Doom ii hell on earth monitor11/27/2023 ![]() From the viewpoint of many Christian theologians, Jesus represents the ordering influence within the Holy Trinity (or the Logos: the original Greek for “word, reason, and/or discourse”). ![]() ![]() Rather than an inferno conforming to Dante’s vision-one where Hell is divided and subdivided into circles, rings, and ditches- DOOM II looks to the senselessness of something like a Hieronymus Bosch painting for inspiration. If god is order and the influence of Heaven one of words and law, then the antithesis of this is a Hell devoid of reason. This is made clear through its embrace of Hell as not just a place of fire and brimstone, but of a higher form of fear as well: a kind that traces its roots to the theology of Western Christianity. DOOM is very much a game about a descent through chaos and Hell-this story just happens to be thematic rather than expository, and is told through progressive level construction rather than dialogue. Not exactly Pulitzer material.īut it would be a mistake to conflate the series’ lack of any real plot with the idea that DOOM games aren’t “about” anything. Doomguy, a member of the security forces assigned to oversee the UAC scientists, shreds through this opposition on a journey through the research labs installed on Mars’ moons and, finally, the depths of Hell itself. These are the vanguard forces of Hell, loosed through malfunctioning teleportation devices created by the Union Aerospace Corporation. The player finds herself fighting through Martian science complexes in the first game, encountering an array of monsters ranging from floating, electricity-vomiting cacodemons and spiky brown imps to muscular, snortling demons and super-buff minotaurs called hell knights. You’re a space marine, you kill demons from Hell, that’s about it. This may not seem like much, but from a design perspective, introducing setting is one of the key elements of establishing something very un DOOM -like: a narrative.ĭOOM is famous for not having much of a story. There are other maps in DOOM II -“Factory,” “Industrial Zone,” and even “Suburbs,” which are clearly meant to have at least a passing relation to their real-world counterparts, but “Downtown” is the only level that appears to be trying to reproduce a specific setting. id Software is in a very literal way bringing “Hell to Earth,” and “Downtown” is one of the clearest examples of this. Instead of the developers sharing their vision of what they think a “Nuclear Plant” or “Refinery” would look like on a Martian base, they’re trying to evoke imagery that the player already carries with her. In “Downtown,” however, we get something altogether different. In terms of real-world architecture, the game starts off in the realm of sci-fi and ends up positively fantastical. ![]() In DOOM, players move through a military base on a moon of Mars to another military base hovering just over the surface of Hell to traveling through Hell itself. The fiction of the DOOM series is such that the games have almost always been protected from the necessities of real-world fidelity. This isn’t too noteworthy in and of itself a map like “Mount Erebus” in Episode 3 of DOOM was a similar arena-style level-one of the only in the game, in fact. But “Downtown” is interesting in that it’s one of the only places players visit in the DOOM iverse that seems to be trying to mimic a real place. Unlike the winding corridors of the first game’s “Knee Deep in the Dead” episode or even the hellish labyrinths composing the latter levels of both DOOM games, “Downtown” isn’t a single-path romp through corridors, but rather a vast, open-air and open-ended level with no clear progression from the start. “Downtown” is a prime example of the way DOOM II differs from its predecessor. Its networks of hidden passages, demon-filled corridors, and well-concealed keycards may echo superficial elements from the first DOOM, but the core of its design is a marked departure from what came before. The 13th level in DOOM II is called “Downtown.” It’s big, set in a bizarre facsimile of an urban centre where the streets are rendered in lumpy, oatmeal-textured stonework, red brick-work apartment facades are entered through pneumatic metal doors, and the skyline is filled with blazing fires peeking out behind a haze of apocalyptic smog. “Downtown” is, in many ways, the quintessential level of id Software’s 1994 sequel. The full book, which features work from 15 writers, hand-drawn illustrations, and a foreword by Clint Hocking, is available here. This is an exclusive, original essay from the editors of SHOOTER, a collection of critical essays about games with guns.
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