Memories of Doom atmosphere & Heretic artwork

   Can’t say Doom is a title that pops to mind when I think of an artistic game: it feels more like a gameplay game. A game about shooting, survival… And yet it feels like it’s made an emotional mark. It may be just repetition/familiarity/my time spent on figuring out Carmack’s programming through playing with code in DosDoom (Plutonia and TNT wads most of the time) or more likely the fact that I was so freakin excited about all the amazing maps people made for it and spent countless hours trying them (one with a very emotional atmosphere given by NiN midi music pops to mind). My point being: to me it still feels like it has a certain feeling. It’s technical limitations of 2d bsps resulted in a very specific style of artwork, a certain kind of design by symetry/asymetry. Anyway, just found myself on this whole memory-emotional rolercoster reading a gamedaily retrospective of the Doom series. I’m talking about Doom 2 & associated wads mostly. Doom 3 had a very promissing start that made me feel like a writer was behind it, and indeed the audio journals were a great touch, however it too soon turned into maze walking (even backtracking i think) through all too similar environments and though i finished it from that point it lost artistic value to me and all the great graphics, shadows and bumpmapping in the world couldn’t save it for me. Unfortunatelly in my opinion ID software have always been more of a technology company… and though they shaped and led 3d graphics through time my heart still remains with those who use technology for artwork. Take Raven Software: they took the doom engine and made the amazingly art-oriented Heretic. Sure, it ran horrible even ages after, and it didn’t cast any blazing trails… but the artwork in it… yum yum yum. Inspiring.
   Note: I make a HUGE distinction between graphics in the sense of technology and in the sense of artwork. IMHO you can have a top notch engine running on high end hardware producing things that feel ordinary, even if they do it in super high detail, or you can have a world with low res textures, running on a weak engine and ancient hardware that still hints at great artistic elements or even manages to make you forget the technology and enjoy the artwork. For example for me the Heretic game is so full of story, one told just by it’s artwork: i completelly forgot it’s game story, but it’s artwork has told my mind a fascinating story, of a magical world, and yet not fantasy, but somehow dark/scifi.. of ancient civilizations and ritual temples.