Pondering Over Fire and Brimstone

One should never underestimate the importance of narrative within the structure of world building when trying to wow one’s audience.


Or Not!

I spent so much time playing Doom: The Dark Ages, I didn’t leave any time for me to write about it today. C’est la vie. Ultimately a good problem I suppose, though overly lengthy levels is a quality The Dark Ages shares with Eternal, which is neither here nor there in terms of conclusively good or bad, though it does kind of kill your buzz when you realize you aren’t going to be getting solidly knee deep into hell without a solid hour on your hands. In any case, really more of a blurb today than a proper article, as I am just about to leave for work, but I did feel weird not writing something down.

I was initially thinking about discussing the dragon and mech sections of Doom today, which, I guess can still happen on a micro-level, albeit in an extraordinarily condensed bite sized version of my thought, which is really antithetical to what those sections represents, as they are larger than life set piece moments encased in pure spectacle. Reading the communities thoughts online about them and critical reception in general, people definitely have mixed thoughts on their inclusion, which is understandable on some level. Pondering them myself, more so the notions behind them instead of the mechanics, the reason for the loud push-back is due to the shocking realization that they represent one of the first times we’ve seen divergent gameplay in the entire series, with Doom as a group of titles that has quite literally stuck to it’s guns, and has never really changed up the gameplay formula at all in more than 30 years, which is kind of impressive when you think about the sheer resiliency of sticking to such a confident formula with no need to deviate after all these years.

The whole thing kind of got me thinking about the gaming equivalent of the idea behind “the death of the author”, and how the concept would translate into the video game realm, as I think it would be nothing less than a gargantuan gold mine from which one could certainly unearth conceptual treasure from, but alas, tis just the genesis of a much grander concept that will have to wait, as time waits for no one.

Till next time.

~Pashford