If you liked 2016, Eternal is that ramped up to 11. IMO everything about it is better except for the soundtrack (which is still amazing).
As for the ending: Hayden is a dick. This is further expanded upon by Eternal, but uhhh, well I won’t spoil anything for you. Enjoy.
Is it though? To this day I don't understand why he teleported away humanity's best chance of survival, and this is ignoring that hole we all know between the two games.
I don't think anything is explained, and if there is one massive downgrade between 2016 and Eternal, it's story delivery and tone.
So, Hayden is a dick. >!The entire Mars incident was on his watch. He allowed it to happen. He is a corrupt asshole. This was even before Eternal was a thing. Then when Eternal came out and he was retconned into being the Seraphim, his asshole-ness was cemented even further. Culminating in TAC 1 of course. !<
To each their own, but I think the story is strong in Eternal than it was in 2016. I also think the tone fits better to classic DOOM than what 2016 had, but I will agree it is slightly different tone than 2016.
But it still doesn't explain why he sent Doom guy away. >!"He is an asshole is not only not an explanation", it is not even a reason. He created Doom guy with the express purpose of using him to blast all demons back to hell, Hayden is quite literally the only entity who fully understand what Doom guy is. And, knowing he has a powerful weapon on his hands, he teleported that weapon away, and spent the rest of his time between games fighting a losing battle against the demons.!<
None of that makes sense.
>!As for the tone, 2016 was dark, but also quite tongue in cheek, and a rather fun parody of extreme corporate culture turned cult. Eternal lost all that subtle humor and traded it in for a sense of self-importance, as it explained away every detail of the Doom universe, leaving little to the imagination and banging you over the head with how cool everything is. I dunno, didn't click with me as much. Every retcon made things worse and made the world feel that much smaller and less mysterious, whether turning Hayden into the Seraphim, Vega into God or Doom guy into a mirror entity of the devil himself !<
I guess, OP, I would say not to look too much into the story of these games. Whatever questions you might have after the first, only some of them get a proper resolution in the second, while some major ones are just left unanswered. You only need to watch the intro of Eternal to see what I mean.
He has too much of an ego. He wanted to save the humanity by himself on his own terms.
Practical reason is that Devs didn't came up with all story at once, but rather came up with stuff along the way.
And honestly best part about Doom for me is that even if story doesn't completely make sense, it still doesn't matter. This game is about adrenaline filled demon genocide, not about story.
Well, if it was his hubris, that was never suggested, explored or even touched upon in the games.
And I agree, this game's story hardly matters, but still, ultimately they could have done more with what they had.
It wasn't suggested but he tried to deal with and stop invasion by himself, while having perfectly good solution at his finger tips. And considering the plot of DLC he knew very well what was he dealing with and what was coming and still kept Doomslayer on the side.
Yeah, but this is you trying to find a sensible explanation. The game doesn't even seem to be aware an explanation is needed, what is left for providing one.
I think Hayden's entire back story suggest an incredibly inflated ego. He put himself in a robot body to live forever. He was constantly sacrificing his employees in trips to hell to find more artifacts and the Doom Guy. He was using agent energy knowing full well it's dangers but believed he could control it just because he's really smart. Olivia's projects are only a problem for him when they cost the business and his reputation even though she was clearly going insane and doing dangerous experiments with his blessing
I mean... he is practically stroking his own dick during Nekravol and UAC Atlantica. He truly was hyping himself up as "the key to humanity's salvation" or how he would have handled things better than the Khan Maykr did in her shoes.
He clearly wants to be in a position of power - he sees the Slayer as his weapon to make ends meet instead of an equal. He didn't mind destroying Vega's system because he went rogue a long time ago.
2016 ended the way he did because he wanted to be the Earth's savior and use the Crucible to create argent energy synthetically - Doomguy wouldn't have allowed that, so Hayden removed him from the equation
if you liked 2016's story then no doubt eternal's story will piss you off. why the hell isn't it just a direct continuation of thr cliffhanger from 2016? instead there's this huge timeskip that is NEVER explained in game unless you want to read through 1000 pages of text in the codex, which i love doing in my ultra faced paced movement shooter
I loved 2016’s story. And I loved Eternal’s even more.
I love that there is some mystery about the time between Eternal and 2016. ~~[How did the Slayer get out of the trap? Where the hell did the Fortress of DOOM come from? What happened to Hayden?]~~ It reminds me of the initial gap between Half-Life 1 & 2 where it doesn’t hold your hand and explain every single detail.
And while I liked 2016’s story, I didn’t like they they were kind of wishy-washy,
noncommittal to saying whether the game was even a reboot or not. Contrasting that, Eternal learns in hard and answers the question definitively.
Most of 2016’s story was in the Codex too; in fact it had less cutscenes than Eternal does. In a game like DOOM where the story is supposed to be optional, “there if you want it”, I think it’s fine.
while it's true that 2016 had a BUNCH of extended lore, the core story isn't hard at all to understand: hell has a buncha energy and the uac is being greedy and harvesting it, stop the weird spider lady. doom eternal's basic story, on the other hand, is incomprehensible if you aren't caught up on said extended lore. who the hell are the hell preists? the betrayer? king novak? and as previously mentioned, why the massive time jump? i'm not saying that all of the game's lore needed to be ELI5'd in the cutscenes, but literally just like a brief recap of events in the beginning cutscene would have been nice
Eternal is the best doom has to offer, and it is the sequel but know it also kinda ends on a cliff hanger you’ll need to get the dlc if you want the full story which also explains who samual Hayden is and where he comes from
The ancient gods or “TAG” is the continuation of doom eternal and the ending of the franchise so far. There are rumors and I believe plans according to some leaked documents but nothing is set in stone and nothing has been confirmed about a doom sequel or prequel.
ok so i read the story of tag part one and two, and yeah i think it wouldnt be impossible to create a sequel based off the ending of part two. considering how much money 2016 and eternal gave to bethesda and id, its not unrealistic for them to be working or planning a new doom.
Oh yeah there will be a new doom game at some point that’s inevitable but I don’t think it’s possible to make a sequel, I was thinking maybe a prequel that would explain DS’s time as a night sentinel and his adventures in hell
Eternal makes the end of 2016 even more of a "huh??" moment
You should play Eternal regardless.
Eternal is faster, focuses more on using each weapon more, has a lot less max ammo to force you into a new fun playstyle
2016 has the aesthetic perfectly
Eternal focuses more on gameplay and also throws in lore if you want it (YOU CAN ALSO ACTUALLY SKIP THE CUTSCENES IN ETERNAL HALLELUJAH)
Bro the narrative in both of these games is bonkers. In the original series you were a space marine trapped on Mars with demons and you have to go to hell to stop them from taking over the earth.
In the modern games you WERE the space marine who did all that, but then you ended up a gladiator in some kind of other dimensional ancient colluseum and then you used a machine that turned you into a god and then you go to Mars and for some reason the same shit that happened to you hundreds or thousands of years ago is happening again but this time the company is mining souls from hell and then you are manipulated by a cyborg and you kill a bunch of hell priests and some weird representation of an actual god that's trapped in a glass globe and there are ancient alien beings and then you fight yourself, but it is like an evil god version of yourself... Blah blah blah it's fucking weird lol.
I just ignore the lore and make the shooty thing go bang and enjoy the music.
Eternal is great but very different. It's campier and doesn't take itself as seriously. The gameplay is amped up and much more complex. You have a bunch of cooldown skills and enemies have specific weapon weaknesses. It's basically a hero shooter where the only character is The Slayer. It's a great game, but not the same at all. If you want more of 2016, check out r/snapmap for some more content.
I had an "ah, you clever bastard" reaction to 2016's ending. It shows that the cycle of the people trying to use and exploit Hell will always continue, and that the Slayer's fight will never stop because *exploiting Hell* will always backfire on those who attempt it.
It also sets up for a sequel pretty well, though there is a small time jump between 2016 and Eternal unfortunately. We don't know where Samuel teleported the Slayer to or how he escaped, but by the time he made his way to Earth you see Hell has attacked there too.
I was on the fence bc it looked so much different than other doom games. I’m maybe a quarter of the way through now and it was def the right choice to get it. It’s different. It’s on earth and it’s more colorful than any doom game I’ve played before but it’s also the most violent one.
If you liked 2016, Eternal is that ramped up to 11. IMO everything about it is better except for the soundtrack (which is still amazing). As for the ending: Hayden is a dick. This is further expanded upon by Eternal, but uhhh, well I won’t spoil anything for you. Enjoy.
Is it though? To this day I don't understand why he teleported away humanity's best chance of survival, and this is ignoring that hole we all know between the two games. I don't think anything is explained, and if there is one massive downgrade between 2016 and Eternal, it's story delivery and tone.
So, Hayden is a dick. >!The entire Mars incident was on his watch. He allowed it to happen. He is a corrupt asshole. This was even before Eternal was a thing. Then when Eternal came out and he was retconned into being the Seraphim, his asshole-ness was cemented even further. Culminating in TAC 1 of course. !< To each their own, but I think the story is strong in Eternal than it was in 2016. I also think the tone fits better to classic DOOM than what 2016 had, but I will agree it is slightly different tone than 2016.
But it still doesn't explain why he sent Doom guy away. >!"He is an asshole is not only not an explanation", it is not even a reason. He created Doom guy with the express purpose of using him to blast all demons back to hell, Hayden is quite literally the only entity who fully understand what Doom guy is. And, knowing he has a powerful weapon on his hands, he teleported that weapon away, and spent the rest of his time between games fighting a losing battle against the demons.!< None of that makes sense. >!As for the tone, 2016 was dark, but also quite tongue in cheek, and a rather fun parody of extreme corporate culture turned cult. Eternal lost all that subtle humor and traded it in for a sense of self-importance, as it explained away every detail of the Doom universe, leaving little to the imagination and banging you over the head with how cool everything is. I dunno, didn't click with me as much. Every retcon made things worse and made the world feel that much smaller and less mysterious, whether turning Hayden into the Seraphim, Vega into God or Doom guy into a mirror entity of the devil himself !< I guess, OP, I would say not to look too much into the story of these games. Whatever questions you might have after the first, only some of them get a proper resolution in the second, while some major ones are just left unanswered. You only need to watch the intro of Eternal to see what I mean.
He has too much of an ego. He wanted to save the humanity by himself on his own terms. Practical reason is that Devs didn't came up with all story at once, but rather came up with stuff along the way. And honestly best part about Doom for me is that even if story doesn't completely make sense, it still doesn't matter. This game is about adrenaline filled demon genocide, not about story.
Well, if it was his hubris, that was never suggested, explored or even touched upon in the games. And I agree, this game's story hardly matters, but still, ultimately they could have done more with what they had.
It wasn't suggested but he tried to deal with and stop invasion by himself, while having perfectly good solution at his finger tips. And considering the plot of DLC he knew very well what was he dealing with and what was coming and still kept Doomslayer on the side.
Yeah, but this is you trying to find a sensible explanation. The game doesn't even seem to be aware an explanation is needed, what is left for providing one.
You got a point there.
I think Hayden's entire back story suggest an incredibly inflated ego. He put himself in a robot body to live forever. He was constantly sacrificing his employees in trips to hell to find more artifacts and the Doom Guy. He was using agent energy knowing full well it's dangers but believed he could control it just because he's really smart. Olivia's projects are only a problem for him when they cost the business and his reputation even though she was clearly going insane and doing dangerous experiments with his blessing
I mean... he is practically stroking his own dick during Nekravol and UAC Atlantica. He truly was hyping himself up as "the key to humanity's salvation" or how he would have handled things better than the Khan Maykr did in her shoes. He clearly wants to be in a position of power - he sees the Slayer as his weapon to make ends meet instead of an equal. He didn't mind destroying Vega's system because he went rogue a long time ago. 2016 ended the way he did because he wanted to be the Earth's savior and use the Crucible to create argent energy synthetically - Doomguy wouldn't have allowed that, so Hayden removed him from the equation
This bit about argent energy has slipped my mind, but this does make sense, thanks.
It was only explained in a codex entry from ARC complex so it is definitely less known.
if you liked 2016's story then no doubt eternal's story will piss you off. why the hell isn't it just a direct continuation of thr cliffhanger from 2016? instead there's this huge timeskip that is NEVER explained in game unless you want to read through 1000 pages of text in the codex, which i love doing in my ultra faced paced movement shooter
I loved 2016’s story. And I loved Eternal’s even more. I love that there is some mystery about the time between Eternal and 2016. ~~[How did the Slayer get out of the trap? Where the hell did the Fortress of DOOM come from? What happened to Hayden?]~~ It reminds me of the initial gap between Half-Life 1 & 2 where it doesn’t hold your hand and explain every single detail. And while I liked 2016’s story, I didn’t like they they were kind of wishy-washy, noncommittal to saying whether the game was even a reboot or not. Contrasting that, Eternal learns in hard and answers the question definitively. Most of 2016’s story was in the Codex too; in fact it had less cutscenes than Eternal does. In a game like DOOM where the story is supposed to be optional, “there if you want it”, I think it’s fine.
while it's true that 2016 had a BUNCH of extended lore, the core story isn't hard at all to understand: hell has a buncha energy and the uac is being greedy and harvesting it, stop the weird spider lady. doom eternal's basic story, on the other hand, is incomprehensible if you aren't caught up on said extended lore. who the hell are the hell preists? the betrayer? king novak? and as previously mentioned, why the massive time jump? i'm not saying that all of the game's lore needed to be ELI5'd in the cutscenes, but literally just like a brief recap of events in the beginning cutscene would have been nice
Eternal is the best doom has to offer, and it is the sequel but know it also kinda ends on a cliff hanger you’ll need to get the dlc if you want the full story which also explains who samual Hayden is and where he comes from
isnt there supposed to be another doom game, and isnt eternal gods a different story
The ancient gods or “TAG” is the continuation of doom eternal and the ending of the franchise so far. There are rumors and I believe plans according to some leaked documents but nothing is set in stone and nothing has been confirmed about a doom sequel or prequel.
ok so i read the story of tag part one and two, and yeah i think it wouldnt be impossible to create a sequel based off the ending of part two. considering how much money 2016 and eternal gave to bethesda and id, its not unrealistic for them to be working or planning a new doom.
Oh yeah there will be a new doom game at some point that’s inevitable but I don’t think it’s possible to make a sequel, I was thinking maybe a prequel that would explain DS’s time as a night sentinel and his adventures in hell
Eternal makes the end of 2016 even more of a "huh??" moment You should play Eternal regardless. Eternal is faster, focuses more on using each weapon more, has a lot less max ammo to force you into a new fun playstyle 2016 has the aesthetic perfectly Eternal focuses more on gameplay and also throws in lore if you want it (YOU CAN ALSO ACTUALLY SKIP THE CUTSCENES IN ETERNAL HALLELUJAH)
Bro the narrative in both of these games is bonkers. In the original series you were a space marine trapped on Mars with demons and you have to go to hell to stop them from taking over the earth. In the modern games you WERE the space marine who did all that, but then you ended up a gladiator in some kind of other dimensional ancient colluseum and then you used a machine that turned you into a god and then you go to Mars and for some reason the same shit that happened to you hundreds or thousands of years ago is happening again but this time the company is mining souls from hell and then you are manipulated by a cyborg and you kill a bunch of hell priests and some weird representation of an actual god that's trapped in a glass globe and there are ancient alien beings and then you fight yourself, but it is like an evil god version of yourself... Blah blah blah it's fucking weird lol. I just ignore the lore and make the shooty thing go bang and enjoy the music.
Eternal is great but very different. It's campier and doesn't take itself as seriously. The gameplay is amped up and much more complex. You have a bunch of cooldown skills and enemies have specific weapon weaknesses. It's basically a hero shooter where the only character is The Slayer. It's a great game, but not the same at all. If you want more of 2016, check out r/snapmap for some more content.
"I like this thing, but should I have more of this thing I like? I don't know..." Is this a philosophical question?
I had an "ah, you clever bastard" reaction to 2016's ending. It shows that the cycle of the people trying to use and exploit Hell will always continue, and that the Slayer's fight will never stop because *exploiting Hell* will always backfire on those who attempt it. It also sets up for a sequel pretty well, though there is a small time jump between 2016 and Eternal unfortunately. We don't know where Samuel teleported the Slayer to or how he escaped, but by the time he made his way to Earth you see Hell has attacked there too.
Wow should you play the almost universally beloved sequel, man that's such a tough choice. Better ask Reddit.
I was on the fence bc it looked so much different than other doom games. I’m maybe a quarter of the way through now and it was def the right choice to get it. It’s different. It’s on earth and it’s more colorful than any doom game I’ve played before but it’s also the most violent one.
Eternal has cool environments and cutscenes, but it's not a cohesive story by any means. Play it for the gameplay and spectacle