Eyes fly open, only seeing the lid of a sarcophagus, suspended above, and at your level, arms chained to an alter of some sort while zombified scientists meander closer. Chains broken, and zombies killed, you see holograms of people worshiping you, and one woman scheming, before once again donning the armor of the DOOM Slayer. Then you get the first piece of concrete context for DOOM 2016: Dr. Samuel Hayden revealing that things have gone wrong as they possibly can, and the facility is overrun with demons.

And the Slayer's reaction is to be so rightly pissed off that by the end of this quick prologue, he punches a communication panel so hard it goes straight into a late title card.

In retrospect, DOOM 2016 (after this just referred to as "DOOM") has one of my favorite opening sequences. Definitely my favorite cold open, at least in any game I've played. It leaves so many tantalizing questions, and sets the stage for a game about ripping and tearing through countless demons, and being so furious that people would try literally fracking hell for demon energy that he doesn't care at all about whatever justifications they had. No amount of reasoning or, "we had no other choice" could ever make up for unleashing so many demons.

I think there's two main reasons why this stuff worked so well in DOOM. One, is that it was all relatively simple, and straightforward, and the other is that it felt like it understood that the mystery, the ability to let players' imaginations fill in the gaps was better than explaining every last little detail.

DOOM Eternal, however...is kind of the exact opposite. A galaxy and dimension spanning story about a one man war against now not just the hordes of hell, but also against the cyber-angel Makyrs, hell priests, and maybe also some intentionally zombified humans? DOOM was content to let the imagination fill the gaps, but Eternal has a codex entry for anything you could want to know, and so much more.

The weirdest thing, though, is that I feel like all this story and lore developed into something of a paradox. On the one hand, Eternal is overflowing with lore. Digital reams pouring out of the codex, to the point where codex entries became another collectible, like glowing trading cards floating amongst the levels. The problem being that almost all of this lore, these codex entries were so uninteresting that even when I tried to read them, I felt my eyes glaze, and just thought I should go back to the ripping and tearing.

That brings me to the paradox, which is that despite this game having more lore than it knows what to do with, more than could ever be interesting, Eternal still manages to not present enough direct information for me to feel like I fully grasped what was going on. In some ways it almost reminds me of stuff like Destiny 1? Though I'll at least give this to Eternal, it has the lore actually in the game.

I guess I should probably put in a spoiler warning, just because.

The way Eternal handles "world-building" is to just say the names of Proper Nouns and Factions and Locations without any other context, as if everyone already knows what's going on, and if you don't, then find the codex entry collectible that will fill in that gap, if you have the endurance to read the ten part (or more?) series on the history of the Sentinels, for example.

I did not.

I really did not expect this to happen, but Eternal has left me thinking about Mass Effect. Many people talk, even to this day, about spending lots of time reading through every codex entry in that first game. I, as someone for whom Mass Effect 1 is my favorite game ever, am being sincerely honest when I say I barely read any of the codex entries in that game, or even across the whole trilogy.

I didn't feel the need to, because the game did such a great job of explaining the universe, all the different races, factions, etc, in world, through dialog. By giving me the opportunity to talk with characters, to ask questions, to delve into these topics in this way, I learned so much about the rich universe BioWare created, and I loved it. And now, all these years later, when I think about how to best introduce that sort of information about a universe, random bits of lore written in a codex isn't the answer, at least not for me. But who am I to say? It's not like I spend my spare time writing fiction in the hopes that someday literally anyone would read it. (Games writing is different, I know, I'm just being cheeky.)

I admit that part of it is just that I don't really jive with the codex format of world-building, even when the world being built is interesting. Another game I thought about in relation to this, is Pyre. The third Supergiant Games game, the one that's a mix of fantasy sports balling and visual novel. I hadn't played it until this year, and didn't write about it because I didn't feel like writing a full spoiler-blog at the time. Suffice to say I really like Pyre's story, the whole arc, all the characters, the choices (which certainly matter in some respect), everything.

But as much as I like that game, and its world, I just found myself unable to read too much of the lore entries in its codex either. For the life of me I couldn't tell you why, because I think that world is pretty cool. And since there's very little voice acted dialog in that game, it's almost all reading, so it's not like I have some aversion to literally just reading. It's odd and I haven't really thought about it until playing Eternal, because some games like Control, or Prey, I'd read every memo or email I found in the game. For some reason my attention just drops like a rock when the info is presented like an abridged Wikipedia article.

Heck, even in DOOM, I read most of those corporate emails I found!

Okay, the last game, that I cannot believe Eternal made me think about, and please don't stop reading as soon as I say this because I know it's the most tired thing to bring up, is Dark Souls. Or rather, the From Software style of world-building sparsity. Those games (aside from Sekiro) have mastered the art of dribbling out bits of lore, through the environments, off hand dialog from depressed NPCs, and snippets in item descriptions. Now, we all know this, but what exactly made me think about Dark Souls in DOOM Eternal?

Early on, in one of the first few levels, the Slayer encounters a character known as The Betrayer. Upon meeting him, I was given a codex entry, which I read some of, and that boring lore just got me thinking about a much more interesting way of presenting a character named The Betrayer. Think about From games, where often the only direct information you are given about a boss is the name that appears above its life bar. I don't know anything about the Cleric Beast in Bloodborne aside from its name, but there is something fundamentally intriguing about the first boss in that game being called Cleric Beast. This beast much taller than a human, twisted and gnarled, scraggly haired, and antlered, used to be a cleric, or perhaps still is. Without directly showing anything aside from that name and its visual design, it says quite a lot about the world of Bloodborne. More importantly, it raises questions that are key to the bigger story/lore of that world.

I'm not saying that simply naming this NPC The Betrayer and giving no other information would be as informative or world-building as the Cleric Beast, but it would have been a hell of a lot more interesting to just have that name and let my imagination fill in the rest.

And that, really, is probably the most disappointing part of Eternal's lore. The thing that made DOOM's lore so cool was that there was very little of it. Someone referred to as The DOOM SLAYER who was imprisoned in a sarcophagus in hell is cool and left my imagination running wild. The endless possibilities that my mind ran through after finishing that game, things that ranged from eternal cycles of the Slayer awaking to deal with demons, to thinking he was BJ Blazkowics from Wolfenstein.

Finding out he was just some dude muttering about ripping and tearing (I cannot believe they gave him a voice and then THAT was what they had him say) who was given super powers...was disappointing. I'm sure the reveal that he got his powers from the same hell priests he's killing was supposed to have impact, but it really doesn't when those hell priests could just as easily have been MacGuffin crystals for all they actually affect the story.

I don't know what sorts of decisions led to DOOM's story and lore being the way that it was, but after Eternal, I get the impression that maybe intriguing snippets of lore that is far better off with the gaps left unfilled was perhaps not their ultimate goal after all. Even so, the vibe of that game, where the Slayer was just so disdainful of everyone around him, and fed up with having yet another demonic mess to clean up isn't here, aside from maybe one or two instances.

Two moments in Eternal stand out to me in terms of anything writing related, and channeling that vibe from DOOM. The first is when a scientist says they need to carefully remove Samuel Hayden from some stasis thing and the Slayer just yanks him out and he falls to the floor with a clunk. The second is later when Hayden says the Slayer can't just shoot a hole directly into the surface of Mars, followed immediately by Vega just opening the portal for him to go shoot a hole directly into the surface of Mars. Or maybe Hayden said that right before the Slayer fired the BFG 10,000 at Mars, I forget.

When I think about those couple moments, those are the ones that best replicate that feeling from the previous game. The Slayer doesn't care, he just has demons to kill, and he's furious that people were arrogant and foolish enough to let this happen, presumably again. I so wish Eternal felt like that more, because that's how I felt about all this lore. I just wanted to rip and tear, not have Hayden walk me through the step by step process of demons torturing humans to get Ardent Energy out of them, read some lore about the Khan Makyr, and proceed to roll my eyes. Makyr? You know, like maker, because they're angels, except not really.

Honestly, not to get on a huge tangent, but there is something I find profoundly cowardly about so readily and quickly invoking hell, demons, etc, but not doing the same with heaven. The word angel appears in a codex entry, at least, in relation to the Makyrs, but that's about as close as they get. I'm not saying they need to or should go all the way and make these games literally tied to any specific religion (I say as someone agnostic at most). I'm saying that if it was really metal, they would have called it heaven and not been afraid of making people angry, especially when those people were never the ones to play something like this anyway. Let me rip and tear god into pieces, you cowards!!

Okay, last story complaint here: In DOOM, about the only time the Slayer showed any care toward another character was when he transferred Vega into a storage device, and brought him to safety. Thus why Vega is your AI buddy through Eternal. Now, I know Vega doesn't really have much personality beyond a pleasing voice, because he fills the role of generic AI character. But I like Vega, and I was bummed that he just kinda gets left at that terminal on the Makyr world. I mean, I also enjoy Hayden's voice talking to me, but Vega is the one character in these games that deserved better than to presumably die. On the other hand, since Eternal begins with the Slayer in a space castle with no other context, and all his upgrades/weapons from the last game gone, I don't know that continuity is something that especially matters, so they could just bring him back next time.

At least the game is fun, right? Even then, as much as there are some improvements, I didn't come away from this one feeling like it was the best shooter I'd ever played, which was my feeling after DOOM in 2016. And that's despite additions like the double-dashing, flamethrower to get armor, grenades actually being useful, overall better feeling weapons, etc that I think would make replaying DOOM now a little harder to get back into. Obviously that game wasn't designed with that stuff in mind, but even things like how the ammo/chainsaw are balanced I like better. In DOOM, midway into the game I barely ever needed to use the chainsaw for ammo, whereas here, I guess the Slayer's pockets in the new suit are a lot smaller, because he can't carry nearly as much, so that part of the loop stayed useful.

Then again, there's no Marauder in DOOM, and I'd never have to hear the indescribably unfunny phrase "mortally challenged" again if I just replayed DOOM, so there's that. And the soundtrack's better, sounds like maybe due to old Mick Gordon not having full control this time/having a falling out with Bethesda?

So, DOOM Eternal, fun game, despite some missteps. Glad I played it, still looking forward to whatever that team does next (probably another DOOM), and hopefully they can reign in some of the lore stuff then.

Unrelated, I have a couple other games on my docket. After finishing Eternal, I've been playing Nioh 2, which is more Nioh, but in a good way. In some ways, it is the most, "they made that game again" sequels that I've played in years. But also there are additions and changes to the combat, like stealing special moves from Yokai like this was a DS Castlevania game. And I like that I can play an anime purple haired samurai lady instead of generic white dude from the first game, so I'm having fun. I like the rolly Yokai cat friends a lot (that you can pet). I probably won't have enough to say to write a full blog about that game, but I'm enjoying it.

I really want to play Final Fantasy VII Remake, but as of this writing, the copy I ordered has yet to arrive, but that'll probably be what I play after Nioh 2. Unless something screwy happens with the shipping, at which point I'd have to go directly to the last game I've got here.

As for what it is, well, it's a newer re-release of a game, but...

You'll never see it coming...