Suffer in Darkness No Longer, Let's Play Doom 3: BFG Edition

[Blastinus]

The previous video was pretty short, so let's keep on trucking, shall we?



Part 21: Central Processing

So last episode, we discovered that Master Sergeant Thomas Kelly had turned evil in our absence, or perhaps he was evil all this time. If you go by the latter theory, then it certainly paints his previous actions in a bit of an interesting light. The game never makes an explicit judgment on this matter, but it's entirely possible that Betruger just got the drop on him like he did with the other soldiers he converted into commandos, and that Sarge was working entirely in good faith up until a certain point. We'll probably never know for certain.

Near the end of the video, I also lament my lack of a chainsaw, but it was actually back in the previous level. I just overlooked it on the way by. If I really feel like I can't live without it, then I suppose one will just magically drop into my pockets at some point.

[Blastinus]

By the way, a clarification on the Soul Cube's behavior:

When released, the Cube is designed to seek out the nearest opponent with the highest amount of health. Not maximum, current. If you unload on a dangerous enemy but find yourself in danger suddenly, the Cube may decide to seek out a weaker underling just by virtue of it having more health at the moment. That's why, at one point, it went after a Cherub instead of the Arch-Vile summoning it. I'd already shot it up a bit.

[Kibayasu]

I forget exactly when but Sarge has a rather explicit voice change after the message is or isn't sent so it's always been "turned evil" to me.

Comparing the game before and after the trip to hell does show a pretty strong lack of variety in enemies from before hell. With easier access to hell with the Soul Cube it does make sense to go with a more action pace but since you're still dealing with pretty tight spaces that just creates different problems.

[Blastinus]

Part 22: Central Server Banks

So...Sabaoth. With 1750 HP and access to the deadliest weapon in the game, he would easily qualify as a Hard Boss™ if there wasn't one small issue: The Soul Cube does 1000 damage, the Rocket Launcher does 170 and has 5 shots, and he starts the fight coming directly at you, giving you a target that would put broad-sided barns to shame. Do the math.

If you don't have the Cube charged though, you're in for a world of hurt. I died more times trying to do this fight fair and square than on the rest of the bosses combined. Nothing in the rest of the game is going to come close to this battle. I hope that doesn't dull the excitement for what's to come.

[azren]

They make more traditional spider-like squeaks

This has always confused me. I mean, I've heard the term "hissing bastard spider" in reference to a goliath birdeater, but that's about it for noises.

Regardless, the whole thing about taking away my weapons really didn't sit well with me. First of all, I really don't like having my toys taken away from me, but I also don't like it happening when I have no way of knowing that I need to use or lose those BFG cells now. I'd been saving them for when I got to another mancubus or something, blew up the hellknights with some to spare, and... gone. Maybe I'm petty, but it ticked me off.

I'd personally find the extra ammo in this version a godsend. It's probably mostly just me being bad at the game, but I was constantly low on ammo on the X Box version.

[Cythereal]

If that was supposed to be a tank Sarge was grafted onto, it was the tiniest tank ever. More likely some kind of tracked combat drone, like those little spider bots that haven't shown up in a long time.

[Blastinus]

Honestly, Sabaoth's boss fight has always been really confusing to me. Not just because of how it'd be impossible for it to get into this room, but you've also got these sparking pylons and the side rooms that just randomly open on their own. I realize this is a video game, but this part seems so...gamey.

[Mopey Dick]

The boss fights in this are weird. Sabaoth and Guardian both are pretty cool concepts that are completely wrecked by what seems to be complete misunderstanding of how the game's weapons work and how much impact they have - both in making the Guardian way too easy and Sabaoth too hard unless you decide to cheese him. Vagary, at least, is somewhat threatening with the arsenal you have when you fight her.

[Blastinus]

Trying something new today. Here's hoping it doesn't look bad.

The cavern sites are the last section of the game, spanning four levels including Doom 3's grand finale. I hope you're ready for some hardcore backstory, which should frankly have been spread out over a bit more of the game instead of being all dumped at what is basically the last minute. Obviously, you couldn't have brought the player to the caverns sooner, but maybe spread out the datalogs more or, since we're already having funky visions, have the player see bits of pieces of the backstory through flashbacks. There were ways that we could have learned the plot at a more gradual pace without killing the flow.

[Mopey Dick]

...Was that Michael Bell? Some pretty high-profile voice actors in this one.

I kind of like the cave levels, they're a much needed (slight) change in style and all the story dumped at you makes a change from the endless pointless corridors of most of the game.
Oh, and nice job BFG'ing the imp at the start. No such thing as overkill.

[Blastinus]

The moral of this story is: don't record commentary when you're half-asleep. It makes your brain all weird-like.

Not much to say about Caverns 1. It's a straight shot through a series of elevators, ladders, and one crane. I'm not going to say it's filler, because it's not. It kinda is. Okay, yeah, it is. But it's good filler. It's actually a really nice change of scenery. Lots of wide open spaces. No Lost Souls though, strangely enough. They'd be right at home in this environment.

I'm not complaining though. I dislike those pests.

[Kibayasu]

I'm not sure anything's excessive or wasteful when you have 80 rockets.

It sometimes feels like what enemies show up is just random. I mean, not game-generated random but someone at id just rolled some dice and threw the results in. When's the last time we saw a pinkie?

[Blastinus]

It sometimes feels like what enemies show up is just random. I mean, not game-generated random but someone at id just rolled some dice and threw the results in. When's the last time we saw a pinkie?

Dangit, that's right, Pinkies. I knew that I was missing something.

[Kibayasu]

It sometimes feels like what enemies show up is just random. I mean, not game-generated random but someone at id just rolled some dice and threw the results in. When's the last time we saw a pinkie?

Dangit, that's right, Pinkies. I knew that I was missing something.

I'm pretty sure Lost Souls appear more often than pinkies so its fair.

[Mopey Dick]

I always thought Ticks were explosive by default? As in, if it attacks regularly, it's a trite?

[Blastinus]

Well, no, the spider-like monsters aren't supposed to blow up. They just leap at you and bite you. The reason why I expressed surprise was because instead of splatting like usual, one of the Trites went up in a blue pop instead. I'll need to go back and see if that's consistent. Might just be a special scripted thing. Doom 3 has plenty of those.

[TuxedoTed]

I fell behind for a bit but finally caught up, and one question has been on my mind. Does armor actually do anything?

It never seems to dip below 90 or so while your health takes five times the hit. Unless there's an asymmetrical exchange between how much armor you lose and how much health loss you suffer. Would you suddenly be dying in one or two hits without any armor?

[Blastinus]

Actually, the formula for player damage is pretty simple. Armor absorbs 30% of damage and reduces by that rate, so 50 damage is 35 to health, 15 to armor. However, we can have 125 armor in reserve but only 100 health, which means that being brought down to near-death doesn't end up bringing us to more than the 90's, armor-wise. When you factor in the abundance of armor shards and suits, it means that running out of armor is never a concern.

[Blastinus]

By the way, since the next level clocked in at only 7 minutes, I'm doubling up again. Next episode will be the end of Doom 3, and then we can move on to the expansions. Stay tuned for that, I guess.

[TuxedoTed]

Hot dog, glad I caught up in time for the finale

[Blastinus]

I gave some brief thoughts at the end there, but let's go over it in detail:

To be frank, even at the time of release, people thought that Doom 3 was primitive, bland, and not altogether that fun. It was praised for its technical achievements (and rightly so), but presentation is what makes or breaks a game, and Doom 3's artistic identity was honestly abysmal, being presented in stark gray, red, brown, and sometimes sickly green. The story and dialogue took itself too seriously while also being either far too hammy or too flat, with nothing in between. The horror was slapdash and didn't set a consistent mood. The music was either dull or nonexistent, which is a serious problem in a Doom game. The guns lacked impact and sounded either weak or muted, lacking even an alternative fire which as far back as 2004 was still essentially an industry standard. the monsters weren't numerous enough and were altogether too samey, and the level design was fine but generally too reminiscent of Half-Life, as we've harped on time after time.

And yet, even having said all that, I still like it. Maybe not as much as when I started this LP, but I wouldn't be averse to playing the game again even with all the stuff I just pointed out. As I've said, I grew up with Id Software's games, and nostalgia heals a lot of wounds. Would I recommend Doom 3 to someone else?

No. No no no no no. Just play Half-Life 2 instead. It came out a few months later.

Anyhow, I'll be starting on Resurrection of Evil in a few days. We'll see if Id learned to take criticism and grow from their mistakes.

[Mopey Dick]

Oh, wow, that ending is even more underwhelming (less whelming?) than I remember. Even the cyberdemon looks much smaller than back then.
I'm fairly sure you were never intended to have this much BFG ammo in the original either.

[AradoBalanga]

After watching the main campaign, I can say that probably the biggest flaw overall with Doom 3 is that they leaned so much on horror and atmosphere, that all of the high-octane insanity that defined the first two games just got reduced to a tiny fraction of what it was in prior Dooms. Sacrificing what made the franchise into a name brand to go trend chasing never works, and sadly Doom 3 is one (of many) examples of why game developers should never do it. To make matters worse, the live action film "adaptation" of Doom came out right after Doom 3, not helping things out at all. Thankfully, the landmark success of Doom 2016 and Eternal have brought the franchise back from the depths of being a relic of a bygone era.

I've never seen Resurrection of Evil, so I'm interested to see what's in that expansion.

[Kibayasu]

Thinking about the ever present darkness again I remember when all the flashlight mods were coming out for the original version I believe I downloaded one that only gave it to the pistol, machine gun, and shotgun. At the time it felt like a decent balance between being able to see and still shoot but also holding back the firepower of the heavier weapons. Though it also may be why I continue to despise the shotgun in Doom 3, I had to use it too much to see!

Anyways ending aside I think I still like Doom 3 but like you not as much as I thought I did. I've never really been bothered by environments being in a dull colour scheme, if the story is just "there," or too many audio logs. Like you as things progressed though it doesn't really seem like much of a good game any more. To mention another game that makes use of darkness and flashlights I think if I played Alan Wake 16 years from now I'd still enjoy it because it elevates itself with other flourishes.

[Blastinus]

Resurrection of Evil was the first expansion for Doom 3, released in April 2005, not by Id Software, but by a company called Nerve Software, founded by an ex-Id employee. Back in the late 90's and early 2000's, it wasn't considered strange at all for a PC game to also have an expansion game released not too shortly afterwards. It's effectively the same thing as a DLC campaign, only released in its own game box on store shelves for close to retail price. Just a testament to the fact that game publishers have never NOT been greedy.

As for Nerve Software, you might also remember them from other such great titles as... Alright, let's be honest here, they're effectively just coders for hire. They've done some assistant developer gigs for Activision, ported some FPS games (including Duke Nukem 20th Anniversary, just this year), but their list of personally-developed titles begins and ends here, and they mostly just used Doom 3's assets anyway. Though to their favor, almost all the level designs are unique and there are quite a few new monsters and a couple new weapons.

Of note, our first new acquisition is the Grabber, which is sort of like a Gravity Gun if you removed all the kick from it and inserted it into a game that doesn't have Havok physics. And yet, despite its jank, it's oddly addicting. I find myself pulling things that I could quite easily just walk over and pick up with my bare hands. But why would I do a thing like that when I have the power of telekinesis? If I had a gun that could turn the lights on and off, you can bet that I'd never touch a light switch ever again.

[Artix]

You don't usually see quite this level of blatant "Hey it's [thing] that you like from [game]! Wasn't it great there? Well we have one too!" as the Grabber. I know everyone and their mother wanted to have a Gravity Gun after Half-Life 2 but like, at least pretend you were going for something else, you know?

[Mopey Dick]

After watching the main campaign, I can say that probably the biggest flaw overall with Doom 3 is that they leaned so much on horror and atmosphere, that all of the high-octane insanity that defined the first two games just got reduced to a tiny fraction of what it was in prior Dooms. Sacrificing what made the franchise into a name brand to go trend chasing never works, and sadly Doom 3 is one (of many) examples of why game developers should never do it. To make matters worse, the live action film "adaptation" of Doom came out right after Doom 3, not helping things out at all. Thankfully, the landmark success of Doom 2016 and Eternal have brought the franchise back from the depths of being a relic of a bygone era.

I think there is more to it than that. The last singleplayer game Id software made before this was Quake 2 - which was a]a really long time ago, b]completely and utterly soulless where singleplayer was concerned, with an incredibly dull campaign. This seems to follow in its footsteps - an amazing engine (that was fully utilized by different devs - Quake 4, OG Prey and especially Wolfenstein 2009 were much better games), a trend that was repeated afterwards with idtech 5 and Rage (again, amazing engine, soulless game). The company's strategy seems to have been banking on John Carmack's programming genius as opposed to actual game design.
Which makes it even more amazing they managed to completely turn this around with Doom 2016 (...and dive right back down with Rage 2 but that franchise probably can't be salvaged).

[Blastinus]

You don't usually see quite this level of blatant "Hey it's [thing] that you like from [game]! Wasn't it great there? Well we have one too!" as the Grabber. I know everyone and their mother wanted to have a Gravity Gun after Half-Life 2 but like, at least pretend you were going for something else, you know?

It was actually really hard for me to stop playing Half-Life 2 once I'd gotten that clip. Nova Prospekt is second only to Ravenholm in terms of the fun Gravity Gun shenanigans you can get up to, like conking everyone with toilets. This game lets you hit things with shovels and jackhammers, but it's not quite the same.

[Blastinus]

I know it's only two updates in, but it's already time for our first boss fight. The Hunters were introduced at the start of the game and we'll be encountering all three of them as we progress, each time unlocking a new feature for this game's version of the Soul Cube, known as the Artifact or, if you look at the game's files, the Bloodstone. The Artifact is an evolving weapon, similar to the Unmaker from Doom 64. As we progress, it gains increasing amounts of power and, like the Unmaker, is only limited by its scarcity of ammunition. The problem is that the game designers severely underestimated the destructive capability of it. The Artifact only has a third of its power in this update and we're already able to clear a room with minimal fuss. While I realize that this is just an introduction, it gives me cause to wonder if the game's challenge curve is going to match our toolkit.

[Kibayasu]

Its hard to think of a game that wasn't broken by time slowing powers in some way. Sometimes breaking the game is on purpose of course, Max Payne and Singularity come to mind. Usually the expansion is harder than the original game though!

[Blastinus]

I will admit that in general, this game has been throwing more enemies at me and it's been a lot harder to avoid damage, even with all the extra tools available. I don't know whether to attribute that to increased challenge or me just acting like an idiot.

By the way, I've gotten the next episode recorded and am currently in the editing process. I'd just like to share this, devoid of context.

[theenglishman]

You don't usually see quite this level of blatant "Hey it's [thing] that you like from [game]! Wasn't it great there? Well we have one too!" as the Grabber. I know everyone and their mother wanted to have a Gravity Gun after Half-Life 2 but like, at least pretend you were going for something else, you know?

Wasn't the Grabber originally a devtool that id later added as a proper weapon for RoE?

[Blastinus]

Three levels, three absurd tools. These are all the new weapons that Resurrection of Evil has to offer, and by golly, they are more than enough for whatever we encounter. In this update, I uncover another example of pure laziness on the part of BFG Edition's designers and I come face to face with the deadliest enemy that this game has to offer: climbable shelves. Overall, not a bad ride.

You don't usually see quite this level of blatant "Hey it's [thing] that you like from [game]! Wasn't it great there? Well we have one too!" as the Grabber. I know everyone and their mother wanted to have a Gravity Gun after Half-Life 2 but like, at least pretend you were going for something else, you know?

Wasn't the Grabber originally a devtool that id later added as a proper weapon for RoE?

This is Id's official take on the issue. They'd planned to implement the Grabber in the original Doom 3 but shelved it for the expansion instead. No telling if they were inspired by Half-Life 2 or not, since preview footage and press releases were going around long before the release date, but if they were, you'd think the Grabber would be easier to use.

[AradoBalanga]

I am trying to wrap my head around changing the intro section of Resurrection of Evil for the BFG Edition. The only possible explanation I can think of was that at one point, the player would be able to go straight into Resurrection of Evil after completing the campaign, just select either "Continue on to Resurrection of Evil" or "Go back to the main menu" (and dropping a save point there in case you wanted to continue with that save file). Thus, you wouldn't need the title card for the expansion to show up because the player knew what was coming next. But that still doesn't take into account the chance that BFG Edition may be the first time a person actually experiences Doom 3, thus they'd lose out on seeing the original title card.

Then you have stuff like removing corpses for the Artifact, which seemingly goes against the BFG Edition's philosophy of giving the player more ammo/resources to fight the forces of Hell. It just makes my head go , because if the re-release is built around making things less frustrating in the main game, why make the expansion harder and more frustrating?

[Blastinus]

I'm not gonna mince words, Erebus 4 is unremarkable. It's gratuitous filler that doesn't add anything, doesn't teach us anything new about the plot, and doesn't even introduce any new monsters. The arcade game isn't even worth laughing at this time around.

That being said, I did encounter a funny glitch, so if those are your jam, just skip to the end of the video and call it done.

[Kibayasu]

Just a random meat tube in the lab, no big deal.

I want to say the super shotgun feels like an improvement but some of time you're using it also makes it feel like they just "solved" the original shotgun issue - even the weakest enemies taking 2 shots to kill no matter the range - by having the new shotgun fire 2 shells at once.

[discountcleric]

That "convoluted process for such a tiny bridge" was absolutely a last-second management order because they didn't want to walk around, despite engineering's cries of "we'll have to shut down the debris processing gears and redesign the throat to fit the bridge mechanism".

[Blastinus]

Betcha didn't think that Resurrection of Evil could sneak a sewer level in there, did you? The environment suit's grand showcase is actually a lot of fun and it's bizarre that BFG Edition cut it entirely. Maybe the visual and audio filtering was too hard to replicate or something. Whatever the reasoning, we've got the original to demonstrate how it was done.

Just don't expect an entire level centered around the automap or the partial invisibility powerup, cool as the possibility might be.

[Kibayasu]

So you still fight through the sewer, just without the clock? Weird, you figure they could have just not applied the filter if that was the problem, its not like the original did that on the surface. If it was because they wanted to make the game easier why not just remove the oxygen part too? Who knows.

[Blastinus]

The Erebus excavation site finally concludes with a boss fight. There's not much to the Berserk Hunter. You just wait for the ribcage to open up and then unload your weapon of choice into its heart. Although, if you use up all your Artifact charges, you'll have to contend with a boss that won't sit still and likes to rush your position constantly, so landing that shot might be a little complicated. Probably not impossible, but definitely not easy. Managing every use of Helltime and making your shots count is vital to your success.