This is really disappointing to read. Mick's soundtrack was a huge part of making DOOM 2016 and Eternal such great experiences.
His talk at GDC where he goes into some of the process of creating the soundtrack is fantastic, so much fun to see the creativity he brought to the game's music.
The soundtrack for Eternal was the only thing that felt special about this sequel IMO. Doom 2016 was and is amazing though, instant classic including the congenial soundtrack.
I’m even less excited about any further sequel now.
Too bad John Carmack didn’t want to put up more with the business side of things. Zenimax are slowly becoming the worst of all the gravedigger big gaming companies.
I liked Eternal, I know that a lot of people felt the new mechanics were too much of a departure from 2016, and I'm sympathetic to that, but I had a hell of fun time beating the game on Nightmare.
It turns it into something like Hotline Miami, where there's a room full of guys who can kill you almost immediately, so you wind up playing the encounter over and over until you have the perfect path of devastation through the enemies.
The main thing I disliked about Eternal was the added story elements, the very minimal story in 2016 was so perfect (it's basically: you wake up, you're badass, you hate demons, go rip and tear). Eternal tried to go for some sort of Doomslayer lore - spelling it out makes it lame.
Overall, both games are great, and I very much enjoyed them.
> It turns it into something like Hotline Miami, where there's a room full of guys who can kill you almost immediately, so you wind up playing the encounter over and over until you have the perfect path of devastation through the enemies.
I call it Mario-ization, and I hate it.
I also hated Eternal. It wasn't Doom. It was a "first-person jumper."
Based on the previous game, I pre-ordered the deluxe whatever version, and then couldn't stand the game, even on the easiest setting. This was the game that finally ended pre-ordering for me.
As always, TACMA and YMMV, etc., et. al. I wish I could enjoy these kinds of games, since a lot of effort is devoted to them these days.
After finishing Gordon's essay, the jagged and at times uneven feel of DOOM Eternal seems to make a lot more sense now. This circular creative process (give me the music so we can design the level ... no, you give me the level design so I can write the music) seems to explain what felt so wrong about DOOM Eternal, this "fantasy platform puzzle" idea that Id was driving toward.
I feel the same way about pre-ordering AAA games, but FWIW I think pre-ordering is really context dependent. Pre-ordering the next DOOM? Hell no. Pre-ordering KSP2 or something like that? Yeah probably.
Really? KSP2 is not being made by Squad. Squad got bought by Take-Two and Take-Two is having a different studio build the game... or was until they cancelled the contract and poached most that studio's talent. This is a project that seems like it has a high likelihood of failing to capture what made the original one great. I'd wait to see some demos and lets-plays before putting your money down
It looks like Squad did get re-involved in KSP2 once they closed out development of KSP with v1.12
I'm not saying people shouldn't check out KSP2 and I have high hopes it will be a worthy sequel. It just isn't the sequel I would call out as a specific example of a safe one to pre-order.
>Based on the previous game, I pre-ordered the deluxe whatever version, and then couldn't stand the game, even on the easiest setting. This was the game that finally ended pre-ordering for me.
Same here. 2016 was perfection in so many ways that Eternal is just...bizarre by comparison. Nearly every aspect of Eternal was just plain mediocre or bad to me.
They added too many mechanical things to fiddle with and it drowned out the positional combat aspect. It felt like playing starcraft in the mid to late game
It definitely gets more mechanically heavy in the late game, in a way that kinda diminishes the pure combatness of the whole thing. At first it feels sorta like "you've given me a small set of murder tools, and I need to use them to build a glorious rampage", and towards the end you have so many options that it feels less artful. I still had fun but I definitely understand the thrust of the criticism - especially given how perfectly DOOM 2016 lets you compose a symphony of destruction with just the guns you have.
I am glad you mentioned Masters of Doom. I've read it on the bus commute during my internship at Microsoft back in college ~6-7 years ago, and I cannot recommend this book enough.
I didn't want to work in gamedev at the time (due to being fairly familiar with how awful working in that industry was), and I still don't. Neither do I have a strong emotional attachment to the original DOOM, I was way too young to appreciate it back when it was released, and I didn't live in a country where it was a cultural hit. I still have no interest or fascination with working in gamedev industry now.
However, that book was something else, and it rocked my world. It is about as strong of a book rec as I can give. Both Carmack and Romero created something very special there, and it is fascinating as hell to read it. Especially since Carmack and his current endeavors are still very relevant to the world of today.
P.S. The last sentence wasn't meant to be a dig at Romero at all. I just don't see him being mentioned in the news much anymore, especially compared to Carmack, and I honestly have no idea what he is up to. But that doesn't diminish his contribution to the story of DOOM and beyond at all.
His sheer enthusiasm in this video is incredible. Also the glee when he adds 666 to the music lol (or maybe it was a pentagram, or both? Been a while since I watched).
The spectrogram stuff you're referencing was one of my favorite parts, and also the description of his crazy array of pedals he used to get the signature sound.
Gordon's YouTube channel is amazing. His videos about creating the sound of DOOM (2016) are stuck in my head very strongly. The guy clearly is extremely passionate about his work, and he loves going into the nitty gritty of the process.
His very short video about the old soviet hardware synth he managed to find and pretty much had to reverse-engineer to make use of was very memorable[0].
It was a great soundtrack, perfect for doom. but that talk left me confused.
what I got out of it. he did not want your normal heavy metal soundtrack so he deconstructed music down to it's core, created a bunch of noise, layered it up to make the songs... but it sounded bad, so he had to add the heavy metal back in.
At the end I am like... so your whole process... was for nothing?
I mean, learning a hypothesis doesn't work isn't for nothing?
And unlike previous entries in the series, iirc, during gameplay the soundtrack reacts to the player's progress rather than just being there in the background.
His talk at GDC where he goes into some of the process of creating the soundtrack is fantastic, so much fun to see the creativity he brought to the game's music.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4FNBMZsqrY
The next DOOM will be a little less DOOMy without him.