why do people say 2016's story is better lol

[THEDOOMGUYISREALL!!!!!]

look, i understand if you dont like the story, but dont go saying "oh 2016 was 1000x better!"
in 2016, you were on mars and killed some demons and a spider, yes in eternal you do the same, but with the entire universe. doom (1993) had a little bit of story. its not like eternal is just a HUGE downgrade storywise, because both have the same premise: you angry man, go kill demon

[Jordan_Peterson]

oh 2016 was 3000x better!

Alright, but now let's cut the formalities. When people say Doom 2016's story was "better", they aren't just talking about the basic 'go bash some demon heads in' deal. It's like saying every burger is the same because it's got beef and a bun. Nah, man. It's the seasoning, the toppings, the sauce—that's where the essence is.

Now, Doom 2016? It had at least the sauce. The Mars setting, the drama with that corporate suit Hayden, the mystery vibes about who the hell the Slayer even was? That stuff was at least somehow decent.
Doom Eternal? Sure, it's bigger, flashier, and full-on cosmic spastic chaos, but sometimes bigger ain't better. I guess they threw too much on the grill at once. Some like their story medium-rare, not well-done. But to each their own, right?

[Grampire]

Short answer - the story in a Doom game will always be low-hanging fruit for trolls and haters.

My opinion: No one in their right mind would ever pretend either game has a "great" story. But I think most reasonable people expected Id to set the table with plastic sporks and paper plates. And I've had some really, really good meals using both.

[Kyller92 AKA Cinos]

Stories in Doom never were particularly good. People uses it to criticize the game because... it's better to take what you can find regardless of its substance I guess...

At best, it could be argue that now that Eternal has quite a lot of cutscenes, we can really see how the story don't really work in a Doom game.
In the OG games, those were simple texts and nobody put much thought into it because it was "cool". (The ending of Knee-Deep in the Dead alone should be a good enough reminder).
In D16, it was becoming a harder already because of how inconsistent the Slayer's actions were and how often the game stopped you for exposition despite acting like the story didn't matter.
And we now see the result in Eternal.

That being said, knowing the Internet, the worst thing here is that I'm pretty sure even if Eternal kept its story to a minimum, people would still complain about it one way or another.

[The guy from Ace Attorney]

I feel like the story TELLING was better in 2016 at least, but that's not saying much. In 2016, when you had a goal that was more than just kill demons, there was usually a well explained reason for it. You have to break the filters to shut down the portal, blow up Vega to open a new one, etc. In Eternal, you kinda just pick up keys, and tokens without much reasoning or understanding. To this day I don't think they ever fully explained what those tokens are when you kill the Hell Priests, I can only assume it negates their soul guard or whatever, but even that is poorly explained, it's basically just an excuse to have boss fights without the Slayer just immediately murdering the Priests. Not that that's a bad thing, but I feel like everything OUTSIDE the game (Marketing, the dev streams, etc.) implied that this game would be better than that.

[Sar]

Uhhhh 2016 never really established what the heck Wraiths are or why are you “putting them to rest”? That whole part with the knight ghosts was also a big hook for Eternal.

[Mortimer Reed]

Originally posted by THE Star Fox 64 Expert:

I feel like the story TELLING was better in 2016 at least, but that's not saying much. In 2016, when you had a goal that was more than just kill demons, there was usually a well explained reason for it. You have to break the filters to shut down the portal, blow up Vega to open a new one, etc. In Eternal, you kinda just pick up keys, and tokens without much reasoning or understanding. To this day I don't think they ever fully explained what those tokens are when you kill the Hell Priests, I can only assume it negates their soul guard or whatever, but even that is poorly explained, it's basically just an excuse to have boss fights without the Slayer just immediately murdering the Priests. Not that that's a bad thing, but I feel like everything OUTSIDE the game (Marketing, the dev streams, etc.) implied that this game would be better than that.

What you said about Doom 2016 having goals other than kill demons and pick-up keys is also same in Eternal. Have you forgotten that you need to blow a hole into the surface of Mars? Or that you need to shoot the gian tentacles holding the gate in ARC complex using the two AA guns? Or you need to punch a giant, crucified demon to destroy a wall to progress?

[The guy from Ace Attorney]

Originally posted by Mortimer Reed:

Originally posted by THE Star Fox 64 Expert:

I feel like the story TELLING was better in 2016 at least, but that's not saying much. In 2016, when you had a goal that was more than just kill demons, there was usually a well explained reason for it. You have to break the filters to shut down the portal, blow up Vega to open a new one, etc. In Eternal, you kinda just pick up keys, and tokens without much reasoning or understanding. To this day I don't think they ever fully explained what those tokens are when you kill the Hell Priests, I can only assume it negates their soul guard or whatever, but even that is poorly explained, it's basically just an excuse to have boss fights without the Slayer just immediately murdering the Priests. Not that that's a bad thing, but I feel like everything OUTSIDE the game (Marketing, the dev streams, etc.) implied that this game would be better than that.

What you said about Doom 2016 having goals other than kill demons and pick-up keys is also same in Eternal. Have you forgotten that you need to blow a hole into the surface of Mars? Or that you need to shoot the gian tentacles holding the gate in ARC complex using the two AA guns? Or you need to punch a giant, crucified demon to destroy a wall to progress?

I think you misunderstand my point, so since we're still talking about story in a Doom Game, lemme try and elaborate on my opinion some more.
So, Doom 2016, the Vega Core. Hayden explains that you need to overload Vega's core to open another portal to Hell to get the Hell Well. The specifics of why it works this way isn't important, but your goal is clear and the "lore" (For want of a better term) behind it is defined well enough to a player that's just going thru the game. There's added context to the level, but it's simple and has decently solid reasoning behind it.

The argent filters are even easier to understand the context for. It's already established that everything is powered with the stuff, so obviously breaking it down will stop the equipment from keeping the Hell portal open. Not only that but Doom Guy's reasoning for breaking the filters instead of disabling them is so easy to understand, you don't even need it explained. Obviously he hates everything related to Hell, including Hell Energy, and breaking it is quicker than disabling it.

Taras Nabad, you need the Crucible to kill the Icon of Sin, so you go to where the Crucible was left, take it out and need to recharge it with some weird Token and a pool of what I assume is Argent energy. What even is this Crucible, and why is it different from the one we got from Hayden's lab? Why do we need a token, and what even is this? The context is simple, but it's implied to be a lot deeper than it actually is, and none of the game's lore or storytelling as it's presented to the player lives up that.

Same with Mars Core, the goal is "Blow up Mars cuz there's a portal we need there". Nevermind that Doom Guy's ship has been able to take us literally everywhere else until this point, they kinda hand wave that off like "Well this is the only portal that goes there". And now the context is less simple, instead being a city in the Mars Core that houses the one functioning portal to this over city, and there's literally no reason or explanation for it. It'd be like if every other portal still worked and Doom Guy in 2016 just blew up Vega's core for the fun of it, and they made some excuse after the fact.

This extends to dialouge, as well, in 2016, all thru the labs you hear talk about Argent Energy from the holograms and Hayden. The story of the energy crisis on Earth and how clean, renewable and poggers Argent energy is, that's all stuff that learn as you listen to the dialouge. The first meeting with Hayden establishes the stakes, 61,000 or so dead, the reason behind the invasion, and reestablishes Olivia as the antagonist and Hayden as a really shady guy in general.

Going up the elevator at the end of the first level in Eternal leads to basically nonsense dialouge. Vega says the Kahn Maykr is present but can't be killed, except she's not even there when Doom Guy arrives and it's clearly a hologram of her when she DOES show up. The priests talk about judgement and the souls of the nonbelievers, and the Kahn Maykr just says the same stuff again before Doom Guy walks off. The meeting with King Novik, everything he says was just made to put in a trailer with no thought to the context in the actual game, same with the Betrayer, and then neither of them show up again for rest of the storyline. (Not counting the DLC cuz if I start talking about TAG 2's story, I will lose my mind more than I already have)

And yes, I'm aware there's examples of both games being better/worse at this whole context/simplicity balance, IE: the Wraiths in 2016 as mentioned above.
On that note, what I'm talking about is actually done well in Super Gore Nest, the quickest way to destroy the heart of the nest is powering up an engine or something, and that's what the keys are for, simple, to the point, something that any player can understand without even reading the codex. To illustrate my point, if Super Gore Nest were done badly, instead of keys and an engine, there would be orbs that you put in a box to make ghosts stop praying to the heart of the nest so that it dies, with Vega in the background just explaining the history of the nest or something. I hope one of these examples gets my point across here cuz I typed a lot of them lol

[Sar]

I dunno why demons building The Biggest Gore Nest™ around some kind of a working engine which has a potential of instakilling it and then making 3 spooky keys to lock a vent into one of the control chambers (but not the other) and scattering those keys around the level makes perfect sense to you, but Heck Priests having essentially a phylactery in form of their Guardians doesn't.

[Sar]

my favorite part of D2016 story is how Hayden has a super elite Special Forces Red Dude UAC team and he installs a kill switch into all of them and then shares it with Pierce and when he knows Pierce is evil he doesn't bother to change the password, so when she makes her move she also instakills Cool Red Dudes but that backfires since now Doomguy can use their chips to upgrade his armor (for whatever reason)

[The guy from Ace Attorney]

Originally posted by Sar:

I dunno why demons building The Biggest Gore Nest™ around some kind of a working engine which has a potential of instakilling it and then making 3 spooky keys to lock a vent into one of the control chambers (but not the other) and scattering those keys around the level makes perfect sense to you, but Heck Priests having essentially a phylactery in form of their Guardians doesn't.

Well for one thing, I only just now learned the word "phylactery" just now, so thanks for expanding my vocabulary. My thing with the Priests is the game starts with one talking about some soul protection and this token that Doom Guy just holds up and there's no context until 3 levels later when they introduce the guardians and that still doesn't explain where Doom Guy got the first token anyway. As for the Gore Nest, I didn't say it was a perfect example of story telling, just that the context is simpler and better explained to the player in the moment. To be clear, I'm not saying either game's plot is better or worse than the other. I just think these details are fun to talk about, but to be fair I doubt the devs ever planned on this kind of nitpicking.

[Sar]

Originally posted by THE Star Fox 64 Expert:

the Priests is the game starts with one talking about some soul protection and this token that Doom Guy just holds up

And that's really all you need to realise that you need choccy medal to kill a Heck Priest. Gameplay-wise they wanted you to battle some kinda boss before killing the priests since they don't look intimidating, that's an explanation for why you need that.

There were plans to release a digital comic bridging D2016 and DE, but as far as I know it won't ever happen.

[The guy from Ace Attorney]

Originally posted by Sar:

Originally posted by THE Star Fox 64 Expert:

the Priests is the game starts with one talking about some soul protection and this token that Doom Guy just holds up

And that's really all you need to realise that you need choccy medal to kill a Heck Priest. Gameplay-wise they wanted you to battle some kinda boss before killing the priests since they don't look intimidating, that's an explanation for why you need that.

There were plans to release a digital comic bridging D2016 and DE, but as far as I know it won't ever happen.

I get that it's just an excuse to have a boss fight, I already said I'm fine with that. There's just no context as to what the Chuck E Cheese token is, and what is actually happening when you start the game and get to that scene, and it's not just the Nether Popes where this is a problem. My larger point is that Funky Doom had a much simpler story, but told it better to the player, like a poorly written action movie, things just about make sense if you just sit back and watch. Whereas Doom Eternal has a much deeper lore, cool concepts and characters and locations, which would all be cool to explore in stuff like the comic or lore book that sadly never happened, but in game a lot of the plot just comes across as a bunch of disconnected dialouge and nonsense, like Dragon Ball Z, the lore is just dressing for the action. It's kinda like the gameplay, 2016 was just point and shooty, whereas Eternal has weakpoints and extra strategies to exploit with a greater challenge as a trade off.

Anyway, here's waiting for the Doom Eternal comic, coming the same year as the last TF2 comic lol.

[Spoon]

Not only the story, the gameplay was 100x better too. The rock paper scissors combat and platforming nonsense made Eternal it feel anything but a Doom game.

[Hundinger]

Originally posted by Pickle:

The rock paper scissors combat...

You clearly don't understand how Eternal's combat works.

[Grampire]

^If by "rock paper scissors" gameplay you mean you wanted 3 of your 10 weapons to be rocks that you could smash nonstop into a campaign full of scissors like you could in 2016 then I almost understand....

The problem being that you can still kill everything in Eternal with anything if you know what you're doing. Optimal != Forced.