Half-Life's Story "copied" from Doom?

[Apos]

Ya, you know what really pisses me off about HL 1 and 2, they stole the shotgun, pistol, rocket launcher idea all from Doom 1 and 2!

This is retarded. Every FPS under the sun has shotguns and pistols since they are common human guns. And HL's rocket launcher is nothing like DOOMs, plus it has really creative weapons like the guass gun, and tactical weapons like the tripwires.

A lot of Half lifes original story was taken from Doom 1 and 2, as was some of the weapons. Respect your elders (Doom).

Er, no. Aside from "something goes wrong with science" they are nothing alike, and HL's story actually has something to do with the game and goes somewhere.

What makes Doom3 a ripoff of HL1 is that the opening isn't the basic initial plot, but that the actual in game intro is erriely similiar: bunch of scientists and soldiers who "can't talk to to you right now, I'm very busy" before the big accident. This is exactly like not just the STORY of HL1, but the story that HL showed could be played out in realtime in the game. THAT is what seems like such a blantant ripoff, or at the very least, lack of creativity.

 

[Sadistic Turtle]

You guys, there already is a fan made Grav gun for Doom 3. I think they actually did a really good job on it.

But aside from that, it angers me becasue personally, Valve took id's crown.

And you know what, frankly, EVERY GODDAMN FPS ON THE PLANET stole shit from Doom. It was the innovator, so blaming Half Life so blatantly and making it sound like it is the ONLY game on the planet that has ever taken inspiration from Doom is not only redundant, but stupid.

 

[FangsFirst]

Did Doom 1 even have a sotry besides "Your a marine, go kick some demon ass"

Yes, it did.

 

[FangsFirst]

Well, Doom had the hellions coming through a bunch of ancient gates that people were intentionally tinkering with... then a marine basically just fights his way though shitloads of monsters, collecting keys and flicking the occasional switch, with absolutely no plot at all.

In Half-Life 2 all that happened was I drove some vehicles, threw soda cans, found batteries and shot people.
Don't be stupid. every single game's actual game play goes like that.
Doom was around before we could even see cutscenes. As a result--and as many seem to be ignoring--it had textual descriptions of the plot instead, inserted before and after each chapter.
Just like inserting cutscenes or...sort of like how they insert dialogue into HL2 at various points...The actual gameplay, and I mean PLAY, is always that simplistic. I didn't do anything plotwise as I PLAYED Hl2 either. I mean, I guess technically I killed my fellow good guys on numerous occasions by shooting large hunks of very heavy metal at them (which they unfortunately neglected to notice) but the engine didn't seem to care so what I did was moot.

Half Life had aliens accidentally (at first) coming through a brand new rift that was unintentionally created by a scientific accident (or sabotage) involving an experiment that had nothing to do with teleportation, except that the material used could apparently cause it.

Up until the very last dependent clause, you were describing Doom (except with aliens instead of demons).
In fact, let me rephrase to prove it.
[Doom] had [demons] accidentally (at first[, until they realized they could kill lotsa people]) coming through a[n old] rift that was unintentionally [opened] by a scientific [experiment].
Hmmm. Well, let's continue.

Then a man in a specialised envronment suit (who happens to be the last surviving member if the test chamber team) sneaks or fights his way through various areas of the facility, solving complex (for the time) puzzles and recieving aid from the beleagured facility staff.

Then a man in a [special marine outfit] (who happens to be the last surviving member of the [marines sent to investigate]) sneaks or fights his way through various areas of the facility, solving complex (for the time) puzzles[.]
Christ, this works awfully well, doesn't it?

Later on, he finds that the military have arrived. In an X-Files-esque twist, he discovers that they've not come to help the people of Black Mesa, but that they're there to silence them, terminally. Also, a strange man in a natty suit is seen to be wandering around the facility, apparently invulnerable to the various alien beasts, and able to teleport at will.

OK, an exception, but there were little twists, like thinking you had defeated hell but discovering that in fact you had merely opened the gate and had to go inside (....Xen? is that you?)

Yet a part of the alien forces also appears to be made of enslaved beings called Vortigaunts, so who is in the right?

But for the fact that I always saw them called "Alien Slaves" I had no idea about that until much later. Was that actually in the game?

Later on the scientist is told that the rift should be closing now, but instead appears to be held open by some powerful being on the other side. Sent to Xen, the scientist discovers a strange world of floating rocks and odd organic machines. He also discovers that some of the creatures that were hostile on the Earth side of the portal, like Bullsquids and Vortigaunts, are totally passive on the other side for various reasons.

The scientist then navigates the strange terrain of Xen, locating the source of all the strange parasitic "Headcrabs" that had been encountered in Black Mesa on the way, and finally destroying the master of the alien race, an artificial god of some sort, the Nihilanth, in a last showdown.

Unfortunately, the marine had not defeated hell and found he had to be sent in to permanently close the gates and defeated satan..or whatever. Bigger demons from hell who sucked to fight against because they were uber powerful. whatever.


I mean seriously now. This is a well known logical fallacy, and is related pretty closely to the "straw man" fallacy; you are attacking something that isn't an accurate portrayal of what you are supposedly attacking--a straw effigy instead.
You simplified doom's plot and attacked that, then blew up HL's and praised it. That's not accurate or in any way fair play. Stop it.
"Well, [Half-Life] had the [aliens] coming through a bunch of [portals] that people were [...] tinkering with... then a [scientist] basically just fights his way though shitloads of monsters, [flipping switches and jumping a lot], with absolutely no plot at all."

This is so incredibly frustrating. About half of the people who loved HL or HL2 100% will respond civilly and just disagree.
About half the people who hated it or only liked it 50-90% will respond or post civilly and just agree.
The other two halves (one of each population, not that there are "four halves") simply bitch and condescend about how dumb or wrong the other party is for having their opinion and proceeds to argue it with little or no foundation.

Oh and uh, was I the only one who thought the "Doom had a shotgun first!" was a sarcastic mocking of the posts about Doom 3 stealing?

Maybe I'm giving too much credit to the person who posted that?

 

[Brian Damage]

All Brian did was simplify the description of Doom and go into minute details on half-life. Maybe I could use this totally objective technique myself. Hmm, lets see...

Lord of the Rings had this short guy who had to destroy a little ring.

2 Fast 2 Furious, on the other hand, was way more complicated. It has this ex-cop with this awesome car who the FBI pulls brings in to catch this bad guy. But he needs the help of his old friend to get the job done, which is a problem because his old friend is a very angry black man who basically kicks his ass in the desert. After the FBI prick promises to clear his record though, angry black man decides to help out after all and.... ect ect. (I didn't really pay attention to the movie so I may be off, but you get the point)


Basically, all half-life did was change the Demons in Doom to Aliens, and change Hell into Xen, then expanded a bit on the basic premise of Doom. Half-life may have added a few things, like the special ops soldiers and g-man figure, but the story of the game is nearly identical to Doom's story. Thats the bottom line.

Oh, please tell me how I could have gone into more detail for Doom. There was no plot at all besides a couple of paragraphs in the manual. And all they added up to was "You're the last marine on the base. Scientists made demons come through while fiddling with ancient portals. Kill said demons.".

And the Doom books don't count, they're non-canonical, sold separately from any edition of Doom, and mostly unknown anyway.

 

[FangsFirst]

Oh, please tell me how I could have gone into more detail for Doom. There was no plot at all besides a couple of paragraphs in the manual. And all they added up to was "You're the last marine on the base. Scientists made demons come through while fiddling with ancient portals. Kill said demons.".

And the Doom books don't count, they're non-canonical, sold separately from any edition of Doom, and mostly unknown anyway.

go play through and read the paragraphs that (as I mentioned) are IN the game....

Except for (some people's perceptions of) immersion, inserting a paragraph about the plot is not really any different from what happened in HL2 (I do agree more that HL's plot developed as you went though, with the marines suddenly shooting a scientist, etc)

 

[cl6osiris]

Interesting. I read a manual that came with Doom when i bought it way back then that said the demons came in ships that if i remember it said were miles long made of flesh with doors the size of football fields whilst you were out on training you ran back to find everyone dead/gone/insane. don't recall ever reading anything about portals.

 

[Brian Damage]

In Half-Life 2 all that happened was I drove some vehicles, threw soda cans, found batteries and shot people.
Don't be stupid. every single game's actual game play goes like that.

But it's plot didn't. That's what we're talking about. And please don't call me stupid.

Doom was around before we could even see cutscenes. As a result--and as many seem to be ignoring--it had textual descriptions of the plot instead, inserted before and after each chapter.

Like "Chemical Plant"? I remember vague textual descriptions of the plot in games like Quake 2, but Doom seemed a little light on that count to me...

Just like inserting cutscenes or...sort of like how they insert dialogue into HL2 at various points...The actual gameplay, and I mean PLAY, is always that simplistic.

Plot. Plot. We're talking about pot!... I mean, plot! And I dunno about you, but I found that the game play was not "Simplistic", for a shooter.

I didn't do anything plotwise as I PLAYED Hl2 either. I mean, I guess technically I killed my fellow good guys on numerous occasions by shooting large hunks of very heavy metal at them (which they unfortunately neglected to notice) but the engine didn't seem to care so what I did was moot.

Well personally, I met Barney disguised as a Metrocop. I got sent through Kleiner's malfunctioning teleporter. I was part of the rescue effort to free Eli. I was a major part of the resistance street war. And other things besides.

And we're also comparing Half Life to Doom, not Half Life 2 to Doom.

Up until the very last dependent clause, you were describing Doom (except with aliens instead of demons).
In fact, let me rephrase to prove it.
[Doom] had [demons] accidentally (at first[, until they realized they could kill lotsa people]) coming through a[n old] rift that was unintentionally [opened] by a scientific [experiment].
Hmmm. Well, let's continue.

The demons came out of the portals on purpose, the aliens didn't teleport across on purpose until Nihilanth decided they should.

The Doom thing was a series of old gateways across the universe. Half Life had an interdimensional rift between universes.

The gateways were always open and scientists were messing with them, the rift in Half Life was something created by an accident.

Definate crucial differences there.

So no, I wasn't. Let's continue.

Then a man in a [special marine outfit] (who happens to be the last surviving member of the [marines sent to investigate]) sneaks or fights his way through various areas of the facility, solving complex (for the time) puzzles[.]
Christ, this works awfully well, doesn't it?

The "Special Marine outfit" was just kevlar armour or a metal breastplate, I believe. Gordon's suit is a health-monitoring HEV MK 4 with electrically reactive armour, inbuilt hazard detectors and a mounted flashlight.

Doom was not oriented towards sneaking. Pure gunplay (and occasionally barrelplay). And the puzzles could have been far more complex, even with the limited technology available then. It was not a puzzle oriented game, either.

Nope. It doesn't.

OK, an exception, but there were little twists, like thinking you had defeated hell but discovering that in fact you had merely opened the gate and had to go inside (....Xen? is that you?)

I never thought I had defeated Hell. There were two of those guys. Obviously gate guardians...

And hell is nothing like Xen, apart from the fact that it's a change of location.

But for the fact that I always saw them called "Alien Slaves" I had no idea about that until much later. Was that actually in the game?

Well, they do all the work on Xen, the collars don't look particularly comfortable or natural, they seem totally under control of the guys with great big heads...

Unfortunately, the marine had not defeated hell and found he had to be sent in to permanently close the gates and defeated satan..or whatever. Bigger demons from hell who sucked to fight against because they were uber powerful. whatever.

Nobody sent him in. He just basically does what he always does throughout the entire game... runs forwards. I know it's not quite fair due to the difference in eras, but at least Half Life had the opportunity to mess around a bit.

I mean seriously now. This is a well known logical fallacy, and is related pretty closely to the "straw man" fallacy; you are attacking something that isn't an accurate portrayal of what you are supposedly attacking--a straw effigy instead.
You simplified doom's plot and attacked that, then blew up HL's and praised it. That's not accurate or in any way fair play. Stop it.

Actually, I stated Doom's plot to a T, and then relayed the most accurate assesment of Half Life's plot I could think of. And for the record, I don't actually think it's particularly fair to compare a game from the start of the Nineties to one from the end, but the accusation was that Half Life had completely ripped off Doom's plot, and the only similarity I can find is the basic premise (Bad creatures come from somewhere else. Kill them.), which was around way before Doom, and Half Life twists it in unusual ways anyway.

"Well, [Half-Life] had the [aliens] coming through a bunch of [portals] that people were [...] tinkering with... then a [scientist] basically just fights his way though shitloads of monsters, [flipping switches and jumping a lot], with absolutely no plot at all."

The portals that the aliens came through were not created by anyone tinkering. The invasion rift was caused by an accident, which may in turn have been caused by sabotage. And the puzzles in Half Life actually made some sense (switching on a power system to kill a Garg, activating a rocket test device to clear out the Tentacles, for instance), instead of Doom's "flip this switch to open another door in another place" puzzles. And the plot was definately there, it just wasn't spoon-fed to you.

This is so incredibly frustrating. About half of the people who loved HL or HL2 100% will respond civilly and just disagree.
About half the people who hated it or only liked it 50-90% will respond or post civilly and just agree.
The other two halves (one of each population, not that there are "four halves") simply bitch and condescend about how dumb or wrong the other party is for having their opinion and proceeds to argue it with little or no foundation.

I wish things could be a little more civil too. Like people not making out that others are stupid.

All I did was state my perception of the two plotlines, and how they differed.

Oh and uh, was I the only one who thought the "Doom had a shotgun first!" was a sarcastic mocking of the posts about Doom 3 stealing?

Maybe I'm giving too much credit to the person who posted that?

Nope. I agree with you there.

 

[Brian Damage]

go play through and read the paragraphs that (as I mentioned) are IN the game....

Except for (some people's perceptions of) immersion, inserting a paragraph about the plot is not really any different from what happened in HL2 (I do agree more that HL's plot developed as you went though, with the marines suddenly shooting a scientist, etc)

Wasn't the most the paragraphs ever said something like "You are here. You need to get to here."?

Could you post a couple of these?

cl6osiris: Wasn't that one of the map packs?

 

[dæmon]

Demons invaded Mars in Doom due to teleportation mistakes. Why?

 

[Brian Damage]

I dunno, in Doom 3 it was because Hell was the intermediate bit between the teleport machines, but in Doom... I dunno. I think it was trying to imply the same thing, but the only place I ever saw it adressed properly was the books, where it turned out the Demons were genetic constructs made by aliens that looked like asparagus, anyway.

 

[KurtCobain]

Omg they stole the idea's that 'aliens' invade the world?. noooo

The second half of HL2 reminded me strongly of 'Freedom Fighter's for the PS2, which is a good thing i guess

 

[[LP]Goin Postal]

The way I figure it is ...Its not who does it first or most ...its who does it best....IMO HL2 is now the king......they will probably get knocked out of their throne but RIGHT NOW HL2 is on top and Doom3 is looking way up and clawing at ways to compare....the thing is ...when Quake 4 comes out...things could all be diferent....who knows...only time will tell. but until then .. enjoy the games that we have now

 

[Mytris]

Each game has its own way of telling the story....In doom 3 used PDA system were each person on the facilty had one, it contained video and email messages...Doom 3 had very little in the way of interactions between the player and friendly NPC's...I think Half life 2 delived it story easier because of the high interactions between NPC's...Therefore it's story was more easier to understand...

And all games I belive are combination of ideas taken from different sources, being story or object's being placed in a game...Its like saying "OH but they stole the idea for dropships or APC's" It is very hard to make something totally original.. the best thing to do is take that idea and expand on it...

Both games have its good and bad parts its a matter choice...personally I like doom better, but thats my choice...


Anywayz thats my 2cents....Im sorry this had nothing to do with the thread topic but I wanted to have my say

 

[Kyorisu]

All in all HLs plot makes you want to know more about what really is going on. Doom handed you a small novel in a few hours of gun blasting fun.

Oh and btw YOU CAN'T RIP OFF GUNS.

 

[destrukt]

go read the doom books.

it's really interesting, in the first one he's fighting aliens naked, twice.

the second time there is some girl fighting naked with him.

nb: i'm not making this up, i've read the book.

 

[Brian Damage]

I can vouch for the validity of destrukt's statements. More or less.

They are really weird books. The master aliens are called the "Freds". And the lot that come along and kill all of them are called "Newbies". No joke.

And it turns out that only the bodies of humans decay, and that everyone else in the universe believes that humans aren't really alive...

 

[Crushenator 500]

I think those same wishfull fanbois are now giddy that id is putting a gravity gun in place, cos now they can claim id is ripping valve again. The bottom line is now that we have advanced physics systems in games, it naturally follows that we have a way for the player to interact with them from a gameplay standpoint. Otherwise they become useless and a waste of time for the developers. So if developers are going to impliment an advanced physics system, you can bet they will also impliment a way for players to pick shit up and use it. Now, since it is far too limiting to make the player use his in-game hands to manipulate objects, it follows that a device like a gravity gun be used instead. Valve didn't do anything really incredible, they just took the obvious step after adding advanced physics. Now that physics systems will be common place in games, you can bet on gravity guns being common place aswell, not because every developer has to rip off valve, but because physics and physics manipulating devices MUST go hand in hand for physics systems to be worth while.

And the environment suit w/ torch...?

 

[baron insig]

True.
6char

dont you mean 5 char ( the . is a character )

 

[Eejit]

It's not as if picking up objects was new either. They did that in some other game I barely remember that I only downloaded the demo of a year or so ago...
In fact, HL2's system of picking up objects gave me flashbacks of that game, because it was literally exactly the same (though there was no gravgun).
I guess it might have been Source based, but I'm pretty sure it predated a solid, "license-able" source engine--anyone have any more solid information on the game I'm referring to?

Hmm the earliest example I know of was System Shock 2 (1994) where you could pick up some objects from a distance using psychic powers type thing. So it in some form it goes back quite a while.





Oh yes, 6 characters is the minimum limit for a post.

 

[Raidea]

Honestly, what a stupid topic.

Everything is ripped off everything else, you could make thousands of connections of one thing being 'ripped off' another.

 

[Vito Dintino]

I used to play Doom and i absoloutely LOVED it. For the time being it was the best game (imo). I dont think that anyone can rip anything off of others (unless its almost exactly identical) because sooner or later somone is going to use a similar idea to somone elses, story, weapon, ect ect... its inevitable, and i think its rather creative for somone to be able to take an existing story and twist it into somthing new... and i think that if half life 1 had *stolen* dooms story and just changed the components used in it, they had to of done somthing right, otherwise no one would have bought it because they KNOW it was such a copy of doom. Therefore ending conclusion: Half Life series = Awsome, Doom series = Awsome, I think we should spend more time enjoying the games rather then discussing who stole what or why thats so similar...

 

[Spartan]

It's not as if picking up objects was new either. They did that in some other game I barely remember that I only downloaded the demo of a year or so ago...

You could pick up and toss items in Thief 2, which came in 1998 or 1999 or so. I even stacked some crates and climbed to a rooftop (which wasn't a valid game area). I'm not sure, but it's possible that the same was possible in System Shock (1994). Maybe.

Did Doom 1 even have a sotry besides "Your a marine, go kick some demon ass"

A lot of people, including myself, have wondered the same thing about Half-Life 2.

This is retarded. Every FPS under the sun has shotguns and pistols since they are common human guns. And HL's rocket launcher is nothing like DOOMs, plus it has really creative weapons like the guass gun, and tactical weapons like the tripwires.

Hey, if you want to talk about creative or tactical weapons, look at Duke Nukem 3D (1996 if I remember correctly, before Quake). It's got remote-controlled pipebombs (have I seen this in Half-Life?), a gun that shrinks enemies (then you can stomp them), a gun that freezes enemies (you can either shoot or kick them), laser-activated tripmines (hello, Half-Life). It's also got a machinegun with three barrels and a two-barrelled weapon that fires small missiles at a really fast rate.

What else? The expansion pack added a microwave gun that makes enemies grow larger and larger until they "pop." When I think about it, Duke3D had many, many innovative features, some of which seem to be still missing from FPS games.

Er, no. Aside from "something goes wrong with science" they are nothing alike, and HL's story actually has something to do with the game and goes somewhere.

Doom's story goes somewhere. The end of each episode, you get a text screen where the story continues.

The thing that I loved about Doom was its simplicity. It's a really straightforward hero story. You fight againts laughably impossible odds, go straight into hell itself and still win. You are released from hell because the demons figure out that maybe they've ****ed with the wrong person and should go do something else.

The "Special Marine outfit" was just kevlar armour or a metal breastplate, I believe. Gordon's suit is a health-monitoring HEV MK 4 with electrically reactive armour, inbuilt hazard detectors and a mounted flashlight.

Unimportant details. Doom doesn't offer in-depth explanations about the player's armor, while Half-Life does. Yet, they are no different from each other.

Hmm the earliest example I know of was System Shock 2 (1994) where you could pick up some objects from a distance using psychic powers type thing. So it in some form it goes back quite a while.

(SS2 isn't from 1994) That's right - you could draw items to yourself using PSI powers. Kind of like the manipulator.

 

[Asundai]

I can vouch for the validity of destrukt's statements. More or less.

They are really weird books. The master aliens are called the "Freds". And the lot that come along and kill all of them are called "Newbies". No joke.

And it turns out that only the bodies of humans decay, and that everyone else in the universe believes that humans aren't really alive...

lol i thought you were joking.. but i just found the books on the net:

" "Sorry to burst your bubble, Albert," I said. "I'm
surprised Arlene didn't remind you of what we dis-
covered about the Gates. No matter what you take
with you, you wind up naked on the other side. So
you're dead right about having faith in the aliens on
the other side.""

" Herding . . . harvesting--nomads? Farmers, just
discovering animal husbandry? I prodded the undead
Fred for another half hour, eliciting little other infor-
mation. The best I could tell was that the "Newbies"
had evidently just discovered agriculture and ranch-
ing; they were just settling down from their nomadic
life when the Fred scoutship observed and studied
them. They made contact with the Newbies and
fought a few skirmishes, just probing them."

" A Fred alien, and everybody else except a human,
can never die. Even when you shoot his body to Swiss
cheese, so his blue guts and red blood dribble out the
holes onto the deck, his consciousness remains intact.
Blow his head apart, and it floats as a ghost, drifting
like invisible smoke--still thinking, hearing and see-
ing, feeling and desperately dreaming. You can talk to
them; they actually hear you."

 

[Brian Damage]

We're talking about story here. That means details are rather important.

"Some miscellaneous blue/green armour" < "[fascinating HEV description]"

[EDIT]: Asundai, I'd swear that the guy who wrote them was on LSD or something. Weird, aren't they?

 

[Inertiadriftsc]

lets just leave it at, Half life revolutionized gaming with the first INTEGRATED story line, Doom you had to read the manual, to find out what was going on, and even then you didnt know much.

 

[Wandering Kid]

first time poster, short term lurker. HI! i couldnt resist sticking my nose into this one though.

doom did have a rudimentary story although it aint shakespeare thats for sure. theres a single page backstory in the manual that explains that you are a crack marine that was sent to mars after assaulting a superior officer on earth. on mars, union aerospace corportation conducts slipgate experiments between its two moons, phobos and diemos. they start by sending small things through but one day you get a radio call from a fellow marine ('something fraggin' evil is coming out of the gateway!'). your buddies get mauled into chunky salsa by unknown, really bad, really scary things. shortly afterwards, diemos dissapears from the sky. all your fellow soldiers are dead. you lock and load trying to take it to these demon scum or at least take a few back to hell with you.

whoever mentioned the story about the giant flesh ships, i believe that was the backstory in the manual for ultimate doom which was doom 1 plus an extra chapter with some monsters from doom 2.

yes yes i know, its not pulitzer prize winning. but the story is coherant throughout the game. the first chapter (which was free via shareware) concerned the phobos moonbase. you had to get to the phobos labs and activate the slip gate to get to diemos guarded by 2 barons of hell. diemos moonbase comprises the 2nd chapter. at the end of that you open the gateway to hell guarded by the cyberdemon in the tower of babel mission. and because you are a crack psychopath you take it to hell's minions (in classic b movie style) in the third chapter by going to hell and taking it to the spider mastermind that masterminded the demonic offensive.

after you complete each chapter you you get a little page of red text filling you in on the story. at the end of the final chapter you return to earth only to find buildings on fire. theres a charming low res, 256 colour picture of a rabbits head on a stick and the game ends there (setting it up nicely for doom 2).

the point of this is that when a game does something that works, its only natural that some developer will want to continue or expand upon that idea. narrative in FPS games is one of them. half life definitely moved it up a notch here but it came from the basic premise that FPS games werent as immersive as they could be, and the developers improved an area which they thought was deficient. in this way, games evolve in technical terms by retaining the cool stuff, the bits that worked, and getting rid of the stuff that didnt. as someone said before in this thread, the gravity gun in doom 3's xp is just a natural progression of the FPS moving into an increasingly interactive environment thanks to the physics engines for both games. both games are works of art but you gotta accept they were going for completely different angles. all this versus crap and game x story beats game y story is just idiotic. why cant you get both games and enjoy both games for what they do best?

hahah whoever said doom has always been about blasting an imp's nutsack is kind of right. doom was a game of simple thematic ambitions. really no nonsense. also you gotta think of the time in which doom was released. many games back then didnt have cinematic aspirations. around that time the snes hadnt been out that long and a single page backstory in the manual was considered the norm. many games circa 92-93 didnt even have coherant narratives. in that respect, doom 3 is kind of retrograde because it remakes a game from a different era of gaming (one which doesnt stress such an emphasis on narrative consistancy). doom 3 however is easily the most pantwettingly evil and tense gaming experience ive ever put myself through so it gets a big thumbs up from me for turning me into a bumbling nervous wreck by the end of it.

 

[FangsFirst]

But it's plot didn't. That's what we're talking about. And please don't call me stupid.
I wish things could be a little more civil too. Like people not making out that others are stupid.

Hasn't someone ever told you "Dont be stupid" or "don't be silly" before?
They're not saying you are, they're saying that what you're saying is--ie, that it's UNCHARACTERISTICALLY so.
Sorry you misunderstood me though...I apologize for not being clear.
(I mostly just meant, "Don't try to use a silly argument where you load one side against another unfairly, ie, by selective adjective use")

All I did was state my perception of the two plotlines, and how they differed.

With a snide, condescending tone, yes. Maybe it wasn't intentional, but it seemed pretty overbearing to be accidental...

Could you post a couple of these?

Not at the moment (on lunch break) but I'll see what I can do.
(though Spartan: "Doom's story goes somewhere. The end of each episode, you get a text screen where the story continues." mentions the same thing I'm referring to--and Wandering Kid elaborates further, even mentioning the doomspiderman who "orchestrated the whole thing"...Nihilanth? Is that you? )

And beyond all that, your comments continually seem to be absolutely slanted in their wording.
"All Doom had"
By inserting the word "all" you are pre-emptively declaring it inferior before you back it up. That's the tone I'm referring to.

Well personally, I met Barney disguised as a Metrocop. I got sent through Kleiner's malfunctioning teleporter.

I don't mean to be snide, but that's really NOT doing anything.
You may as well have walked into a cutscene where you see Gordon meeting him or a paragraph of text that tells you you met him or anything else. I mean, short of refusing to walk through the gate at the beginning, or into the teleporter, there's no way those things won't happen, it's not really "doing" much at all.
(besides, I got sent through teleporters in Doom, or at least walked through them. Just because there's a character attached as creator doesn't make it a plot point)
Meeting Barney as a Combine soldier COULD be plot except nothing much was really made of it. No explanation for why he was doing it or anything. It was just...there.
Imagine, to continue a previous analogy, that we have Han Solo running into a stormtrooper. It removes its mask, and hey, its Luke!
We never find out why he was dressed like that--he just was. Technically, yes, it's a plot point to say "I ran into so and so dressed as such and such"--but it's not really much of a plot without a motivation.

Well, they do all the work on Xen, the collars don't look particularly comfortable or natural, they seem totally under control of the guys with great big heads...

How do you know they do all the work on Xen? How do you know they were being controlled? Again, did I miss something?
(And personally, I thought they were just green around their necks )

Hmm the earliest example I know of was System Shock 2 (1994) where you could pick up some objects from a distance using psychic powers type thing. So it in some form it goes back quite a while.

Didn't even think about SS2, but you're right on that.
There was some game just recently-ish, near-modern times in setting, no aliens or anything if I recall correctly, and "use" picked up objects EXACTLY like in HL2...


Oh and going back a bit, descriptions have absolutely ZERO relation to PLOT. (unless it is describing the plot--but describing what you're wearing is not integral to the plot, even if WHAT you're wearing is, the description is still not)

in Half life 2 with practically no scripted AI

Where did you get that information?

 

[Dr. Freeman]

Doom and Half-Life both share the same premise. The difference is, while Doom start and ended with the premise, Half-Life took the premise and fleshed it out into a genuine story. Not to mention the fact that the premise in question was the basis of stories long before computers were even capable of playing games (and long before computers even existed, for that matter).

Valve also did a much better job telling the story of Half Life and Half Life2 over the Doom series... i think this point stands out the most really.

had iD put some time into telling the story in Doom3, it would have been a more appealing game...i think the PDA/email system in Doom3 turned off some pple...in a way its a half-assed way of telling the story. :|

 

[flamz]

HL2 rules.

 

[Moto]

Wow. This is really a pointless argument that doesn't get anybody anywhere. Half-Life 1 was great. I'm sure Doom was great for its time too (I was only 3-4 years old when it came out.) Half-Life 2 is revolutionary. I'm sure Doom 3 was very enjoyable to play as well.

To each his own. There's no sense in convincing someone who believes the opposite of what you believe that your opinion is correct. It just leads to bickering about something that doesn't even matter when you really think about it.

The only reason the HL2 fans get mad at the Doom guys over the Gravity gun is because the Gravity gun is such a new idea. The Doom guys are using a fresh idea that Valve came up with to their own advantage. That's why it angers people, it's too new an idea to have it ripped off. But, that's how it works in the game industry, new ideas are only new for so long before everyone starts taking advantage of their success.

 

[BaNDiT]

i got banned a lil back for posting in such a thread. it was actually half life who copied the original doom... do your hw before you start making retarded posts.

 

[iamironsam]

It's a rip off the X-Files, which is a rip off the tv series "V", which is a rip off the "Attack of the Pod People", which is a rip off of every sci-fi book dating back to the 1920s. But who cares? It's a great story and well told.

 

[Brian Damage]

Hasn't someone ever told you "Dont be stupid" or "don't be silly" before?
They're not saying you are, they're saying that what you're saying is--ie, that it's UNCHARACTERISTICALLY so.
Sorry you misunderstood me though...I apologize for not being clear.
(I mostly just meant, "Don't try to use a silly argument where you load one side against another unfairly, ie, by selective adjective use")

By telling me not to be, you were implying that I was.

With a snide, condescending tone, yes. Maybe it wasn't intentional, but it seemed pretty overbearing to be accidental...

I just find the concept of Doom having any plot other than what was whipped up in the last few days before it was judged ready to be released somewhat laughable. I was playing Doom and Half-Life at around the same time, and I recall that one felt distinctly plotless to me...

Not at the moment (on lunch break) but I'll see what I can do.
(though Spartan: "Doom's story goes somewhere. The end of each episode, you get a text screen where the story continues." mentions the same thing I'm referring to--and Wandering Kid elaborates further, even mentioning the doomspiderman who "orchestrated the whole thing"...Nihilanth? Is that you? )

It was called the Spider Mastermind, and it's no different to every evil genius before it, except that it's a brain on arachnoid legs... which I'm pretty sure I once saw in a movie from the seventies anyway.

And beyond all that, your comments continually seem to be absolutely slanted in their wording.
"All Doom had"
By inserting the word "all" you are pre-emptively declaring it inferior before you back it up. That's the tone I'm referring to.

Your next paragrah sounds kinda similar, then.

I don't mean to be snide, but that's really NOT doing anything.
You may as well have walked into a cutscene where you see Gordon meeting him or a paragraph of text that tells you you met him or anything else. I mean, short of refusing to walk through the gate at the beginning, or into the teleporter, there's no way those things won't happen, it's not really "doing" much at all.
(besides, I got sent through teleporters in Doom, or at least walked through them. Just because there's a character attached as creator doesn't make it a plot point)
Meeting Barney as a Combine soldier COULD be plot except nothing much was really made of it. No explanation for why he was doing it or anything. It was just...there.
Imagine, to continue a previous analogy, that we have Han Solo running into a stormtrooper. It removes its mask, and hey, its Luke!
We never find out why he was dressed like that--he just was. Technically, yes, it's a plot point to say "I ran into so and so dressed as such and such"--but it's not really much of a plot without a motivation.

And I pretty much disagree with all of it. Maybe you just weren't paying much attention while playing. It was pretty darn obvious what Barney was doing there in an immediate sense, and it became obvious why he was doing it in a wider sense later on... You may not mean to be snide, but you come off as just as condescending as you seem to think I'm being.

How do you know they do all the work on Xen? How do you know they were being controlled? Again, did I miss something?
(And personally, I thought they were just green around their necks )

Well, let's see... the Gargantuas are pretty much only any use for demolition purposes, I can't picture the skinny, floating Xen Masters ever lifting a finger for menial work, the Grunts are too dumb and have no proper manual dexterity...

And you must have been playing on really low detail. You never spotted the handle on the collar?