Legacy of Rust Timeline

[shoes]

I'm trying to play the DOOM games in chronological order. Where would Legacy of Rust be in this list?
DOOM
SIGIL
DOOM II: Hell on Earth
Master Levels for DOOM II
No Rest for the Living
TNT: Evilution
The Plutonia Experiment
DOOM 64

[Space Detective]

Master Levels doesn't really fit into continuity as much of the levels don't even have any story attached to them, and the ones that do are telling very much their own stories unconnected to anything else in the DOOM series.

Anyway, if you're fitting TNT and Plutonia in here, Legacy of Rust would probably be somewhere around those two I would wager.

[V I D A L]

My guess would be before Doom 64. Doom 64 is the last one before Doom 2016.

[Princess Maly]

The Master Levels are made up of three completely different series (Titan, Cabal, and Dr. Sleep's Inferno) and the remaining 9 levels have no story attached because the authors assumed they were contributing to a campaign that was never actually put together.

Dr. Sleep's Inferno vaguely references things going bad at a UAC base and going into hell after Beatrice. Given that it the first two cantos were released before DOOM II, the assumption is that's referring to the invasion from the first game, which would mean Dr. Sleep's Inferno is actually the earliest classic DOOM episode.

Cranium's Cabal has you playing as a disgraced Cyberdemon lord that lost their seat on the Cabal because of the failure of the hell's invasion. These levels were being worked on after DOOM II's release and so when it refers to an invasion it probably means all of DOOM 1 + 2 taken together, since the first game leads directly into the second. Whether this would be before or after No Rest for the Living is less clear.

Jim Flynn's Titan follow investigations on the titular planet, the moon of Saturn. There's no obvious time period here, but based on it taking place out in the gas giant zone, I would guess either before or after Evilution?

As for the rest of the maps, given that they're all techbase maps with the Earth sky, I always kinda figured you were playing as individual marines at various locations on Earth during the invasion, i.e. while Doomguy was still in hell during the last three episodes.

Legacy of Rust mentions what sounds like a UAC facility built inside of hell, so that's a whole step up from bases in this universe. My guess is that after finding a degree of success with the tech from Final DOOM, UAC got all colonial and tried to exploit hell ala the new Doom games. Honestly it might not even take place in the classic Doom timeline, because it just doesn't sound like something the old UAC would do. But, if it does, it's definitely after Final DOOM, and would be necessarily before DOOM 64.

So if you ask me the classic games would go like this:
Master Levels - Dr. Sleep's Inferno
DOOM - Episode 1-3
Master Levels - Klie, Willits/Chasar, and Mustaine's levels
DOOM - Episode 4-6
DOOM II - Hell on Earth
DOOM II - No Rest for the Living
Master Levels - Cranium's Cabal
Master Levels - Jim Flynn's Titan
TNT: Evilution
The Plutonia Experiment
Legacy of Rust

Doom 64's lost levels would obviously come later, but if you ask me I think the "fun" levels take place between the original campaign and the expansion, with Panic being last. Doom 3 has never been explicitly connected to the other games but the timeline lines up with the UAC from the new timeline, so it may be a prequel to those. The Lost Mission takes place simultaneously with the original episode so if you wanted to do them chronologically, play up to EnPro and then swap between a lost mission and original episode level.

The New Dooms would all be in release order from the Doomguy's perspective, but without hard dates it's impossible to say for certain where they'd fit on a timeline. Some dates have put classic Doom in the present (as in, like, now, the 2020's), while others assume it's a parallel to Doom 3's timeline taking place in the mid 22nd century. I've always assumed the later because it just makes more sense from every angle and the 202X date comes from the SNES manual so like... no. Also the last level of Mission 3 of SoD is called "Future Threat" and takes place in a UAC base already invaded by hell, and I always thought it made sense to have a clean, even 200 year jump from 1945 to 2145.

So since Doom 3 starts before anything goes down, you're basically playing out the events of the initial invasion that we never see in either Dr. Sleep's Inferno or Episode 1. Then if we assume classic Doom's timeline took a little longer than 2 years to build back up to the point of Final Doom, the full timeline would look like this:

1. Doom 3 original episode up to EnPro, then alternate lost mission & rest of original levels comes first.
2. Resurrection of Evil comes after all of the classic levels in the order above up through the Cabal series.
3. After the rest of the classic series, Doom 64's original episode, then the original 3 fun levels, then panic, then the lost levels, Doom 4, Eternal, and then TAG 1 & 2. That at the very least is chronological from Doomguy's perspective.

[Seamus]

Doom 3 is just straight up not part of the plot.

[Space Detective]

Oprindeligt skrevet af Seamus:

Doom 3 is just straight up not part of the plot.

Yeah, I don't think even the newer DOOM games try to do anything with it.
You may as well try to fit the DOOM RPGs into the timeline (not to knock them, just saying).

[Le Perv]

Oprindeligt skrevet af I <3 SAO:

Oprindeligt skrevet af Seamus:

Doom 3 is just straight up not part of the plot.

Yeah, I don't think even the newer DOOM games try to do anything with it.
You may as well try to fit the DOOM RPGs into the timeline (not to knock them, just saying).

The Soul Cube shows up in both Doom 2k16 and Doom Eternal (Lazarus Labs and Fortress of Doom). Doom 3 is most likely set in another universe since Doom Eternal confirms there's a multiverse. There could be several Doom guys but just one Doom Slayer.

[AWMonopolyMan]

Oprindeligt skrevet af 76561198066568156:

Oprindeligt skrevet af I <3 SAO:

Yeah, I don't think even the newer DOOM games try to do anything with it.
You may as well try to fit the DOOM RPGs into the timeline (not to knock them, just saying).

The Soul Cube shows up in both Doom 2k16 and Doom Eternal (Lazarus Labs and Fortress of Doom). Doom 3 is most likely set in another universe since Doom Eternal confirms there's a multiverse. There could be several Doom guys but just one Doom Slayer.

It is the Hell Region that exists in the Multiverse specifically. As Doom 64 ultimately connects to Doom Eternal (in its prequel flashbacks) as well as Doom 2016 and Eternal’s main games as well.

[Le Perv]

Oprindeligt skrevet af AWMonopolyMan:

Oprindeligt skrevet af 76561198066568156:

The Soul Cube shows up in both Doom 2k16 and Doom Eternal (Lazarus Labs and Fortress of Doom). Doom 3 is most likely set in another universe since Doom Eternal confirms there's a multiverse. There could be several Doom guys but just one Doom Slayer.

It is the Hell Region that exists in the Multiverse specifically. As Doom 64 ultimately connects to Doom Eternal (in its prequel flashbacks) as well as Doom 2016 and Eternal’s main games as well.

Ah ok, I haven't finished Doom 64 yet I've been meaning to but keep forgetting.

If Hell is multiversal I'd like to see some of the Doom 3 demon designs return.
I think the Doom 3 Lost Souls would actually look dope with today's graphics.

[Unseen]

Oprindeligt skrevet af Princess Maly:

The Master Levels are made up of three completely different series (Titan, Cabal, and Dr. Sleep's Inferno) and the remaining 9 levels have no story attached because the authors assumed they were contributing to a campaign that was never actually put together.

Dr. Sleep's Inferno vaguely references things going bad at a UAC base and going into hell after Beatrice. Given that it the first two cantos were released before DOOM II, the assumption is that's referring to the invasion from the first game, which would mean Dr. Sleep's Inferno is actually the earliest classic DOOM episode.

Cranium's Cabal has you playing as a disgraced Cyberdemon lord that lost their seat on the Cabal because of the failure of the hell's invasion. These levels were being worked on after DOOM II's release and so when it refers to an invasion it probably means all of DOOM 1 + 2 taken together, since the first game leads directly into the second. Whether this would be before or after No Rest for the Living is less clear.

Jim Flynn's Titan follow investigations on the titular planet, the moon of Saturn. There's no obvious time period here, but based on it taking place out in the gas giant zone, I would guess either before or after Evilution?

As for the rest of the maps, given that they're all techbase maps with the Earth sky, I always kinda figured you were playing as individual marines at various locations on Earth during the invasion, i.e. while Doomguy was still in hell during the last three episodes.

Legacy of Rust mentions what sounds like a UAC facility built inside of hell, so that's a whole step up from bases in this universe. My guess is that after finding a degree of success with the tech from Final DOOM, UAC got all colonial and tried to exploit hell ala the new Doom games. Honestly it might not even take place in the classic Doom timeline, because it just doesn't sound like something the old UAC would do. But, if it does, it's definitely after Final DOOM, and would be necessarily before DOOM 64.

So if you ask me the classic games would go like this:
Master Levels - Dr. Sleep's Inferno
DOOM - Episode 1-3
Master Levels - Klie, Willits/Chasar, and Mustaine's levels
DOOM - Episode 4-6
DOOM II - Hell on Earth
DOOM II - No Rest for the Living
Master Levels - Cranium's Cabal
Master Levels - Jim Flynn's Titan
TNT: Evilution
The Plutonia Experiment
Legacy of Rust

Doom 64's lost levels would obviously come later, but if you ask me I think the "fun" levels take place between the original campaign and the expansion, with Panic being last. Doom 3 has never been explicitly connected to the other games but the timeline lines up with the UAC from the new timeline, so it may be a prequel to those. The Lost Mission takes place simultaneously with the original episode so if you wanted to do them chronologically, play up to EnPro and then swap between a lost mission and original episode level.

The New Dooms would all be in release order from the Doomguy's perspective, but without hard dates it's impossible to say for certain where they'd fit on a timeline. Some dates have put classic Doom in the present (as in, like, now, the 2020's), while others assume it's a parallel to Doom 3's timeline taking place in the mid 22nd century. I've always assumed the later because it just makes more sense from every angle and the 202X date comes from the SNES manual so like... no. Also the last level of Mission 3 of SoD is called "Future Threat" and takes place in a UAC base already invaded by hell, and I always thought it made sense to have a clean, even 200 year jump from 1945 to 2145.

So since Doom 3 starts before anything goes down, you're basically playing out the events of the initial invasion that we never see in either Dr. Sleep's Inferno or Episode 1. Then if we assume classic Doom's timeline took a little longer than 2 years to build back up to the point of Final Doom, the full timeline would look like this:

1. Doom 3 original episode up to EnPro, then alternate lost mission & rest of original levels comes first.
2. Resurrection of Evil comes after all of the classic levels in the order above up through the Cabal series.
3. After the rest of the classic series, Doom 64's original episode, then the original 3 fun levels, then panic, then the lost levels, Doom 4, Eternal, and then TAG 1 & 2. That at the very least is chronological from Doomguy's perspective.

Very interesting read and well explained. You should make a lore guide but at the same time lore for shooters like doom and quake is very hard to pinpoint.

[Space Detective]

Oprindeligt skrevet af Unseen:

You should make a lore guide but at the same time lore for shooters like doom and quake is very hard to pinpoint.

That's the kind of thing I'd do for DOOM, though uh, it'd probably be prudent for me to play 2016 and Eternal before doing that.

Quake though, problem is I don't think anyone cares about the lore of anything past the first game, and the first game is pretty threadbare.