Why Doom 4 was scrapped

[Eraser]

The Doom 4 initially in production at id was simply "not Doom 4", publisher Bethesda's marketing exec Pete Hines told IGN.

"It wasn't one thing," added id Software studio director Tim Willits. "It wasn't like the art was bad, or the programming was bad. Every game has a soul. Every game has a spirit. When you played Rage, you got the spirit. And [Doom] did not have the spirit, it did not have the soul, it didn't have a personality. It had a bit of schizophrenia, a little bit of an identity crisis. It didn't have the passion and soul of what an id game is. Everyone knows the feeling of Doom, but it's very hard to articulate."

source.

I eagerly anticipate your "Doom 3 and Rage didn't have a personality either" arguments.
Interestingly, the following was said as well:

"And I think what the guys at id are working on is... they're pushing the boundaries and challenging themselves. I don't want anybody to look at id's next project and have this reaction that it's still stuck in the 90s."

Which I guess was the major complaint about Rage as well.

[Pext]

Hm; I don't really care. And I don't think they will come up with something fresh. But maybe that's just because I don't give a shit about single player fps.

RPG elements?
Open world?

I guess an open world that changes during the course of an invasion from hell would be fun. Build up player attachment to some characters and locations and then destroy it all. Kinda like Chrono-Trigger meets GTA meets WoW:Cataclysm with Doom Styling.

[Don Carlos]

Shame; they need to do a back to basic "budget" corridor shooter with Serious Sam levels of enemies and Doom styling.

The world needs that to happen.

[Eraser]

Note that with "scrapped" I meant their original design for the game. They restarted Doom 4 and are actually working on the game now.

[xer0s]

Rage had the personality of a salad bar...

[Don Carlos]

Colourful, crisp and healthy?

[MKJ]

funny, Tim Willits was also the man who said doom 4 was "gonna be awesome!" back in 2010.

PR, rollerburgers.

[bitWISE]

I'm gonna go ahead and guess that they'll fall into the Resident Evil trap , after Doom 3 and RoE not being Doom and Doom not being Doom to those who first played Doom 3, they now don't have the first clue themselves what Doom should be or what people want from it.

Good analogy

[obsidian]

So, we have a universe where they have spaceships, colonies on Mars, space marines, BFGs, the UAC, and yet their level design inspiration of Earth is modern day Detroit and Goof's backyard?

How about this: Earth is a bit cyberpunk, big huge futuristic urban cities, densely populated. Industrial areas are polluted, people are poor, full of organized crime. The UAC controlled areas are clean but the military corporation is authoritarian. You can choose to start the game as a UAC soldier or a pooron for differing storylines, access to different areas, and support from different factions.

Hell breaks loose from a UAC facility. As a UAC soldier, you're a first responder trying to contain the breach, but fighting a losing battle which forces you to retreat into pooron zone. As a pooron, hordes are coming in and you're struggling to find weapons to survive which leads you into UAC controlled facilities trying to steal supplies. All this opens up some replayability and gameplay/character decisions which would at least make the game a little more interesting.

[Eraser]

The game could record part of your gameplay of one character as a demo and play that while playing the other character. That could be limited to one scene or so with no interaction possible between the characters, but it would be neat to see yourself doing something from another character's POV. Just like seeing Gordon Freeman jump into the Xen teleporter in the Opposing Force expansion of Half-Life.

[r3t]

On the topic of Rage: just started playing The Scorchers DLC (sweet deal on Steam for a tad over 1 euro) and holy crap, Rage still is an awesome game. No ifs, no buts.

[Eraser]

No butts neither. At least, unkicked ones.

[Silicone_Milk]

So, we have a universe where they have spaceships, colonies on Mars, space marines, BFGs, the UAC, and yet their level design inspiration of Earth is modern day Detroit and Goof's backyard?

How about this: Earth is a bit cyberpunk, big huge futuristic urban cities, densely populated. Industrial areas are polluted, people are poor, full of organized crime. The UAC controlled areas are clean but the military corporation is authoritarian. You can choose to start the game as a UAC soldier or a pooron for differing storylines, access to different areas, and support from different factions.

Hell breaks loose from a UAC facility. As a UAC soldier, you're a first responder trying to contain the breach, but fighting a losing battle which forces you to retreat into pooron zone. As a pooron, hordes are coming in and you're struggling to find weapons to survive which leads you into UAC controlled facilities trying to steal supplies. All this opens up some replayability and gameplay/character decisions which would at least make the game a little more interesting.

Trying to add way too much storyline to the game imo. Doom was never about the story. It was about shotguns and demons.

These sprawling storylines trying to be slathered all over shooter games makes them pretty hard to enjoy. I want to fuck shit up; I don't care about why I'm doing it.

[losCHUNK]

Damn straight, get to work on various ways of fucking shit up. I think Carmack said last yr that the biggest problem with Rage was that it was stuck between an open world RPG and an FPS, which was kinda my gripe with Farcry 2. I still thought it was good n all, the character animations were shit hot and need to be in every game

They got the tools to make a new best seller that'll go down as 1 of the greats but they can never seem to put it all together anymore. Fucking sucks to see stupid shit like CoD in every other household where the once great id can't even organise a piss up in a brewery

Seeing doom 4 scrapped ?, I guess this is what it's like watching your childhood hero shit and piss himself whilst tryna remember his own name.

[ToxicBug]

A Doom and Doom II reboot would be sick. With the original maps remade (in 3D and with extra rooms above and below old rooms) running on the id Tech 5 engine. I'd buy it.

[Tsakali]

meh

[losCHUNK]

Maybe as a side project.

I think they need to focus and to be fair none of their games have been garbage or even bad, they need to look at where they are now though and at what direction they are planning on going because it's only getting further from where they were. If id had half the ambition they had in the 90s they'd have blown CoD / EA out of the park years ago and they still have the ability to do this imo.

I think other studio's would have been able to capitalise on Doom 3 and Rage a lot better than id had n all, someone like EA would have just buried the titles with plenty of other medicore titles and seeing what sticks, changing then enhance. They also got bogged down with D3 when the market was exploding, due to having a small team ?, this give everyone the opportunity a bite of a fresh apple. By the time Doom 3 was released other studios were knocking out similar titles in a quarter of the time, the market overtook them basically and they havn't recovered since imo. They're also pretty shit at marketing.

Might be wrong but I seem to remember that by the time Doom 3 was released the market had so many new comers that people only remembered Quake 3 or heard of it, Doom was nostalgic :/

[Eraser]

A Doom and Doom II reboot would be sick. With the original maps remade (in 3D and with extra rooms above and below old rooms) running on the id Tech 5 engine. I'd buy it.

That just wouldn't work.
What they do need to do is spawn a dozen enemies into a room and have you run around with light speed.

[MKJ]

cause you can't change the player speed in the id5 engine?

also lol. theres a dozen original doom mods that update the graphics tenfold.
kinda like Overdose does with Q2 but with the big difference that these are actually released.

[U4EA]

kinda like Overdose does with Q2 but with the big difference that these are actually released.

Ouch

[mrd]

Stop fucking around with Doom. Why do people care about this shit still? Make a new fucking universe already. Fuck Doom, fuck Wolfenstein, fuck Quake. There is a point at which you cannot create new and meaningful content in a game universe that is decades old FFS. That point has long since passed. Stop trying to prop this crap up. Fuckin' pissin' me off. id came to fame with innovation, so why are they trying to milk this corpse of a game from 25 fucking years ago?

[Eraser]

cause you can't change the player speed in the id5 engine?

also lol. theres a dozen original doom mods that update the graphics tenfold.
kinda like Overdose does with Q2 but with the big difference that these are actually released.

What I meant was that idTech 5 won't add much to the original Doom if you simply recreate the original levels. Usually the completely recreate game X with modern graphics just isn't as awesome as people want to believe. Besides, like you said, if you want Doom with awesome graphics, why not download one of the engine mods and play that. Seriously, if it was as awesome as you believe, you'd actually go ahead and do that.

What I'd like to see though, is a complete "reimagination" of Doom. Fast gameplay, hordes of monsters, but forget the original level design and come up with something that fits 2013 gamedesign but still has that intense gameplay that the original Doom offered. No sluggishly slow walking speeds or linear and scripted levels, but fast gameplay and interesting level design.

[Don Carlos]

Shame; they need to do a back to basic "budget" corridor shooter with Serious Sam levels of enemies and Doom styling.

The world needs that to happen.

I might have mentioned this earlier...

[Pext]

Stop fucking around with Doom. Why do people care about this shit still? Make a new fucking universe already. Fuck Doom, fuck Wolfenstein, fuck Quake. There is a point at which you cannot create new and meaningful content in a game universe that is decades old FFS. That point has long since passed. Stop trying to prop this crap up. Fuckin' pissin' me off. id came to fame with innovation, so why are they trying to milk this corpse of a game from 25 fucking years ago?

I'd love to see a revisiting of the Q1 world. They should have allready done this with Q4.

Alien Invasions were cool (well... at least a bit) in the 90s when Q2 was released. But when Q4 was released in 2005 this was allready a boring background.

Lovecraft/Chtulhu ftw.

[Don Carlos]

Yeah revisiting Q1 is long overdue