Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/ahoy00:00 Introduction00:50 How was DOOM originally described?02:20 DOOM clones04:33 Quake Killers6:06 A hypothetical questi...
At the time, I wanted to get to the end because that’s how you beat the game. It’s like asking why you run to the right in Mario. The enemies there matter about as much as the enemies in Doom, and serve the same purpose in any action game: they’re lively obstacles. You don’t have to donk every goomba and you don’t have to blast every imp.
This is only important because a bunch of mid-00s shooters got it completely wrong. Painkiller in particular was a sequence of kill-em-all rooms. Spawn thirty dudes in a room, kill those thirty dudes, walk to the next room. The enemies were the entire point. There’s exactly ten levels like that in all of classic Doom… and that’s counting both Final Doom episodes. Only 10 levels out of 132 give one solitary shit about what you kill. Everywhere else - you don’t need to shoot anything. It’s just fun and useful to do so.
Goals do not tend to be optional. There’s a reason the end screen shows a percentage of what you could have done, but that figure has zero mechanical impact. Not even Gauntlet is about the monsters.
Just because you’re not obligated to kill the monsters doesn’t mean Doom isn’t about the monsters. The whole point of Doom is that you’re running through a facility and later Hell, both of which are swarming with enemies. You get to the next level to see what else the game is going to throw at you.
And Super Mario is more than just “run right,” the point is to save the Princess of the Mushroom people (original game manual PDF). But even that backstory doesn’t make Mario an RPG, because the point of the game isn’t Mario’s story, but the enemies and worlds you go through along the way.
Your mission is to shoot your way through a monster-invested holocaust. Living to tell the tale, if possible.
There’s a backstory, but it’s pretty short and doesn’t really give you a real reason to engage with the character. You’re there to get revenge on the monsters who killed your platoon, and that’s about it.
And let’s look at Akalabeth. There’s a backstory, but more importantly there are stats: dexterity, strength, wisdom, and stamina. You get a random start, and can replay the same start by using the same seed. The game is all about the character, not the enemies or the world design. Yeah, it’s a dungeon crawler with simple combat, but the whole point is the character.
Therefore Akalabeth is an RPG since that’s where the focus is. Doom and Mario aren’t, they focus on something else (in Doom, that’s monsters, and in Mario, it’s getting to the end of the level (there’s a timer and reward for getting there quickly).
At the time, I wanted to get to the end because that’s how you beat the game. It’s like asking why you run to the right in Mario. The enemies there matter about as much as the enemies in Doom, and serve the same purpose in any action game: they’re lively obstacles. You don’t have to donk every goomba and you don’t have to blast every imp.
This is only important because a bunch of mid-00s shooters got it completely wrong. Painkiller in particular was a sequence of kill-em-all rooms. Spawn thirty dudes in a room, kill those thirty dudes, walk to the next room. The enemies were the entire point. There’s exactly ten levels like that in all of classic Doom… and that’s counting both Final Doom episodes. Only 10 levels out of 132 give one solitary shit about what you kill. Everywhere else - you don’t need to shoot anything. It’s just fun and useful to do so.
Goals do not tend to be optional. There’s a reason the end screen shows a percentage of what you could have done, but that figure has zero mechanical impact. Not even Gauntlet is about the monsters.
Just because you’re not obligated to kill the monsters doesn’t mean Doom isn’t about the monsters. The whole point of Doom is that you’re running through a facility and later Hell, both of which are swarming with enemies. You get to the next level to see what else the game is going to throw at you.
And Super Mario is more than just “run right,” the point is to save the Princess of the Mushroom people (original game manual PDF). But even that backstory doesn’t make Mario an RPG, because the point of the game isn’t Mario’s story, but the enemies and worlds you go through along the way.
If we look at the Doom instruction manual, we read the purpose here:
There’s a backstory, but it’s pretty short and doesn’t really give you a real reason to engage with the character. You’re there to get revenge on the monsters who killed your platoon, and that’s about it.
And let’s look at Akalabeth. There’s a backstory, but more importantly there are stats: dexterity, strength, wisdom, and stamina. You get a random start, and can replay the same start by using the same seed. The game is all about the character, not the enemies or the world design. Yeah, it’s a dungeon crawler with simple combat, but the whole point is the character.
Therefore Akalabeth is an RPG since that’s where the focus is. Doom and Mario aren’t, they focus on something else (in Doom, that’s monsters, and in Mario, it’s getting to the end of the level (there’s a timer and reward for getting there quickly).
… who said otherwise?
I’m clarifying my own position to make it clear that story != RPG. That’s it. I’m not claiming anyone is saying Mario is an RPG.