Three Ways Doom Series Can Return to Classic Status

On August 13, 2009, CEO of id Software Todd Hollenshead publicly said that the company won’t talk much about Doom 4 until QuakeCon 2010.  Though a lengthy demo was portrayed at QuakeCon 2009, a release date for Rage has yet to be announced.  Given that id does not have a history of working heavily on two games at once, it’s pretty safe to say that Doom 4 is still early in development.  Fortunately, that gives id a lot of time to iron out some issues that hindered Doom 3.  

What we can pretty much expect from Doom 4:  

Id developers have more than proven themselves tech savvy; they’ll keep the graphical and lighting quality insanely high just as they did with the previous installment.  Chances are equally high that hordes of demons will require an itchy trigger finger to dispatch.  However, Doom 3, contrary to what many reviewers have indicated, was not a spiritual sequel in many ways.  Subsequently, the game failed to achieve classic Doom greatness.  There are three key issues id Software may want to take into account when building the foundation of Doom 4’s gameplay.

1.  Story:  Just Ditch It!

Doom 3 attempted to incorporate more narrative elements than with prior Doom installments.  Frankly, this didn’t work.  Instead of trying to weave a real-time, in-game story ala Half-Life, bits and pieces of story were revealed through that damnable PDA.  Text, text, and more boring, unlikely written text littered the decimated Mars City - not to mention the fact that bringing the PDA to the screen felt like the whole game was going to crash.  
   
Here’s a simple solution:  forget the damn story.  Who says you need one?  Classic Doom didn’t really have one; it’s okay.  Doom is all about the frightening, frantic pacing.  Did a lack of story hold back Left 4 Dead?  Sure, Brad Linaweaver and and Dafydd ab Hugh wrote some decent doom stories, but if Doom 4’s narrative is told with either Half-Life pacing or bits of PDA messages, it’s just going to muddy up the gameplay.

2.  Lighting:  Packing Duracells

Doom 3’s excellent lighting effects were psychologically powerful in large part due to the flashlight.  Obviously, having a flashlight isn’t a great technical achievement by today’s standards, but it’s important to keep it in for Doom 4.  Konami mysteriously omitted this feature for Silent Hill 4.  Consequently, the game was the most well lit nightmare I had ever seen; it just wasn’t scary anymore.  In fact, keep the mechanic where the player has to choose between a gun or a flashlight.  Remember, this is Doom.  It doesn’t matter if there’s thousands of chainsaws but no duct tape on Mars.  It’s a mechanic that perfectly builds suspense!

3.  Level Design:  If These Walls Could Talk, They'd Utter a Blood Curdling Scream

The original Doom’s sprawling level layouts were as unlikely as Doom 3’s PDA messages and scarcity of tape.  However, Doom 3 ditched this for more realistic (I guess) corridor crawling.  This decision made Doom 3 feel entirely too restricting.  For the new installment, open up that level layout!  It doesn’t have to resemble what a real interplanetary military installation would look like.  It’s Doom!  Hell, level progression could regress back to sections being passable only when the player finds the last Blue Key left in the building.  The original Doom’s levels were sprawling, terrifying, architectural puzzles.  They were the heart and soul of Doom and in large part made it an addictive experience people couldn’t get enough of.

Articles Consulted: 

“Braving the New World of Rage”  http://pc.ign.com/article/101/1013607p1.html

“id:  Doom 4 Talk in 2010”  -  http://pc.ign.com/articles/101/1013968p1.html