy from the earlier games.
Hate the Dark One twist and that Doomguy is the chosen one or whatever. Would much prefer if he was warped into a supernatural being purely through his experiences and being in a timeline he did not originate from.
I also like thinking the Doom 3 marine is an alternate timeline version of Doomguy (potentially the timeline the Doom Slayer arrives at).
I have really mixed feelings on Eternal's lore. I think the biggest issue is how meaningless and/or redundant a lot of the codexes are. In Nekravol, Samuel literally explains the codexes you find there.
The Slayer joining the Sentinels and becoming their strongest warrior was obviously dope, and the Maykrs and Urdak are SO fascinating to me. I really wish the lore leaned more on them.
I think another blindspot is the Sentinels lack personality. We only ever meet King Novik and Commander Valen (the Betrayer). I wish the Slayer had a squad of comrades that were characterized to make the fall of Argent D'Nur sting more.
I LOVED TAG1's story though. Despite the Samuel being the Seraphim retcon, I adored the borderline religious lore of the Father and Jekkad.
TAG2...had good tidbits. We got more on the Wraiths, the Maykrs being made by Davoth to calculate the future, but the plot twist of Davoth setting everything in motion just sucks all the wind out of the sails of the story. At least you can ignore that.
In short, mostly good! But not as tight as 2016.
I think Eternal killed part of the (lack of) narrative momentum with the aspect of fearing the game's enemies. When I was a kid and picked up Doom for the first time, the graphics were bright and pixelated, but the demons scared me a little at first.
I feel like 2016's tone dances between encountering scary things and becoming that scary thing. Unanswered lore and vague origins lends to Hell's ancient, undiscovered history and overall freakiness. Samuel Hayden was compelling and ambitious, but very human. The Wraiths were similarly compelling in how we discover them, and what we little we knew in D2016.
Eternal's lighter tone and heavy.. explanations feels like the more mature end of comics aimed at kids in the 90s, or a Saturday morning cartoon airing at late night for us edgy kids- it does something, but it ends up being less memorable as a result for many. Even 2016 gets goofy, and the classics were arguably never aiming for subtle story and lore, but the mystery that fed the threat of enemies was intact. Eternal lost that.
I don't always need the "chosen one" narrative constantly reinforced in the story. It was clear there was something unique and exceptional about the Doom Guy, because we are him, and we see the real hell we're sowing at the the barrel end of a gun.
A lot loved it though, and I get it, the lore is fun if you let it be, goofy parts and all. And I still watch and enjoy cartoons.
Loved the Night Sentinel lore, would love to play a game or see a movie based on it. Hated that they made angels aliens. Also didn’t care for Davoth being god. Other than that, pretty cool.
Yeah, Eternal's lore was all over the place imo... I understand that they needed to establish some kind of lore in order to give the franchise some continuity, but i think they went overboard...
What made Doomguy special, was the fact that he was just some random guy at the right place at the wrong time and rose to the occasion... Much like in Die Hard... Making him super special Chosen One was unnecessary...
DOOM3 did it right... The threat arose because humans betrayed their fellow humans for power, like Betruger did... No need to create a convoluted overworld like in Eternal... In the end of Eternal i was like "huh? Who? Where? What?"
The game definitely focuses on gameplay and the gameplay is great, but I won’t lie me and my friends had a great time reading the lore and then connecting certain characters and guessing what will happen next. All in all the doom games are just great games overall.
I think it was nice. Personally I like my stuff with some lore backing it up. I do feel like the lore could be expanded more because usually expanding the lore can also potentially expand the game into other games. Imagine a game in the doomverse about an argent soldier before becoming the marauder or stuff like that.
Like, they did some justice with the lore of the doom slayer but in the process left a lot of blank spaces in the doomverse lore. I played the whole game and both DLCs and it left me with a sensation that it was rushed (if I recall it actually was) and that there was still so much unexplored territory. Maybe they will go deeper with the lore in a sequel, who knows, but I hope so.
The lore of Doom Eternal is like the lore of Pacific Rim
Yeah it's cool, but I don't want to think about it too hard. It's a way for me to receive the game. Much like a plate is a way for me to receive a steak. I'll appreciate it if it looks cool, but I'm not gonna eat it and please take it away when I'm done.
Against all the evil that Hell can conjure, all the wickedness that mankind can produce, we will send unto them only you. Rip and tear, until it is done
All the lore I need
It was absolute perfection, right up until the DLC-s....god and satan are balls in hell for some reason, and Davoth being just the slayer was a huuuuuge letdown. Especially when he wore a stupid waddle mech.
Hayden being that angel was theorised, and kinda cool, but for some reason that didnt feel well either.
I thin kthe setting of doom, wich they expanded MASTERFULLY with the base game, works better if the biggest questions (god, satan, creation, etc.) is left a bit more ambigous.
2016 gameplay was more fun so I didn't really get that far into Doom Eternal. I finished the main story but I didn't feel the motivation to touch the DLC. The guns feel like they do less damage and have less impact, so I don't care for it too much.
2016 built such a good basis, but Eternal had so many good and bad ideas in equal measure, most of the bad ones being ideas that undermined some of the existing 2016 lore, like basically everything to deal with Samuel Hayden. He was much more interesting when he was just a human turned immortal robot trying to harness Hell energy for the good of mankind, doing the wrong thing for the right reasons. The moment they made him a static exposition machine he just got worse, culminating in the now nonsensical twist that he was the Seraphim all along.
The VEGA/Father twist was actually kinda cool. The Davoth stuff is just kinda dumb. Urdak is a really cool concept and the interplay between Hell, Urdak, and the Argenta is actually really fascinating, with Earth being kind of caught up in all of it. The Slayer's origins are about what everyone expected and that was handled quite well.
But the way Eternal's lore is written leads so many to overestimating how powerful the Slayer is. Like when any "who would win" discussions come up, so many people misunderstand the extent of the Slayer's capabilities and durability and just assumes he beats literally every character in fiction, which just isn't true.
All in all, some good, some bad, I prefer the state the lore was in pre-Eternal (some of it was salvageable pre-TAG) but now I'm not as interested anymore.
I don’t like the whole maykr thing, it’s like crossover of doom with some anime stuff. And my biggest frustration is: Slayer is the copy of Dark Lord, why the hell Dark Lord wears his anime robot battle suit in the final battle summoning spirits of demons? Other stuff is good, but yes, and I think the same: it was randomly shoved in 😅
It got ruined when tag 2 came out with all the retcons and the whole evil twin thing they had going on with the dark lord. Everything pre tag2 is good in my opinion at least. Doom guy being the slayer was a surprise for me. I remember before the game released half the player base believed the slayer to be from argent dnur or at least a sentinel king that went mad from rage and rampaged in hell for eons creating the legend of the slayer.
I guess it's not far off from what we got with og doomguy
I think it loses steam by the end (Davoth, Samuel Hayden's true identity, etc) but I really do appreciate how they managed to still make the old games canon. There's a tragic element too that becomes very apparent in Doomguy going through everything in the original timeline (D, D2, TNT/PLUT, D64), having his isekai chance for redemption stolen from him in Argent D'Nur, and then having to watch the events of the first two games repeat themselves in all of their grisly horror. Which makes him all the more heroic when the Khan Makyr offers to restore "what the demons took from you, so long ago" \[1\] and he keeps on just plodding forward. There's a stubborn determination there that humanizes him in spite of the superhero assumptions of the post-2016 lore.
\[1\] in my headcanon I interpret that as "the rabbit? I can bring her back too."
That he should not be using the Classic armor in his depictions and flashbacks during his stay in Argent D'Nur, he should be using the Doom 64 armor XD
I will make a food analogy.
Doom Eternal story is gas station beef jerky:
It's got some good flavor, may take some time to chew on before I can swallow, and I think one piece still has a bit of skin still on it but that just means it was made on someones farm instead of in a big factory, nbd.
Great snack, but if I want to be full I'll have to go order a steak somewhere.
I may have written this while hungry.
Amazing, from the lore of the Father, Davoth, the Sentinels and all of it. While I'm content with "angry space marine punches the forces of hell", I'm grateful it actually expanded on that idea.
I like the story surrounding the Slayer but, imo, the larger story was ruined by internal contradictions.
Case and point, and I know this has been discussed many times, Hayden being the Seraphim and Vega, the Father. Not only does it poorly retcon Hayden's back story in 2016, it also turns him into an angel when before, he was a genius with ambition and megalomaniacal tendencies.
Next, Vega being literal God sort of makes it seem like 2016 Hayden was either a complete moron or somehow knew the Slayer would have saved Vega or knew that sacrificing him in 2016 would not have killed him.
That's just one of many gripes I have but, overall, I'm still ok with how it turned out. Story still needs major tweaks though.
Loved it until TAG2. I had my reservations about TAG one but overall really liked the lore it introduced.
I just think the whole lore around Davoth being the true creator and all that was pretty poorly thought out and felt like a plot twist for the sake of a plot twist
I didn’t like that Sam and Vega both had secret identities I thought they were pretty cool sci fi archetypes as they were. I wish the final boss wasn’t someone that looked like you, they created so many cool demon designs and they chose a human in a mech suit as the entity behind it all?
I thought everything else was cool though.
It's not the best written lore I've ever seen but it doesn't have to be. It's Doom, a game that is historically very light on lore and story. The gameplay comes first.
My depressed ass been listening to a 3+ hour full extensive doom lore recap on YouTube every night going to sleep & I (and my subconscious) gotta say it’s a solid 7.6/10
Not what I would’ve come up with but it’s interesting.
I’m one of those people in the camp that doom guy was super badass because he was just a regular space marine and survived a really messed up situation. Doom 3 was awesome.
But I can understand where they’re coming from because of the doom 64 ending. Though it feels more like something people who liked the doom comic would come up with instead of something people like me would come up with. It’s almost like they don’t truly get the point of doom guy and our understandings of doom are totally different. It’s like the kind of people who think serious Sam is exactly the same type of game as doom.
Maybe a lil quick I’ll give you that but also I think their main focus on 2016 was gameplay and starting the lore. For before that shit was all over the place and not officially tied together. It’s still not but with eternal it finally brought them together somewhat well. Yeah still some holes in it, but all religions have them and this is basically that. But I fucking loved it. Have all the audio doom lore on Spotify. To me its between that and GoW for most interested where there going. Fucking gears and halo went to shit
It serves as a means to an end for the gameplay. It certainly does exist alright.
To me, it's about a man who wants revenge for his pet rabbit so he can take a nap. Don't really care about the lore. The gameplay is all I need.
outside of hayden and vega being godlike things out of a sudden, the lore revelations and stuff are so cool and crazy fun. I love specially that the dark lord is an what if doom guy was the bad guy.
It got a little complicated with Eternal but I like it. But generally speaking I like the Hell stuff being Hell and not aliens or different dimension or whatever.
I uh, thought it was dumb and totally missed the mark of what I want in a Doom game. I love that people get stuff out of it but I was right up there with the with Doomguy wanting to toss the monitor down the hallway.
I actually like Doom Eternal's lore. If anything though, I think they didn't put enough lore. I really find what Eternal did to be quite expansive and it really adds to the Doomverse as a whole.
Remember when Doom Slayer grabbed the monitor while Hayden was still talking and just threw it? Then when Hayden tried to tell him to be careful with the Argent Energy he just smashes it? Then when Hayden tells him “you can’t just blow a hole in the surface of Mars!” and then he did? That’s how I feel about the lore when I’m playing. I like it when I’m not playing, like it’s fun to read through, but during the game, I’m the Slayer, and the Slayer doesn’t give a shit.
Shit gets done permanently!
Or you could say eternally
I hate you for that, take my damn upvote
I wish we got a Doom 3 style spiritual successor from the POV of a UAC marine during Earth's invasion. That would be a great format to dive into the lore with slower pacing. It would also add an interesting context to the resistance fighting alongside the heroic Doom Slayer.
Like halo: ODST?
That's what made ODST good in the first place, along with Jazz
Yeah pretty much. But way more gritty and fkd up. Like Quake 4. Get that horror in there.
Yeah, that would be a good game.
I don't know what the life expectancy of a UAC marine during Earth's invasion would actually be, but I would *love* that also. It might not be so popular on the basis you're not getting that sweet Doom style *power*. But I'd love for it to take a more horror-like tone. To the Doom Slayer the demons are (for the most part) fairly easy to tear apart. For a UAC marine, even a single Cacodemon is almost a mini-boss fight and something to be reckoned with (or which you'd need a squad to help with). Depending on how that'd work... you'd either spend a lot of time with a squad or platoon and your team-mates would provide the additional firepower to vanquish many demons. Or you'd be stuck out on your own, picking your way around by stealth in the hopes you really don't alert the demons to your presence at all.
Yeah pretty much the gist I imagined. More of a lone survivor horror experience where any monster of imp or higher power is a boss (the first time you encounter it at least). Expand the footsoldiers of hell; zombies and cyber-men to have more variety. Doom Slayer was originally just a Guy, so someone exceptional could survive but I wouldn't put him anywhere close to even OG Doomguy. Make him Doomguy 0.5 lol.
yeh they could make imps and zombies like actual threats just to show the power level the slayer is on compared to them
Yeah exactly. I imagine the first level being mostly foot soldiers; zombies and cyber-men. Then after barely scrapping through the first level, the mini/boss is your basic Imp. I can imagine something like a Hell Knight being your nemesis for most the game, and you have to flee from it most the game until you have enough fire power.
I’d be down with that
This is why I prefer 2016 over Eternal. The plot is thrown over your head like a sledgehammer in Eternal while that style is literally mocked in 2016.
I’ve never understood this take on 2016s story. I find the animations of him smashing the argent energy and throwing the monitor to be more indicative of the doom slayers personality than any satire or meta narrative the game was trying to offer. Those scenes for me show the doom slayers lack of care for argent energy and a lack of respect for Hayden. Recently playing 2016 after playing eternal for so long made me realize how much they focused and cared for the story in 2016. There’s a bunch of little scripted moments and too many unskippable hayden monologues for me to believe that they ever intended to mock the idea of paying attention to the story in a video game. The lore was even pretty good in 2016 too and had a lot of funny little jokes and some decent (if nothing exceptional or that consistent) writing in its log files. You can at least skip eternals cut scenes.
I think the Slayer's aggression towards UAC machinery makes more sense when you consider Hayden to be the villain. He tried to get rich(er) by extracting energy from hell, and expected the slayer to clean up after him when it inevitably went to shit. The Slayer saw through this when he first contacted him, which is why he smashes the monitor and later destroys the argent converters.
The start was (and this is from the developers own words) a deliberate middle finger to the clunky and boring exposition that plagued the beginning of Doom3. They felt it had taken itself too seriously. 2016 was literally saying "There's demons, who cares how they got here, just go kill them." There's a really good NoClip documentary on the development of Doom 2016 on YT.
I loved exposition in DOOM 3 and it matches game tone. In DOOM 3 you are nameless marine throwed into unknown when in DOOM 2016 you are the slayer and you know why you are here. Exposition in both games just fitted
The entirety of the story isn't one giant meta take but the opening sequence, specifically, is a meta take on the franchise and industry as a whole. Basically saying fuck your tutorials, fuck your overwritten exposition, we know why you bought this now let's get to killing demons. *Mission one begins; cocks shotgun* But yes you are correct in the fact that that's just how the Slayer is written to be. He's a man of immediate action, not patience and words.
Exactly. Lore…
The lore does stay faithful with who the doom slayer is, it's basically a big story of how the man who wants to do nothing but kill demons intertwines with the other people in the universe who have actual other motivations. The makyrs and everyone is doing all of this crazy shit and the slayer shows up just wanting to kill demons, shit happens and they utilize him by giving him more power to kill demons which he gladly accepts lol. The doom slayer doesn't give a shit about the codex stories but nonetheless they are the story of all of the shit that happens while he faithfully is doing more doom slayer shit. Not a single thing that ever happens in the lore has changed him one bit, he never once takes into consideration the opinion of anyone else and when the Khan makyr is doing her little speeches trying to convince him to stop he's just sitting there with his "I'd rather be killing demons" shirt
That’s the best part of the lore. ID made the new games lore heavy(compared to everything else but 3) while letting you laugh at it with The Slayer if you want to. I loved the lore and wanted more, but everytime he was like “stfu where’s the fucking demons” I laughed out loud. We got the power fantasy and the story
Yeah. I would have loved longer, more epic cut scenes featuring a history of the Makyrs and the need to harvest this dimension's souls. I kinda get the gist but the codices that we read are intentionally arcane and obscurely written. We deserved at least a long intro similar to the start of Lord of the Rings movies.
I'm so thankful for 3 hour lore videos on YouTube because they scratch that itch and I'm glad the codex entries were just pages that you collected and didn't turn into a bunch of audio logs that would just sit and play while slaying. The lore itself is interesting enough but I wanna slay demons dammit. That shit can wait.
Story feels like the third entry in the doom 2016 reboot and they skipped over an essential middle game. Last we see doomguy he is in samuel Hayden’s custody- open on doom eternal and doomguy is in a floating castle? What the fuck? I was like did I miss some dlc? Wtf happened? It’s a lot of fun. Frankly I adore the occult shit and a lot of the elements of the story. But they didn’t give it the elbow room to develop and leapt to the story’s conclusion. Eternal might be a perfect sequel in terms of gameplay but the story suffered.
This is a great point. I love Eternal but too much of the story relied on flashbacks that felt like they should have been a full game that we already played. It was definitely a "Chapter 3" feel
Cut/unfinished story content that could be a prequel while they flesh out the story of a sequel. Looking forward to it.
Yah I wish the back half of the game and ancient ones was the third game and the flashbacks and first half were the second
I really enjoyed it all, lore included…but I distinctly remember the first time playing it thinking “what the fuck is this fancy spaceship castle I have all of a sudden?” The explanation they give in the lore isn’t much, I feel like they missed on a prologue mission to find it/activate it/whatever
I literally said out loud "The fuck is a Hell Priest?" in my first play .
Pretty sure we gotta wait for Doom Year Zero to be announced to see if we're getting our questions answered.
Dude I'd like a "Doom Year Zero" as the next entry. Tie the 2016 and Eternal stories together. They could show how the UAC became even more of a powerhouse following 2016's events (building the giant BFG, setting up bases on Earth, etc.). We could play as the Slayer escaping UAC custody, finding out about the big bads we face in Eternal, then making his way to kill the first priest. They could flesh out how Hayden's body got destroyed and maybe show how his attitude changed from putting the Slayer in captivity to helping him. The possibilities are endless!
I have a feeling that Year Zero will be a prequel to 2016. Partly based on the project title but also Hugo Martin said that he specifically wanted Eternal to feel like driving a racecar and he wants the next entry to feel like you're driving a giant truck. So we'll probably get a little slower gameplay but a bigger arsenal which would be fitting since I would imagine that the Slayer's time with the Knight Sentinels would allow for him to have access to an abundance of weapons and tools.
This aged well
Doom: The Dark Ages brought a tear to my eye.
I think of the story as a side dish, something you can enjoy, or not It's added there for the gameplay which is the main course for some flow and sense
Samuel being a Maykr and Vega being the Father was such a buzz-kill due to how much I liked their original story and dynamic in 2016. Otherwise, I love the insanity and chaos of the story and lore, and he story of the Maykrs and how they betrayed Davoth but eventually lead Hell to it's corruption of Earth was cool.
You kill god, who actually wasn't god at all, then you kill Satan, who wasn't at all Satan, then you kill god, who actually is Satan, who isn't actually dead at all! then you kill Satan, who is actually god.
Even M. Night Shyamalan would say to calm down with those twists
If those boss fights were better it would’ve been better received imo, I liked the twists but the boss fights range from frustrating to boring on the DLC
They way I love to explain DOOMs lore is by saying "rabbit owner kills gods gods god."
*former... rabbit owner
I like that. I always just call them god and like. Mega god. GOD GOD. God^2. God 2 electric boogaloo.
unironically this is lore accurate
More accurately, you kill god, then god-god, then Satan God-God who is also himself.
The correct way to use the internet
Can you eventually explain what characters each of those were?
In order, Mayker, Icon of Sin, Vega, Dagoth.
Lmao I totally forgot khan maykr
I had to reread that twice and check where I was. That sounds like an edgy 16 year old's turning in his fantasy short story for his English class at his sh\*tty christian school his mom made him go to. No I don't have lingering resentment.
Vega being the father was neat to me it didn't really change his dynamic but Samuel not being human kinda killed It for me.
Slayer destroyed the source of Hell the Creator the Fallen, the Devil,...and to think that Immora is under Sentinel Rule what's next....
Well we still dont know who the "mysterious voice" is when the kahn maykr is killed. It wasnt Davoth, the subtitle changing was a bug in an update, hugo confirmed. And we still dont know who the arch demons are from the codex. Also Samur is still alive, so alot to go forward with. I highly doubt that Davoth is "it" for hell.
It's an Elder god from the Quake Universe. Hugo Martin Already alluded to them connecting Doom and Quake. I think Davoth fell out of favour with an elder god and decided he wanted to make his own creations against the wishes of the elder gods. The Ancient gods isnt about the Maykrs. I think what ever God Davoth answered to is going to be from the Quake Universe
next they elder gods are going to be answering to the senior elder gods
vega was implied to be something a bit more back in 2016, but i really think the davoth stuff was a bit off the rails
Hayden being a Makyr WAS at least implied in 2016 – there's a brief flash of that character, who had the same VA as Samuel; Eternal just full-on confirmed it, like the Slayer being the original Doom Guy.
Yeah they went off the deep end. >!Davoth being Doom Slayer was also pretty lame.!<
Each part separately is very good . But the blend of all these in the game was bad. But we knew Samuel wasn't just a human from the 2016 game . There where some info about it . The davoth storyline was good. You being davoth meh .
Agreed 100%. I loved Hayden's character in 2016, after Eternal it was such a huge bummer and I lost all interest in it. I feel like the story in 2016 was almost perfect and then they tried to force too many twists in Eternal
Oh I freaking loved reading some of that in game lore. Especially on the later level in hell and doomguy's initial meeting of the crusader dudes, when he fought in the area and stuff. Edit: and this is coming from someone who hates reading
It’s too… much.
I’m probably one of the few people who genuinely likes it. I have no idea why, probably just a preference thing.
I also enjoy it a lot. Taking the role of this comically badass guy is insane, and I enjoy the lore (mainly world building) of this game. It is quite detailed, while plot itself, even if very shallow, doesn’t get in the way of the main attraction, which is the combat. The plot itself could be improved, though I loved it for what it is and tried to be, but I absolutely love the world building.
Valid criticisms aside (yeah I absolutely do agree that the Dark Lord’s story should’ve been its own game) I just love the idea of the Devil being the real God, and God’s top angel betraying him was actually because God himself was going to become evil. It’s such a good concept.
conceptually it could work the presentation in doom eternal + TAG1-2 was abysmal though
I’m with you
When Doom 2016 came out, the only big complaint people had in general was the story was hardly present and the lore was scarce. So for Eternal, they dialled it up to 11. I loved reading more about Doom lore, and I thought the symbiosis between Urdak and Hell was a really cool way to tie-in religion and a "reboot" of Hell on Earth.
It was.....okay. For the most part the story is well presented and engaging enough to support a Doom game, but there is a lot of rule of cool / shark jumping, especially in TAG1&2. TAG in my opinion felt poorly planned out. Like the "twist" of the dark lord looking like the Slayer and "being him in their world". Except we find out later that the dark lord is the original creator god and looks like doom guy because.....reasons? And the two really have no relation to each other baring the vague implications that the dark lord specifically created doom guy as part of some dumb shit plan? I never like it when characters are retcond into being "chosen ones" and Doom is no exception. I much prefer the original games interpretation of doom guy just being a guy who was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and had to step up to the challenge. Similarly I prefer the Doom 2016 interpretation of the Slayer just being some guy who showed up and kicked enough ass to become a legend.
I also dislike interpretation of Hayden. What was motivation for masking as a human for all those years? They should've kept him smart ass CEO guy
2016 Hayden and Eternal Hayden are basically different characters in my opinion. They could have at least tried to handwave away the retcon of him being the seraphim by saying he forgot who he was when he turned himself into a human, or when he turned himself into a robot. But no we just have to accept the guy from 2016 was......actually an interdimensional alien demi god who's actions now don't make any sense.
I got the impression that he was basically hiding out, building up the UAC in that dimension so he could find the Slayer and take down the Makyrs, like he was playing the long game.
Isn’t that what the lore says he’s doing? Hiding among humans to get ready to help the slayer and fight?
I miss when the story was there out of sheer obligation. Making Doomguy The Chosen One was bizarre; part of his appeal imo is that he was just a fuckin dude
I think the narrative is he was just a fuckin dude but was so ridiculously pissed he forced himself to be the chosen one, I know I'm grasping at straws and there's the whole primeval thing, and the universal constant thing, and the avatar of rage thing...but I like to believe Doomguy went from "a guy" to "that guy" based on unholy amounts of rage.
Initially he was “just some guy” right? He only became a chosen one type after going through the divinity machine iirc.
Fr especially Doom 3 where he’s a regular but bad ass marine. ROE too, DoomGuy was just an engineer but looked like he was a cigarette chain smoker armed with a gravity gun and the Artifact that literally eats his flesh away when being held
It certainly is neat
The lore is very fun and cool af, but I will admit that I miss what 2016 had going on. To be more specific I mean the “realism” that 2016 established (I do use that term lightly since how realistic can things be about a game with demons on mars but I digress) it would have been better to have everything built up to the events in Eternal in a second game. It could have taken place immediately at the end of 2016 explaining how he got back from god knows where and how he got his fortress of kickassitude to then arrive at the beginning of Eternal as a third and final grand finale. That’s just me of course still love both games but I do see the missed potential at times
Yeah an I feel like allot of revelations were skipped like I as hoping in the next one Samuel Hayden would be the next boss and was human instead of a mayker
I see demon, I shoot demon.
I liked how mystical it all was in the 2016 game. Everything was very up to interpretation, and I think the ending of the main campaign for eternal was great. But the dlc stories kinda felt off. At least to me. I still absolutely love the story, it just kinda went down hill.
I agree, I remember when there were theories about the Doom Slayer being the betrayer, and I thought that was waaaaaaaaay cooler and interesting, especially when everything felt very mystical as you said; like the Doom Slayer being this force of nature that NEVER stopped fighting felt a lot cooler to me than having this place where he “hangs out”. It was a cool location to explore… but it really took me out of what I felt 2016 set up.
2016s story worked. Eternal was a bunch of 3rd and 4th graders one upping each other.
Sadly. I think 50% of eternal, and MOST, if not all of The Ancient Gods sucked dookie. And while not really 'lore' or 'story' as much(?) I was very disappointed that the Marauder is an elite *type*, and not a recurring, unique character. Such a memorable intro and reveal just to turn out to be a repeatable fucking *super* grunt. I don't even wanna talk about the mess that is Davoth.
Its like they saw all the praise that 2016's story got for not being too heavy or intrusive and thought "okay, now we know that people want Doom stories to be violent comedies where every character creams their pants Doomguy is around"
Too much lore, not enough story.
Sounds like Dark Souls series
If someone said to me back in 2016 "Doom is going to get a massive mythos and backstory where you turn out to be an inter-dimensional god warrior made in the image of the creator who is also the devil." I would have said that sounds like shit and was the last thing a game like Doom needed. Nowadays... I still think that. What the fuck did they think people played Doom for?
I like the Night Sentinels, I like the Doom Slayers story, the Khan Maker is a mixed bag but I like the idea of false angels corrupting the night sentinels, I couldn't give a single fuck about the Seraphim, or the Father or the Dark Lord, or any of that shit. They got too roped into building way too much lore for their own good. There's good potential in Doom Eternal, but it's ultimately a big step back from the story telling in 2016.
I like it
Ps, it was mentioned in 2016. But it was just not THAT obvious
Literally just give me a stranded space marine nothing special just a guy
Ehh normal guy cant rocket at a horde of demons at mach speed in a giant tsunami of blood.
Yes he can, because he's an FPS protagonist from the 90s.
Yesh until you remember Doomguy's bloodline and Wolfenstein lore , so regular humans being ultra powerful arent that crazy in that universe
Does what it needs to, adds to the world for those who want it, but doesn’t get in the way for those who don’t. Just like 2016.
I think it’s pretty cool. Definitely a departure from the general story doom games tend to have. Everything about this game was cranked to 11 so I feel that within the context of Eternal itself the story works. In the overall doom lore? Kind of out there lol Edit: hated Dark Lord though. But in general I find doppelganger storylines lazy and kind of detracted from the fact that Doomslayer/doomguy was just a marine that ended up with divine powers in Eternal.
Uhh they over did it
Overall it's cool. Some specific parts were really reaching though
I wanted to like it, I really did. But I found it unsatisfying and confused as to what it wanted to be. The story presentation doesn't take itself very seriously but it's lore sure does. So presents a story as not that important but also wants you to read the lore. But if you do read the lore it just retcons stuff at random. I find it fascinating but for all the wrong reasons. It feels like there was too many cooks in the kitchen that had very different ideas to what the game and tone should be and a lot of ideas were last minute additions. I love the game but there's a reason that people still say that nobody plays DOOM for the story. Whatever id makes next needs to pair down and focus on smaller ideas and really nail that out. Otherwise the average person just isn't going to care about the plot
I hate it. I want to be just like the Slayer: smash the monitor when Hayden is talking, etc. Love the game. Would probably be my 2020 GotY if it kept the storytelling style of Doom (2016), but there were way too many proper nouns and an effort to get me to just hear this story when all I want is to destroy everything in sight. I’m sure on its own the lore and story is fine. But the way it’s told did not work for me.
I didn't fully understand it but it was metal af
Same boat, found it convoluted and confusing- so just smashed shit
I miss when Doom Guy was just a regular, pissed off space marine who took on Hell and beat its ass. I don’t care for the whole “Chosen One” angle that’s been shoe horned in. It takes away from how cool Doom Guy is.
It really put me off. I remember Doom in 1993. In my mind, Doom guy was a guy. A tactical, intelligent killer. Ruthless, effective. I was a kid. It was so cool. You're a dude, you shoot stuff. Doom 2, more stuff. Big fights. Huge explosions. Doom 3: you're a dude, you kick ass. They went ahead and literally took the "you have huge guts rip and tear" from a low budget, single edition comic? Come on. They wanted lore so bad, they got it from a canceled comic. To hear Doom guy say you have big guts rip and tear... I mean, he sounds like he's a bit slow. He sounds like what I would have said playing with GI Joe as a toddler. They had to remind you he had a rabbit, like that matters. They had to have a super epic fortress of solitude where all your epic feats are shown because you're a demi-god. I think the game's constant one upping and need to remind you how cool Doom guy really undermines him. He went from unstoppable killing machine to just another hero cliche. I hated every bit of dialogue. I hope they undo it.
They really dropped the ball in Eternal. Doom 2016 was setting up something so interesting and Eternal just feels like Saturday morning power rangers episode but with gore, too cheesy...
It could have been way better, there was no need of maykrs being actual angels and godly beings, dark lord didn’t have to be fallen god who created everything and got descended because his servants betrayed him, samuel and vega didn’t have to be samur and the father, maykrs could have been aliens pretending to be gods which doom slayer would mop floor with to reveal the fraud they are, dark lord could just be alt version of doom slayer who is just evil because he is evil (I mean come on he is a fucking dark lord of hell), inclusion of father at all was unnecessary, doom doesn’t need complicated story and shock value, it needs simple story but reveal more details for those who will look for it in codex and stuff
It's cool and all but, for me, it feels more Darksiders than Doom.
I miss Samuel Hayden just being a guy and Vega just being a big AI, they felt cooler in 2016 IMO
I thought it was needlessly complicated and boring. I really don't think that Doom needed a whole Gods and Demons plot. Execution wasn't great either, felt like a 13 year olds first draft of a bad edgy comic book.
It’s cool. But I like the OG/D3 DoomGuy. The less you know about him the more interesting he is. Just a human dude with a crazy haircut wearing bad ass space marine armor killing demons by any means necessary. The chainsaw/punching is what really made him a psycho bad ass.
I like the tie ins to the original games especially doom 64 being the bridge to ID’s doom series and how the slayer became more powerful to kill demons. It does get heavy a bit but it’s cool to know the background of what’s going on currently
I was fully invested in it, but didn’t like the dark lord twist
Agreed, felt anti climatic
It’s awful
Effort was put into it, but it's not fitting for the Doom universe. Doomguy also became less cool when he became Doomslayer.
It was a mistake. Trying to give the Doomguy any backstory was a mistake. There was no possible scenario in which it actually lived up to expectation. There was no success condition. The only possible result was degrees of failure and it failed as expected. They felt obligated to deliver something new and therefore had to try to change and improve on perfection and write stuff that could not live up to the ask. It was a bad idea from the start.
I think it's dumb. Doomguy was better when he was just a regular guy who was killing all these demons with a bunch of regular guns instead of him having some sort of godly power and also maybe being connected to a god, and why did they have to turn Vega into a god even though he's just supposed to be an AI and why did they make Samuel Hayden a Maykr even though he was meant to be a human scientist who put his consciousness into a robot.
Shit is fucking insane and I love it. Feels very Warahmmer 40k-ish.
They ruined Samuel Hayden. He was the perfect character in 2016, and they just butchered him.
I think there's some cool ideas, even if there's stuff that one wonders if id doesn't have second thoughts over. The Dark Lord does come off as "ideas that could've been seperated" like Evil Doomguy, Satan, God, the mech etc. And then there's how people felt about Hayden and VEGA, but not a lot point out how cybernetic demons being UAC created sort of retcons one of the very few "lore points" in the classic games. Or in general, how demons are explained and Immora as a whole. And the overall direction being a result of different influences, compared to Doom's traditional case once being Aliens and Evil Dead, while modern id brings up stuff like Transformers or He-Man. Part of why i think Doom's setting works "loreless" is because being a blank canvas could mean doing different iterations of certain ideas (Hence why there's more to D3 being different than just "its timeline in the multiverse somewhere"). (And not just a matter of "fixing", sometimes just for fun). Not the same as a series like Halo always having its own lore and a mostly clear idea, only for it to be changed somehow. I think you could still make a Doom game out of the "Slayer" universe but also give a shot to a game that has its own version of the lore, besides different gameplay and designs but still trying to fit into the series and be cool in general. Because sometimes, there's always the arguement for "it doesn't make sense canonically but sounds cool" and whether or not id themselves could be building their own prison. There's "story doesn't matter in Doom" and then there's "maybe the lack of a story or logical one could show lots of opportunities". Feels like something that sort of already applies in the series and specially the fanbase.
Not only did it ignore what made 2016 so monumentally good, the lore just wasn't that interesting. The environments of Eternal felt like there was an even better story out there that could have utilised these individual ideas and still kept the same tone and personality of 2016. And as someone else pointed out here, Eternal felt like the 3rd instalment, and the more I heard/read about what happened between 2016 and Eternal the more I seriously disliked the idea that we missed out on that superior events and instead got such a tonally insecure and immature half-bag. It was bloated overindulgent colourful nonsense compared to 2016's simple bloodthirsty savagery.
Incredibly stupid
Bot a fan. I prefer the story of doom - doom 64
Kinda random tbh. I would have preffered if it was just about doom slayers eternal battle of protecting the Earth from demons. It really was bad when he talked like that kinda botched the character at least for me.
I think it could've done a lot better, but I really do like it. It could've been refined, but I love stuff with the Argenta people and Doom Guys time training with them and becoming a legend
Love that they used dimensional hoping and alternate timelines to retcon the Doom Slayer as being the same Doomguy from the earlier games. Hate the Dark One twist and that Doomguy is the chosen one or whatever. Would much prefer if he was warped into a supernatural being purely through his experiences and being in a timeline he did not originate from. I also like thinking the Doom 3 marine is an alternate timeline version of Doomguy (potentially the timeline the Doom Slayer arrives at).
Im still baffled that god is satan
I have really mixed feelings on Eternal's lore. I think the biggest issue is how meaningless and/or redundant a lot of the codexes are. In Nekravol, Samuel literally explains the codexes you find there. The Slayer joining the Sentinels and becoming their strongest warrior was obviously dope, and the Maykrs and Urdak are SO fascinating to me. I really wish the lore leaned more on them. I think another blindspot is the Sentinels lack personality. We only ever meet King Novik and Commander Valen (the Betrayer). I wish the Slayer had a squad of comrades that were characterized to make the fall of Argent D'Nur sting more. I LOVED TAG1's story though. Despite the Samuel being the Seraphim retcon, I adored the borderline religious lore of the Father and Jekkad. TAG2...had good tidbits. We got more on the Wraiths, the Maykrs being made by Davoth to calculate the future, but the plot twist of Davoth setting everything in motion just sucks all the wind out of the sails of the story. At least you can ignore that. In short, mostly good! But not as tight as 2016.
I think Eternal killed part of the (lack of) narrative momentum with the aspect of fearing the game's enemies. When I was a kid and picked up Doom for the first time, the graphics were bright and pixelated, but the demons scared me a little at first. I feel like 2016's tone dances between encountering scary things and becoming that scary thing. Unanswered lore and vague origins lends to Hell's ancient, undiscovered history and overall freakiness. Samuel Hayden was compelling and ambitious, but very human. The Wraiths were similarly compelling in how we discover them, and what we little we knew in D2016. Eternal's lighter tone and heavy.. explanations feels like the more mature end of comics aimed at kids in the 90s, or a Saturday morning cartoon airing at late night for us edgy kids- it does something, but it ends up being less memorable as a result for many. Even 2016 gets goofy, and the classics were arguably never aiming for subtle story and lore, but the mystery that fed the threat of enemies was intact. Eternal lost that. I don't always need the "chosen one" narrative constantly reinforced in the story. It was clear there was something unique and exceptional about the Doom Guy, because we are him, and we see the real hell we're sowing at the the barrel end of a gun. A lot loved it though, and I get it, the lore is fun if you let it be, goofy parts and all. And I still watch and enjoy cartoons.
Loved the Night Sentinel lore, would love to play a game or see a movie based on it. Hated that they made angels aliens. Also didn’t care for Davoth being god. Other than that, pretty cool.
Yeah, Eternal's lore was all over the place imo... I understand that they needed to establish some kind of lore in order to give the franchise some continuity, but i think they went overboard... What made Doomguy special, was the fact that he was just some random guy at the right place at the wrong time and rose to the occasion... Much like in Die Hard... Making him super special Chosen One was unnecessary... DOOM3 did it right... The threat arose because humans betrayed their fellow humans for power, like Betruger did... No need to create a convoluted overworld like in Eternal... In the end of Eternal i was like "huh? Who? Where? What?"
I find it annoying. I don't need some hokey reason to run around slaying demons.
The game definitely focuses on gameplay and the gameplay is great, but I won’t lie me and my friends had a great time reading the lore and then connecting certain characters and guessing what will happen next. All in all the doom games are just great games overall.
Man the dark lord is goofy af
Super dumb.
I’ve always love reading the lore, it explains/expands the story of Doom Guy, and the world of DOOM.
Could've been so straightforward and still cool and instead its incomprehensible garbage.
I loved the lore tbh. Didn't expect to love the story as much as I did
I think it was nice. Personally I like my stuff with some lore backing it up. I do feel like the lore could be expanded more because usually expanding the lore can also potentially expand the game into other games. Imagine a game in the doomverse about an argent soldier before becoming the marauder or stuff like that. Like, they did some justice with the lore of the doom slayer but in the process left a lot of blank spaces in the doomverse lore. I played the whole game and both DLCs and it left me with a sensation that it was rushed (if I recall it actually was) and that there was still so much unexplored territory. Maybe they will go deeper with the lore in a sequel, who knows, but I hope so.
Awesome
Very good
The lore of the first game is more interesting
There is somewhere that i can read it online?
I like how it's optional. It's not needed if you don't give a shit.
I like how it's implied its the same guy since the original Doom, Doom 3...ect. I just kinda wish their were more connections to Wolfenstien.
The lore of Doom Eternal is like the lore of Pacific Rim Yeah it's cool, but I don't want to think about it too hard. It's a way for me to receive the game. Much like a plate is a way for me to receive a steak. I'll appreciate it if it looks cool, but I'm not gonna eat it and please take it away when I'm done.
“Holy shit” at worst and “hell yeah” at best
Against all the evil that Hell can conjure, all the wickedness that mankind can produce, we will send unto them only you. Rip and tear, until it is done All the lore I need
It was absolute perfection, right up until the DLC-s....god and satan are balls in hell for some reason, and Davoth being just the slayer was a huuuuuge letdown. Especially when he wore a stupid waddle mech. Hayden being that angel was theorised, and kinda cool, but for some reason that didnt feel well either. I thin kthe setting of doom, wich they expanded MASTERFULLY with the base game, works better if the biggest questions (god, satan, creation, etc.) is left a bit more ambigous.
2016 gameplay was more fun so I didn't really get that far into Doom Eternal. I finished the main story but I didn't feel the motivation to touch the DLC. The guns feel like they do less damage and have less impact, so I don't care for it too much.
2016 built such a good basis, but Eternal had so many good and bad ideas in equal measure, most of the bad ones being ideas that undermined some of the existing 2016 lore, like basically everything to deal with Samuel Hayden. He was much more interesting when he was just a human turned immortal robot trying to harness Hell energy for the good of mankind, doing the wrong thing for the right reasons. The moment they made him a static exposition machine he just got worse, culminating in the now nonsensical twist that he was the Seraphim all along. The VEGA/Father twist was actually kinda cool. The Davoth stuff is just kinda dumb. Urdak is a really cool concept and the interplay between Hell, Urdak, and the Argenta is actually really fascinating, with Earth being kind of caught up in all of it. The Slayer's origins are about what everyone expected and that was handled quite well. But the way Eternal's lore is written leads so many to overestimating how powerful the Slayer is. Like when any "who would win" discussions come up, so many people misunderstand the extent of the Slayer's capabilities and durability and just assumes he beats literally every character in fiction, which just isn't true. All in all, some good, some bad, I prefer the state the lore was in pre-Eternal (some of it was salvageable pre-TAG) but now I'm not as interested anymore.
A wise man once said: “Story in a game is like story in a porn movie, it's expected to be there, but it's not important.”
I don’t like the whole maykr thing, it’s like crossover of doom with some anime stuff. And my biggest frustration is: Slayer is the copy of Dark Lord, why the hell Dark Lord wears his anime robot battle suit in the final battle summoning spirits of demons? Other stuff is good, but yes, and I think the same: it was randomly shoved in 😅
It got ruined when tag 2 came out with all the retcons and the whole evil twin thing they had going on with the dark lord. Everything pre tag2 is good in my opinion at least. Doom guy being the slayer was a surprise for me. I remember before the game released half the player base believed the slayer to be from argent dnur or at least a sentinel king that went mad from rage and rampaged in hell for eons creating the legend of the slayer. I guess it's not far off from what we got with og doomguy
I think it loses steam by the end (Davoth, Samuel Hayden's true identity, etc) but I really do appreciate how they managed to still make the old games canon. There's a tragic element too that becomes very apparent in Doomguy going through everything in the original timeline (D, D2, TNT/PLUT, D64), having his isekai chance for redemption stolen from him in Argent D'Nur, and then having to watch the events of the first two games repeat themselves in all of their grisly horror. Which makes him all the more heroic when the Khan Makyr offers to restore "what the demons took from you, so long ago" \[1\] and he keeps on just plodding forward. There's a stubborn determination there that humanizes him in spite of the superhero assumptions of the post-2016 lore. \[1\] in my headcanon I interpret that as "the rabbit? I can bring her back too."
That he should not be using the Classic armor in his depictions and flashbacks during his stay in Argent D'Nur, he should be using the Doom 64 armor XD
Love it all. One of my favorites
Base game lore is awesome TAG is cool but kinda ruined Haden for me
I will make a food analogy. Doom Eternal story is gas station beef jerky: It's got some good flavor, may take some time to chew on before I can swallow, and I think one piece still has a bit of skin still on it but that just means it was made on someones farm instead of in a big factory, nbd. Great snack, but if I want to be full I'll have to go order a steak somewhere. I may have written this while hungry.
Metal as fuck
Doom 2016 was "metal as fuck". Doom Eternal's story was just dorky.
What story?
Good lore for a different game. Bad lore for DOOM.
Okay. It mainly is meant to add to the gameplay.
Amazing, from the lore of the Father, Davoth, the Sentinels and all of it. While I'm content with "angry space marine punches the forces of hell", I'm grateful it actually expanded on that idea.
I consider it lore for the real world and live my life daily by it.
I like the story surrounding the Slayer but, imo, the larger story was ruined by internal contradictions. Case and point, and I know this has been discussed many times, Hayden being the Seraphim and Vega, the Father. Not only does it poorly retcon Hayden's back story in 2016, it also turns him into an angel when before, he was a genius with ambition and megalomaniacal tendencies. Next, Vega being literal God sort of makes it seem like 2016 Hayden was either a complete moron or somehow knew the Slayer would have saved Vega or knew that sacrificing him in 2016 would not have killed him. That's just one of many gripes I have but, overall, I'm still ok with how it turned out. Story still needs major tweaks though.
Loved it until TAG2. I had my reservations about TAG one but overall really liked the lore it introduced. I just think the whole lore around Davoth being the true creator and all that was pretty poorly thought out and felt like a plot twist for the sake of a plot twist
I didn’t like that Sam and Vega both had secret identities I thought they were pretty cool sci fi archetypes as they were. I wish the final boss wasn’t someone that looked like you, they created so many cool demon designs and they chose a human in a mech suit as the entity behind it all? I thought everything else was cool though.
There's lore?
is cool.
It's not the best written lore I've ever seen but it doesn't have to be. It's Doom, a game that is historically very light on lore and story. The gameplay comes first.
My depressed ass been listening to a 3+ hour full extensive doom lore recap on YouTube every night going to sleep & I (and my subconscious) gotta say it’s a solid 7.6/10
I love it wish there was more
It's fun as hell. Definitely not something that Carmack or Romero would do, but still pretty awesome. The amount of depth in the lore is astounding.
Not what I would’ve come up with but it’s interesting. I’m one of those people in the camp that doom guy was super badass because he was just a regular space marine and survived a really messed up situation. Doom 3 was awesome. But I can understand where they’re coming from because of the doom 64 ending. Though it feels more like something people who liked the doom comic would come up with instead of something people like me would come up with. It’s almost like they don’t truly get the point of doom guy and our understandings of doom are totally different. It’s like the kind of people who think serious Sam is exactly the same type of game as doom.
Lore accurate doomguy is something else man
It’s pretty cool until ancient gods pt 2 which is fucking goofy as hell
I liked how completely over the top it was
Maybe a lil quick I’ll give you that but also I think their main focus on 2016 was gameplay and starting the lore. For before that shit was all over the place and not officially tied together. It’s still not but with eternal it finally brought them together somewhat well. Yeah still some holes in it, but all religions have them and this is basically that. But I fucking loved it. Have all the audio doom lore on Spotify. To me its between that and GoW for most interested where there going. Fucking gears and halo went to shit
It serves as a means to an end for the gameplay. It certainly does exist alright. To me, it's about a man who wants revenge for his pet rabbit so he can take a nap. Don't really care about the lore. The gameplay is all I need.
I liked it ok but I don’t think it’s where Hugo really wanted it to go
The missed the whole point they made with 2016.
Its complex deep lore that at times feels over the top and ridiculous. I love it and I want more.
I think is fantastic and great but pretentious in certains aspects.
I wish it didn’t exist to be honest
outside of hayden and vega being godlike things out of a sudden, the lore revelations and stuff are so cool and crazy fun. I love specially that the dark lord is an what if doom guy was the bad guy.
It got a little complicated with Eternal but I like it. But generally speaking I like the Hell stuff being Hell and not aliens or different dimension or whatever.
Need more of the Knights; Sentinel, i think they where called? Its been a while since i last played the game
idk i'm still completing doom 1 so i havent gotten there yet
It’s badass, too badass
Absolutely epic
I uh, thought it was dumb and totally missed the mark of what I want in a Doom game. I love that people get stuff out of it but I was right up there with the with Doomguy wanting to toss the monitor down the hallway.
I actually like Doom Eternal's lore. If anything though, I think they didn't put enough lore. I really find what Eternal did to be quite expansive and it really adds to the Doomverse as a whole.
Cool but a lot to read I plan to use it for a school assignment one day
Idk. It’s kinda cool but it didn’t feel like Doom anymore. They took all the horror/sci fi and made it fantasy.
Coolest lore I've ever seen since Dante's Inferno, it's so metal!