Doom (series)/Headscratchers

Doom

• How exactly does the nameless Space Marine in Doom 3 survive the catastrophe and running around in Hell without getting at least zombified? I mean, yeah, in the original Doom, the hero was "too tough for Hell to contain!" but Doom 3 ... rather downplays this.
  • Note, however, that the player-character is not the only survivor; other Marines survive the initial wave with no ill-effects, it's just that the most you ever see of them is running around through a window before the demons physically kill them, or before Betruger possesses them. The guy investigating Betruger and his bodyguard, as well as the scientist near the teleporters, were also fine. The idea seems to be that the initial zombie "wave" simply isn't completely effective and leaves survivors.
  • The original Doom explains this by saying that the nameless space marine stood outside the base as a sentry while all his comrades went in. Since in the original, the demons apparently have to kill you first and then make you a zombie, he wasn't affected.
    • The ORIGINAL original script for Doom had only sleeping people become possessed, you and your co-op buddies were up late playing cards.
  • There may be a justification here: physical strength prevents possession. Almost all the initial wave of zombies are scientists and maintenance personnel. It's not until later that marine zombies show up, usually covered in blood. Since most of the marines are in pretty good shape, it implies the above justification.
  • There are actually a LOT of survivors. It's just that most of them hole up behind barricades or get killed. During the game your buddies, who communicate with you by radio, get killed or report casualties. Most of the scientist are unarmed, so it's not a wonder if only few of them survive. I always believed that the "fly-by" possession works on those who are either stressed or have weaker willpower. Marines are trained to be tough guys, so they survive. Z-sec, on the other hand, are just normal people. Compare soldier vs. police.
  • Remember those random instances where Doomguy's vision turns red for a few seconds? I think those are failed attempts to turn someone into a zombie. Doomguy was probably too "tough" to be turned, hence the attempts to try and kill him, instead.
  • There is also the possibility that Doomguy was just lucky. The only way to turn into a zombie is to get attacked by those flying skulls. I guess the flying skulls somehow missed him.
    • Not likely. Shortly after the invasion begins, you get stuck in an airlock for a few moments, during which a skull or two flies through. Unless you're standing off to one side for some reason, it will pass right through you, failing to harm you in any way.
  • Keep in mind that several logs mention civilians and security suffering from high rates of dementia and schizophrenia, most likely a side effect of opening the portal so often. It's possible that this effect was eroding their ability to resist zombification down the road. Since Doomguy was a very recent arrival, this background effect didn't have enough time to work on him. That also may explain why Swann and Campbell weren't affected either.
• In the expansion pack Resurrection of Evil ... oh, man, where do I begin? First of all, in the opening sequence, he seems rather ... triumphant, considering the artifact he just grabbed has just wiped out the entire rest of his squadron.
  • Could just be going back to the source - the idea that the main character is intimately tied to a demonic artifact which inspires you to commit acts of brutal, indiscriminate violence and rewards you for them was something that didn't make it into the original game (my source is the semi-biography "Masters of DOOM"). Not saying I like it, but it's not out of place...
    • They were also planning to include an item that would reward you for killing and punish you if you failed to kill often enough in Quake -- the inspiration was reportedly the Tabletop RPG that also inspired the game's name -- the Soul Cube from Doom 3 was basically id finally including some variation on this idea in one of their games, and Resurrection of Evil followed up on it. Not really relevant to the original post, but interesting to know.
• Second of all ... why the hell are there several buildings in RoE which open directly into Mars' atmosphere. Does Nerve Software not know why the original Doom 3 had, y'know, airlocks?
  • Well, the facility has been offline for two years, and the sole reason the UAC went back was because they detected a signal from the base (it was actually the Artifact and the demons were trying to come back). So, it's a facility that has been invaded by Hell, had almost all of its equipment destroyed, and none of it has been repaired for two years, meaning more breakdowns. That's probably why. Remember, there was one point in the original Doom 3 where you had to move through the door quickly because demons teleporting blew out the windows, forcing you to rely on oxygen tanks.
  • In differing DOOM media, it is said that the architecture has been changed and re-arranged by the monster's influence.
• And RoE's ending sequence. Dr. McNeil says that the Artifact, while it does give its weilder power, is a one-way portal to Hell, it's a danger as long as it stays on Earth, and the only way to destroy it is to bring it to Hell. However, once you get there, Dr. Betruger taunts you, saying "What did you hope to accomplish?" Gee, I dunno, maybe because it's not a danger to Earth now that it's been brought to Hell? And then, after the boss fight, Betruger demands that the hero give it to him. The hero responds by shoving it down Betruger's throat, causing him to disintegrate!? Oh, followed by fade to white, and Dr. McNeil's voice saying "Marine ... Marine? Welcome home." Cue closing credits. WTF.
  • I'd figured it was "Welcome back to normal reality" as opposed to being "Welcome back to Earth." Home is where you lay your head and all that. Or it could be id's attempt at a Gainax Ending.
  • This troper always interpreted it as going back to Earth, and he mentioned it on the main page until it was deleted for Natter. Basically, McNeil said "Welcome, home", not paradise, not "a better place", just home. So, going back to Earth is probably the most logical conclusion. And it's not like it's impossible. McNeil disabled life support to power the teleporters, and the Doomguy in Doom 3 managed to get back from Hell, so it's possible Ro E Doomguy teleported back to Mars, and then him and McNeil simply teleported back to where their ships are and left for Earth. Why id didn't show it, however, is beyond me.
• Why is the gravity so strong in Doom 3? It's Mars, the player character should be able to jump nearly twice his own height. Would it have been that hard for the programmers to go into the code and decrease the acceleration of gravity?
  • Two reasons:
    • A: They could have done the code, but Did Not Do the Research
    • B: They original Doom or at least the novels, before they went for a Gecko Ending, stated that the gravity around the gates was somehow Earth normal.
    • Maybe he's just weighed down by the 57 or so guns?
      • If you add mass, you add inertia. When you discount air resistance (which can only slow your fall, not speed it up), all objects in equal gravity fall at the same acceleration. Obviously the Mars base must pump gravity through the floors like in Star Trek. As for the outside scenes, don't think about it.
      • Or maybe the designers of the base didn't bother with gravity changing, and, while unaffected by weight, the Doomguy just has really weak leg muscles?
      • There's an ad for gravity generators in Ro E elevators.
      • This troper thinks it's because humans can realistically only jump a few inches high unless they're Olympic Atheletes (Yes, Marines are quite close, but they don't practice jumping their whole lives) while they're on Earth. Therefore, it's probably not going to be super high on Mars. Not to mention the fact that, as one troper mentioned above, Doomguy is carrying a huge loadout. All that weight is probably weighing him down even further.
• I've heard rumors that the first DOOM novel had precisely one reference to hyperphallic demon penis (in the form of a wall carving where said phallus is a lever to a secret area). Just three questions to ask here:

1. 1. Is this rumor true?
   2. Why in the hell did they even make such a reference?
   3. Why in the hell did they stop with that one reference?!

• • • Actually, they did it twice.
      • Oh, really? The guy I talked to about this is an avid Doom aficionado, and he can only remember the one reference. What, exactly, was the other one?
        • In the first novel there was one reference to demon penis. It's basically as your friend describes:

The entire room was constructed of that black, oily, ulcerating wood. There was one object in the room, placed at dead center: a bas relief of a demonic monster more horrible, or more ridiculous, than any we'd fought. Every physical attribute of the thing was exaggerated so that it almost seemed to be a cartoon. The largest protuberance of all was its penis, sticking out at a 45-degree angle. "They've got to be kidding," said Arlene. "I hate to bring it up, but that's probably another switch," I suggested. "I've handled worse," she admitted.

There's references to tongues as levers, which may have been what confused the guy saying there were two demoncock references. As to why they stopped at one... they didn't think it'd be funny again? That said, they did manage to fit in a huge pulsating vagina that the protagonists have to pass through, where they manage to make fun of religion. "Do you ever feel like you've been born again?"

• • • • • Here's the other one, in a later section entirely. Never mind that it reads like a different version of the same one:

The wall had a switch, a full-body bas relief of a cloven-hoofed alien. And it wasn't his tongue that required flicking. My face flushed. "Um, you'd better take this one, PFC Sanders. "And here I thought you were a born lever-puller."@@

• The comic: Were they serious?
  • I don't know. Was Da Vinci serious when he painted the Mona Lisa? Was Michaelangalo serious when he sculpted David? Was Dickens serious when he wrote "Great Expectations"? We can only be grateful for the final product.
    • More seriously, probably not.
    • Actually, Yes, No, No, Only Somewhat, and No.
  • Personal theory: There was no communication whatsoever between the artist and the scripter. The scripter looked at the pictures he'd been given, muttered "what the fuck is this?" to himself, then cracked a bottle of tequila, stuck Commando on the DVD player, and woke up three days later in a back alley in Tijuana with a cheque from the publisher in his back pocket.
• Why is John "The Demons" and then a zombie?
  • In his haste to ram a twist ending in at the end, blast the internal inconsistencies, the author failed to realize (or pretended not to realize) that zombies and demons are two different creatures. Or, to be slightly more gracious, Cernel Joson wasn't placing a great emphasis on specifics and considered a zombie to fall under the heading of "the demons." Either way, that leaves a further question: Assuming Joson's only contact with John was that radio, how did he know John was or had become the demons?
    • Perhaps he say John transform but couldn't yell to him.
    • Zombies are humans possessed by demons, same difference really.
• Why doesn't Doomguy's armour cover his entire body? Why leave a huge hole in his abdomen as well as not cover his hands at all?
  • Not like it bothers him at all - he's badass enough to take a rocket to the gut if necessary. He just better make sure he gets another stock of armor by then.
    • And on that note, if he's that Badass, adding an obvious flaw in his armor is simply to make it all the more obvious to the monsters that he's a badass.
  • Because he wanted to feel what it felt like?
  • If you look at the cover art of Doom, it looks like the demon the Doomguy's fighting ripped off the armor covering his abdomen. I blame budget cuts.
    • Yes, the above is correct. It's hard to tell looking at the actual box, but if you look at a high resolution version, you can clearly see that ab spot has been torn away.
• Sergeant Kelly in Doom 3 always gets me. Was he really working for Betruger and the demons all along? Was he manipulated into helping them in exchange for power, a BFG, and a crack at the Doomguy (who cracked him into oblivion)? Or was he just another bystander trying to do what he thought was right?
  • I always interpreted it as Kelly being on the side of the humans, and he wanted you to call in reinforcements for the obvious reason, to save the base. Then, at some point during the battle, as the non-player humans who didnt become zombies were dying off one by one, Kelly was killed/captured in battle and transformed into a demonic creature
  • It is somewhat suspicious that he was in Delta Labs when you hear from him after the incident, but there's no proof either way that he was always working against the humans, or if he was turned after the Communication Towers. His zeal to get the transmission sent is explainable in that he thought it was the only way to save the situation.
  • Note that there's entire squads of surviving Marines shortly after the initial attack, with Sergeant Kelly tracking them from Delta Labs and giving them tactical direction. And in short order, all of them are dead -- Bravo Team especially, that ran right into an ambush while following the directions Kelly gave them. The only survivor is you, the one guy who didn't get into position in time to catch up to Bravo Team. Makes you wonder just what kind of directions Kelly was giving...
    • (OP of this JBM here, with a lengthy theory.) Thinking about it, I think it's possible that Betruger was subtly manipulating Kelly throughout the game, especially since Kelly was in Delta, which was the epicenter of the invasion. In addition to the obvious influences of Hell via the main teleporter, maybe a more subtle effect was inflicted on the minds of those left unzombiefied. (Which may explain why the Marine wasn't turned into a zombie; the mental effects could have weakened the further from the epicenter a person was. It might still be potent enough to cause the visions he periodically had, however, that's a whole different tangent.) So Betruger could have subtly manipulated Kelly into ordering the surviving squads to head into areas where they could be ambushed, which would decrease resistance to the invading hellspawn, possibly only sparing the Marine due to assuming he's not a threat on his own. When the Marine gets the transmission card, Betruger may have seen him as a useful tool, intending to kill him after he sends the transmission, regardless of whether the Marine sent the transmission or not. When the Marine survives the toxic gases in Recycling, Betruger could have amped up his manipulation of Kelly in order to lure the Marine to the main portal in Delta Labs 4 so he could be pulled into Hell and dealt with there. (Anyone else notice Kelly's low, almost-Creepy Monotone in that last video transmission when you hit Delta Labs 1?) When THAT failed to kill the Marine -and he recovered the Soul Cube, to boot- Betruger cranked the manipulation on Kelly up to eleven and transformed him into Sabaoth in a last-ditch effort to get rid of the Marine and recover the Soul Cube. And we all know how well that went...
    • One could make the argument that the ambush on Bravo team shows that Kelly wasn't directly working with Betrguer. Prior to them getting wiped out, Bravo Team had the communications card and was on their way to calling the fleet, which was exactly what Betruger wanted to happen. If Kelly was working alongside Betruger at this point, why would Betruger's demons have slaughtered Kelly's Marine Team that was trying to accomplish the very end they were both working towards?
  • Sergeant Kelly seems to have been possessed from the start of the attack. When you have a brief video encounter with him outside marine command, his eyes are noticeably grey and it doesn't exactly look like he's defending against a horde of demons. Likewise, at one point, Specialist Wilson comes on the radio saying "...my team are all dead, I'm running blind here! What are my orders?" Sergeant Kelly responds "...Head back to your last known CP... We'll find you". Gives me shivers every time.
• The chaingun from the old Doom games. It's a big, badass-looking weapon...that uses the same ammo as the pistol, as well as having a rate of fire more comparable to a sub machinegun. I know that before the game was finished, they intended it to just be a sub machinegun...so what bugs me is the fact that they changed it's appearance so that it look more potent than it really is. And if you played Wolfenstein 3D, it's even worse: the chaingun in that game had a rate of fire that was quite respectable, which would leave you entirely expecting Doom's chaingun to have the same firepower.
  • I'm guessing it's because the monsters are so tough. It takes a long time to kill stuff with the pistol.
    • What I was pointing out wasn't the low damage output of the chaingun, but the low rate of fire. How tough the monsters are doesn't have anything to do with the fact the chaingun is absurdly slow.
    • Wolfenstein's chaingun is the game's superweapon. Doom's chaingun is merely a halfway-point suited to mowing down Zombies and other fodder, and a way of using all of those bullets without taking three damn days to do so.
  • If you want to see the chaingun running at a respectable speed, play Doom using Z Doom, and use the cheat "sv_fastweapons 1" in the console. You should activate infinite ammo in the gameplay options section as well.
    • Skulltag also has the minigun, which is a chaingun only twice as fast.
      • Combine with rage run also in Skulltag, that'll double the fire rate again.
• I think the image on the main page (previously "Who the hell is that second guy?") asks a valid question. Who the hell is that second guy? Doomguy's Deathmatch partner?
  • Go and read the (paper-thin) story. I very much doubt either of those two are the Doomguy.
  • Doom also had a cooperative multiplayer mode.
    • No-one remembers that, though, since no-one cared about co-op in FPS until Halo "invented" it.
    • So I suppose all of those player-created co-op WA Ds weren't actually created by players but just randomly popped into existence one day? Doom's co-op play was definitely a big thing; Quake was the game that decidedly made Deathmatch mainstream, and that still had a Co-op mode.
    • I just wanna point this out. 1: It's not the Doomguy, since the Doomguy only goes by himself throughout the entire game. No backup. 2: There is a gun at the bottom of the picture, pointed outwards in typical FPS style. The POV provided by the camera is then a first-person shot, of someone viewing the screen. 3: The demon on the bottom-left is looking at you amusedly, not aggressively and not to attack. Answer: You are the demons.
• In Doom 3, the tons of monster closets releasing enemies from behind is frustrating. Especially since its difficult to run backwards into rooms.
  • The monster closets in general are headscratchers. During the invasion, did some of the demons decide on their own to hide behind doors that just by chance might be opened? Or was it that some imp pissed off a Hell Knight, and was put on time out to think about what he had done? And are there still, by the time you finish, monsters still stuck in closets, patiently waiting for some schmuck to bumble into it? It seems kinda lame to be stuck in a small space with only the hope that someone will open the door by mistake. Maybe they should have at least brought some cards, or a book or something to keep themselves entertained while waiting, since the ones near the end especially would be waiting hours for you to get there.
  • Perhaps they teleported in there accidentally.
• If Doomguy has one or more guns at any given time, how come when he runs out of ammo he resorts to Good Old Fisticuffs rather than Pistol-Whipping? You'd think any weapon would be better than no weapon.
  • You're assuming that the Doomguy isn't a weapon all on his own. You'd be wrong. (Also, berserk packs, but you didn't hear that.)
  • There's nothing wrong with the demons that Doomguy can't fix WITH HIS HANDS!
• The games detail legions of Hell invading, depending on the game in question, Phobos, Deimos, Mars, and Earth. This does not apply to Earth, but Phobos, Deimos, and Mars were populated by almost entirely male scientists and testosterone-loaded soldiers. Dead planet, dead moons, no women. Wouldn't the obvious and simplest strategy be to utilize succubi? Even if you mixed them in with the other demons, I'm surprised Hell never thought to use even one.
  • That assumes two things: That legions of Hell are lead by powerful and intelligent mind that can form plans beyond "Get in, kill all, pick next target, repeat" and that Hell has succubus in it's arsenal.