A while back I had a quick go at modding Doom 3, with a view to turning a cutscene early on in the game into a Half-Life style scripted sequence. Like most of the cutscenes in Doom 3, this one takes control of the camera in order to show you something that is happening right in front of you anyway, which to me feels like a weird move in a silent-protagonist FPS years after Half-Life, especially Doom 3, which takes so many other cues from Half-Life. It subtracts from the tension in particular, I deem, when every new enemy gets a cutscene introducing it, where you have to watch your guy watch a monster enter the room, instead of just watching the monster. Below is a video.
It’s a bit broken here, but I always think Doom 3 needs a full halflifeification mod. Un-cutscene all the cutscenes, do the HL1 follow/unfollow thing with the scientists and security guards. The sort of project I might undertake if it felt like I had more time on my hands. Not all that much work, but probably pretty drudgerous.
It always feels sort of insecure to me when a game cutscenes its incidentals this way. I’ve been in a lot of meetings where someone will anxiously wonder “but what if the player misses it?!?!” and I always sort of wonder why that person is even in the room, how you got into a career in games without becoming comfortable with the delights and potential pitfalls of attempted collaboration with the audience, which is the whole premise. In Doom 3’s case, which I have no inside scoops on, I sort of bet the idea at one point was to never do cutscenes. It works too well. The conversation in the video takes place behind a locked door into an office with windows the player can look through, and when the cutscene ends everyone walks out, a classic setup for a scripted_sequence. Doom 3 isn’t allergic to these, either, it’s just not prepared to lean on them. A shame!
Doom Eternal (which I hate) continues this tradition: the player enters a hallway and we get a cutscene of the player walking down the hallway. Just let me walk down the hallway, you fuckin’ goof.
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