Doom III at E3 May 24, 2002 Bob Colayco

Doom III

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Developer: id software
Publisher: Activision
Estimated Release: 2003

High Expectations

Doom III is yet another game for id software that has nearly impossible expectations to fill. With this release, id software is working hard to make a compelling single player experience and shed its image as a multiplayer only, or worse, a technology-oriented developer that has no sense of gameplay. id’s focus on the single player elements in Doom III may just silence the critics. There were no hands-on demonstrations of the game at the show, just a ten minute or so movie of the gameplay from a pre-alpha build dubbed “version 0.01” in the bottom right corner of the console, but the movie showed off lots of in-game elements.

The Story

The year is 2145 – a mega corporation known as Union Aerospace has colonized Mars, and some top secret research is being done at a R&D facility there. Right in the beginning of the movie, we see several soldiers guarding the facility having a discussion about changes in the day’s security codes and speculation on why they may have been changed. Immediately that struck me as something new for id – dialogue! Zooming in on the faces as they speak, we see immediately the level of detail id has put into the character models. Faces seem to be made from tons of bones and “muscles” –as they emote, different parts of the face, the cheek, brow, mouth, and more twitch and move in patches just as you would see in real life. Imperfections in the skin, scars, and hairs are apparent on faces, to about the same level of detail or better than we saw in the Diablo II CG cutscenes, but in Doom III, this was a scene using the in-game engine!

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Facial features

Back to the movie, a scientist walks past some guards nervously (he is silent but these emotions are obvious b/c of the huge detail in facial animation) and steals away into a side room of machinery where he does a little tinkering, perhaps sabotage? A machine in the middle of the facility goes haywire, and some demon spirits leak out, flying through the facility. The camera focuses in on one as it penetrates and possesses a soldier, lifting him up into the air and dropping him back on his feet as he convulses violently and chokes to death. In the process, his face and skin decay away gradually. He is morphing into a zombie before our eyes until his head drops for a moment, then back up with his visor broken – the transformation is complete and the entire base has become overrun with evil spirits. Except of course, for the hero who has somehow escaped demonic possession. This is where the action starts!

Our hero comes down an elevator shaft with his combat helmet in hand, exposing his face. As the elevator comes to a halt, the camera goes to a close-up shot of his face as he looks around suspiciously, and lets out that familiar Doom snarling sound. Immediately he pops his helmet on his head, the camera flies around and into the helmet as if we are seeing the HUD on his visor display, which is basically, the HUD for the Doom III game. The pistol comes up, and the hero is off to do some damage; we got to see ten minutes or so of shooting, exploring, and hiding action within the game itself. The chronology of the events gets a little hazy in my head here as my notes become more sparse. Once the shooting started we became so engrossed in the action that all our attention had to be focused on the screen to take everything in.




SIDEBAR: The line to watch Doom III was hours long – for some reason Activision PR seemed unable and unwilling to get me a spot at the front of the line to watch the movie. As a journalist with appointments stacked back to back to back, there’s no way I can afford to spend hours waiting on one game, even if it is Doom III. I was afraid I wouldn’t ever get to see it, but fortunately I spotted Fred Nilsson from id on the show floor and he was gracious enough to get me a spot in the very last Doom showing of day 1, after E3 was closed. Many thanks to Fred for the hookup!

Shadows, Weapons and Scripts

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Shadows and lighting

The first thing that strikes you about the graphics engine is the extraordinary quality of the lighting and shadows in Doom III. Once you see the dark brooding environment created, with flickering overhead fluorescent lamps creating and swaying overhead, creating real, true swirling shadow patterns on the ground based off the geometry of the models and the level…every other lighting you see in any other game feels fake. On large monster models you can see the model casting shadows on itself. Depending on the distance and intensity of the light source, shadows cast long or cast short, cast strongly or cast softly when it is appropriate. Somehow id software has raised the bar for graphics engines yet again, and the rest will have some catching up to do, while us gamers grumble about having to upgrade our systems yet again.

Weapons

Getting back to the game, the first weapon our hero pulls out to shoot zombies is a simple pistol. One striking thing about the pistol, was that it had to be reloaded – there were about 17 shots in the clip. Reloading is again, something that’s been in many games forever but had yet to appear in an id software game. Other weapons we noticed from the game included an Aliens style pulse rifle that had a digital counter on top of it to remind you of how many bullets you had left. To my recollection this weapon did not have to be reloaded but the counter on it did say [x]/345 where x was the number of bullets left in the gun, because it decremented as it fired, and presumably 345 (it was a number in the mid 300s, but 345 may not be exactly correct) is the number of rounds it can hold at once. Obviously in such an early build, these attributes can and will change.

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Scripted sequences

As our hero made his way through the ruined research facility shooting the zombies and monsters that attacked him, we noticed some environmental interaction (tapping out a code on a 10 digit keypad to enter a room, operating large factory machinery via computer console, etc) as well as tons of scripted sequences. Sometimes we’d come across zombies dragging bodies away, leaving bloody smears on the ground behind them. In one room, we saw a standing shelf set rattling in the background shadows as some boxes and assorted items got knocked off of it. Our hero pours fire in that direction, shooting off some items from the shelf a la Metal Gear Solid 2. In another sequence, our hero passed a hallway with some steam pipes running along the left sidewall. As we reached a certain point we hear a thud and see a fitting from one of the pipes fall off in front of us and clatter on the metal grating floor at our feet. Just as the hero looks down, we hear a big crash and see a huge four-legged demon/cyborg monster breaking through the pipes! One more smash into the wall and the monster is free and chasing after the hero in the hallway.



SIDEBAR: Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails fame designed the music and sound for the E3 demo – negotiations are underway to have him do the full game. His handiwork shows immediately. The sound effects in the game are hard hitting where they need to be (weapons, etc.), subtle sometimes, and engrossing at all times.

The Bathroom, Monsters, and Death

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The bathroom scene

In perhaps the most impressive sequence, our hero enters a bathroom with tons of smeared bloodstains and wall to wall mirrors. As we glance at the mirrors in the bathroom, we see in the mirror that one of those four legged cyborg monsters pops out of a stall and starts snarling. The hero runs around to the other side of the bathroom and does a peek around the corner. From there we see the cyborg monster’s attention focused on a fat zombie’s lifeless body in the center of the floor. The cyborg monster starts taking bites of flesh out of the zombie with roars and a disgusting squishy/tearing sound. All the while, the fat zombie has a disturbingly contented, almost happy look on his face, as if he is asleep and having a wonderful dream. The most demented part of this sequence is that after the hero comes around the corner, shoots the cyborg monster to death and turns around, the fat zombie that we thought was dead and was being eaten by the cyborg monster GETS UP and starts attacking the hero. It was being fed upon while still “alive.”

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Monsters

We’ve talked about three monsters so far – the zombie soldier with the minigun, the fat zombie humanoid, and the four-legged dog-like cyborg monster. Other enemies we saw in the video included regular sized zombies based off not-so-fat humans, and a smaller four-legged zombie with incredible leaping skills and the ability to throw fireballs. The speedy jumping zombie reminded me a lot of the Reaper from Quake 1 with its ability to gobble up huge distances with one quick jump. Another humanoid zombie that was encountered several times had one arm mutated into a long tentacle-like whip, which he would use to strike out at the hero from long distances. Finally there was a huge, bi-pedal monster that appeared to be about twice as tall as the hero and about two and a half times the weight with its musculature. It would be this creature that would be the death of the hero in the end of the Doom III movie.

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Death

Near the beginning of the action, the hero comes across a bi-pedal monster, hearing it approach with its thundering footsteps. He immediately hides in a dark, shadowy corner of a sideroom escaping its clutches as it walked by the hallway, shadows menacingly dancing on it from the swaying overhead lights and fans. Though the hero escaped notice that time, the encounter was foreboding of a later demise. Later in the game we hear the familiar thundering, and the hero runs down hallways trying to escape. Jumping down a short flight of stairs he stops, thinking he’s safe while staring at his shadow on the wall right in front of him. Immediately, we see a huge shadow loom in the wall right over the hero’s shadow, just like a horror movie. Turning around, the monster is there, and after vainly pouring some lead into it, the monster strikes the hero down and he dies, crumpling to the floor in a heap, with the camera never leaving the player’s first person POV during the death sequence. This results in us seeing some of the limbs flop in front of our eyes, a lifeless hand clutching a gun that could not be the hero’s savior this time.

The monster lingers next to the dead hero, roaring and snarling with glee. It picks up the hero’s body by the head, severs the head from the body (the camera is still “in” the hero’s head), and examines it as we look back at the monster’s face up close and personal. After a little more roaring and snarling, the monster opens up and eats the head, swallowing the camera in the process, ending the presentation with a flourish.

This isn’t the same Doom you remembered with hordes and hordes of enemies coming at you from all sides. If that’s the gameplay you want, then Serious Sam 1 and 2 are out there and are excellent. Doom III maintains that same feel you had before, but is obviously going for a more scary type of gameplay than one that is wall-to-wall guns blazing. This is not to say id is making Resident Evil – there was plenty of shooting involved in our little demo. Just don’t expect the zombies to go down with one blast from your double barrel as they did in the first one. The monsters from Doom III may just get back up.


SIDEBAR: What do you think of Doom III? Sound off in our comments section!