elfs | Doom Eternal, initial impressions (Reply)

I’ve just played through the very first level of Doom Eternal and I’m not as excited by it as I was about either Doom III or Doom (2016). My take on Doom was that it was much more arcade game than first person shooter, and Doom Eternal takes that video game sensibility to such great extremes that I think it actually hurts the pleasure of playing the game.

Just to keep things straight, I’ll use “Doom” to refer to the 2016 game, and “Original Doom” to refer to the 1993 release.

The other thing is that Doom Eternal pushes the ID-Tech engine out two generations from the one used in Doom and in doing so they’ve re-created many of the problems that plagued ID’s post-apocalyptic game, Rage. In many ways, this game feels as if Doom and Rage had a baby, and since Rage was an ugly game the result is an ugly baby of a game.

The visuals are, like those of Rage, truly groundbreaking in their realism, and yet it is that very realism that makes the game feel off. Doom Eternal, like Rage, suffers from the problem of being able to show you gorgeous views only for you to realize that you can never get there, can never visit that location. There are places in the game that feel as if you should be able to get to them, and yet you can’t, not because of any obvious barriers or capability shortcomings, but because the game engine just won’t let you.

The visuals are so much more “realistic” than Doom that you wind up wanting to look around and do the sightseeing thing, enjoying the truly hellish art that pervades the entire universe. You start off somewhere in America, a ruined city with fires and smokes and the red glow of Hell everywhere. Demons have run out of humans to kill and are turning on each other, which is a good thing as it means you can sometimes sneak past them without having to fight, but often the battle is so heavy and hard to defeat that you miss all the art.

The young male UAC intern has been replaced by a chirpy young female UAC intern who delivers such lines as “Rejoice in what we have accomplished! Report to the nearest harvest center!” and “The UAC. Because fulfilling prophecy takes a lot of hard work!” In the context of Doom, the intern’s cheerleading videos made a lot of sense; in Doom Eternal, not so much.

The storyline, I’m sure, is meant to be a “We’ll reveal the backstory as we go along,” but there’s a discontinuity here that is very poorly addressed. Maybe it’s just me, but I like playing for the story as much as I do the combat. I mean:

Original Doom: You are a marine at the far end of a base on Mars when the Hellwave kills most people, converts the rest into zombies, and drops a whole bunch of demons on you. The game starts moments after the Hellwave. At first, you have only to survive, but ultimately you take on the duty of closing the Hellgate. Good luck!

Doom III: You’re a marine at the far end of a base on Mars. The game starts a half hour before the Hellwave, so you get the basic story that you’re the “Ranking FNG” who gets to do the Sergeant’s lousiest jobs, one of which you’re in the middle of when the Hellwave hits. At first, you have only to survive, but ultimately you take on the duty of closing the Hellgate. Good luck!

Doom: You are an overpowered cybersoldier who was put into cryogenic suspension for unknown reasons. You awaken moments after the Hellwave hits. At first, you’re fighting only to survive, but it becomes clear you were manufactured to fight the forces of Hell, and you take on the responsibility of stopping an internal cabal of UAC cultists from opening the Hellgate. Good luck!

Doom Eternal: Uh, why does the Doomguy cybersoldier have a space-based Fortress of Solitude? Why does he have the teleport gates from Doom III, which isn’t canon? Why is the AI Vega from Doom alive again, and is Doomguy’s best friend? Why doesn’t Doomguy have all the buffs he collected from the last adventure? Where’s Sam? And if he’s such a goddamned great super-soldier, why doesn’t he carry around a decent collection of ammo packs for his trusty shotgun anyway?

It goes like that, and it’s really annoying. Sure, it’s meant to be an arcade game: run up, shoot things, collect buffs and ammo. The plot is a thin tissue for the joy of shooting butt-ugly monsters. But in this 40 hour game (estimated playable time), there’s over an hour and a half of cutscenes! That’s an entire movie right there. You’d think there’d be a sensible plot.

The biggest thing between Original Doom and Doom III was that Doom III actually felt lived in. There were other people, and lots of voice talent, to help you understand that Mars Base was a place full of humans who were tragically affected by the UAC’s desire to exploit Hell. The later games make light of this, which I suppose is the point, but it’s not one that resonates with me.

I’ll probably finish Doom Eternal. It’s a fine game. It’s just not the masterpieces that Doom III or Doom turned out to be.

Aside: Yes, I am running Doom Eternal on Linux. It works pretty good. The configuration details you have to go through to get it to work are pretty demanding, though, and not for the technically inept. I’m running it through Proton, the “Linux Compatibility Tools” on Steam, which means basically the Wine API emulation layer with a lot of extra configuration details. None of the Compatibility Tools that Steam provides work; you have to install a custom version.

Install the very latest Nvidia drivers! You may have to go through some serious headaches to make this happen. My laptop required that I shut down the windows environment but somehow leave the Nvidia card powered on– that was tricky, and it’s different for every computer.

Install the latest “Glorious Eggroll” edition of Proton. Download the file and find your .steam folder. Change into it until you find the folder with sub-folders “steam” “steamapps”, and “steamui”. If it doesn’t exist, make a folder, compatibilitytools.d. Change into that folder and unpack the Proton you just downloaded: tar xvzf /path/to/Proton-5.5-GE-1.tar.gz Stop and restart Steam.

Tell Steam to download Doom Eternal. Once it’s done, right click on the entry in your library and pull up “Properties.” Click “Force the use of a specific Steam Play compatibility tool” and choose the Proton you just installed. (The link goes to Proton-5.5-GE-1, but there may be a later edition.)