We have Wolfen War 2 at Home
Doom, as a franchise, needs no introduction for the same reason I don't have to explain to you what Star Wars is. The original games did so much right that it remains playable from a design perspective to this day. I never played the PC originals until I was an Adult (circa 2010), and while there are some strange choices, there was no question as to what I should be doing and how.
And, like the Elder Scrolls series, a huge part of its longevity comes from Modding.
Going through its entire library is a task far beyond a long tumblr post. There are many kinds of mods. Some are just new levels (with or without new assets), some are bigger gameplay changes, and some are complete overhauls.
There are so, so many I want to talk about, such as Walpurgis and Doomzone. But the one I really want to talk about today is Kriegsland, which is basically Wolfenstein enemies and weapons. The Chaotic Evil demons are now replaced with Lawful Evil Nazis and all the strange tech you would find in that series. But something did not feel right about it in context; Why are the Nazis keeping their own soldiers in cages and not even disarming them? Many of the demons are wild, animal like, classic for horror movies, so cages can be appropriate, but not for a military force to its own soldiers.
My solution was a map pack called Lost Civilizations. This is a favorite among fans for its more open, expansive maps, taking place in jungles, beach towns, ruins, countrysides and so on. It is a work of art as far as Doom map packs go.
So, we got the enemies/weapons, we got the maps. Last ingredient? WW2 inspired background music. The ones I listened to, testing Lost Civilizations, were maybe a little too calm and vacation-like. That wouldn't do. I was up for pulpy WW2 sci fi action, and we needed the right tone.
Oh, and I basically always play with the mod Universal Gibs regardless of what Mod combo I used. Just mentally file that under A Given.
And the result was, to my surprise, fairly cohesive.
Now, to my knowledge, Lost Civilizations was not made with Kriegsland or anything remotely WW2 related in mind. Or vice versa. But it worked shockingly well for a collection of unrelated work smashed together. What followed was a guerilla war against a famously evil regime from locale to locale, through strange portals, lost technology and interdimensional weirdness. We start in jungles, but then there are abandoned islands, more European castles (again, fits very well), and long lost temples.
Often, because the areas are so large and enemies positioned everywhere, I was scraping by, trying to use weapons that worked very differently from the classic Doom line up. I approach a corner, shouts in German just out of sight, knowing there is little sneaking around them and trying to make the first shots count. Flash backs to the OG Medal of Honor games stepped into the forefront of my mind, despite this being a newer take on an old game. Yes, this is still riding off of Doom. Yes, there are still slaughter areas where you take on an absurd number of Nazi soldiers. But the sound and assets kept the whole experience alive, despite any clashes between mods.
I do value story and characters in games, but often the heavy lifting can be done by the context alone, especially in a video game. The eb and flow of drama, in this context, comes from the combat, the resource management (even if it is just ammo) and discovering location after location on these giant maps. Environmental story telling is something that video games excel at, and it is easily one of their greatest strengths as a story telling medium. Without much dialogue or character building, having a solid context is often enough to keep you going.
I'm reminded of Inglourious Basterds, the 2009 film by Quinten Tarantino. The intro scene does not do what most WW2 dramas do; there is no grey filter over the beautiful French countryside. It is lush and full of life, farms at work and the sun shining bright. But then a car with a swastika drives up to one of the houses. Suddenly, the whole scenery feels corrupted, poisoned by the presence of fascism. Without a word of dialogue, so much is told by those touches. This is France, it is occupied by Nazis, and there are only a few reasons why a lone German military vehicle would drive up to a farm house and none of them are good.
In Lost Civilizations, you, too, are in lush, beautiful locations, very picture-esque and impressive given the Doom engines still present limitations. As I played it, it is all occupied by Nazi Germany, scouring the land and ruins for reasons you not yet know. With a pistol in hand, your role in the story is made clear. You are not here to hide; you are here to fight, resembling those stupidly fun Man's Life magazine covers. Even your starting point, alone in the bushes with one of the enemy's weapons, implies that this character has escaped captivity. And given the flow of the game, you are not here to just escape.
You are not given an objective, admittedly. But Lost Civilizations was made with the idea that you are exploring long buried ruins. Mystery is weaved in the set up alone. So, you having only just escaped captivity, having zero clue why you were brought there or what they are planning, makes sense. Both you and the player character are united in that respect: Neither of you know what is going on. But both of you are going to find out.
Some games are considered completely devoid of story, and its an argument I never truly agreed with. Stories, sometimes, are that simple. What matters is making what your writing/programming important enough to the viewer/player that they stay engaged. You still need a hook, you still need context. Quake is famous for being uncommitted to explaining why the protagonist is there in the first place, or what "Quake" is, but the moods, weapons and design still hook me in. There is still the immediate context of the gothic castles and deadly mazes. There are monsters and there is the macabre theme, and its edge and commitment to the bit can be very engaging all on their own.
The various enemies in this mod set up probably should not be taken seriously as characters. But they are still serious as threats. As goofy as the set up is, there is no bathos to be had beyond that. They are armed and ready to kill you, so you better hope you shoot first. Early Id Software was particularly skilled in this tonal balance. Their games will make you laugh, but they manage to do that while maintaining the edge of the enemy threat. Kriegsland, before you get to the maps themselves, captures this quite well. The gratuitous, cheeseball German and retro futuristic designs do not take away from the tension of the gameplay.
Combined with that tonal balance, the maps do flow into a narrative of their own. Again, you start in a islands, then go further into one land with its castles, and then go deeper into ruins. There is a drug induced dream sequence at some point. Eventually, you get to more modern urban environments, which will lead you to a base with strange lost technology in an underground lab. From there, you go through a portal into a strange eldritch dimension of floating pyramids and lands being slowly consumed by lava. Escape that, and you return to the military lab, now ruined by (presumably) your actions, finding your way to another lab.
And here is where things take a turn. This lab is a smallish circular building, a control panel with a scientist standing beside it. There, you fight wave after wave of enemies while trying to deactivate a barrier shield around the scientist. With the last Nazi blown to pieces, the barrier shield is gone, and the scientist just stares at you.
Perhaps, this is the part where my whole theory takes a hit, but hear me out. For a moment, I was lost as to what to do. Clicking the Action key did nothing. I either missed or could not harm him with the combat knife. After about a minute of looking around the room, I decide to fire my shotgun at the man, and he finally reacted with a demon yell of pain. I fired again (maybe a third time) and the cry gets louder, with the wall of the room exploding. And this ends the map.
"I see," I thought. "This is a reskin of the head of John Romero, and killing it ends the level."
Because this mod was not 30 maps long (but trust me, this was not a short campaign), its last map is a small vacation spot as an elaborate "Thank you for playing" sign. And that is the ending. You have completed everything the modder set up for you.
So, I sat there, looking at the background scenery and went, in a satisfied way, "Cool."
Was what I had just witnessed a story?
This is not what the creators of either mod necessarily intended. No one intended for me to fight Nazis in an Indiana Jones-meets-Wolfenstein-esque pulp adventure through these particular maps. I have only myself to blame for that specific combination of mods. Then again, I put these two mods together not really knowing what I was in for. Authorial intent, but for my clueless actions, is not a major factor here.
Perhaps, then, we take the route of Death of the Author, and just judge this improvised cocktail for what it is rather than what it is supposed to be. Broadly speaking, this is a Wolfenstein-esque narrative where our hero chases his enemies into lost ruins, where they are clearly looking for something. Over the course, we have our dream sequence, perhaps influenced by the hero's own traumatic war experience. We make our way out of the ruins, mostly empty handed.
We return to Europe as the chase continues, and already they have their projects up and running. We go in, destroy the machinations leading to the weird portal trip from the other side. With that technology now disrupted, we escape the main base and hunt down the scientist responsible. The Nazis make one last ditch effort to save whatever tech remains, including the scientist. They fail, and the scientist just stands there, staring mockingly. We try to beckon him to follow. He doesn't, his intent seemingly to stay and continue his work, consequences be damned.
Can we assume he refuses with a slight demonic echo to his voice? Sure, let's do that. Terrified, we shoot him, and the demonic echo becomes a shout. Somehow, the scientist is still alive. Another shell is fired, the scientist cries out one more time and the lab begins to implode on itself.
The technology is lost, but given the wrong hands it found itself in, perhaps humanity was not ready for it.
Our hero escapes this, and travels to a remote island. It is not a military base, not even for the Allies. Nor is it a warzone. Nah, this soldier had seen enough, his job is done. The Nazis were already crumbling from the inside. It was time to return home.
What was that demonic cry? This soldier does not know, and does not care to.
From that pile of tropes, we can glean some themes from the wreckage. Obviously, there's the digging up technology that humanity is not ready for. There is destruction of old lost ruins, motivated by grave robbery, rather than archeology. There is the horrors of war, reinforced by the demonic cry and what can be interpreted as a technological circle of Hell. There is fascism as a cancer upon an otherwise beautiful land. And like some forms of cancer, the only way to remove it is painful and bloody, leaving behind a wound and terrible trauma. Yes, the Nazis are dead, but the bloody corpses remain. You could say that hearing a demonic voice for the first time, after drug induced nightmares, the best thing for our soldier was to stop. These are not intended, but these are the thoughts that this whole adventure stirred in my mind.
This is all, of course, my interpretation of an overly elaborate game of pretend. But the point of this exercise is to demonstrate how much context matters. Let's say, I kept the whole load out to be about BFGs and demons. Well, you would basically be in a hell ridden wilderness with the most conscious enemy being zombies, but never anything human. Change that to the army of a fascist regime, suddenly the enemy is alive and consciously following orders. A wild, chaotic stampede becomes active, deliberate occupation. As far as programming goes, they are very similar, even identical in most respects, but the presentation makes all the difference.
You could call it another coat of paint, but the paint still speaks. I'm here to not just fight any old monster; I'm here to fight fascists because I have a bit of an axe to grind with current events. This is the fantastical image that worst of them aspire to. Therefore, it is my own fantasy versus theirs.
This is why I turn my nose up at the idea of some games having "no story" or that, somehow, the story does not matter. Context is why we're here. What is Dungeons & Dragons without a charismatic Dungeon Master? What is without its demons? What is From Software's whole library without its environments? Role playing doesn't come from following a script, it comes from responding to what the designers put before you.
This journey, that an unknown number of players took (and maybe it was just me), was not planned. But the art of it hit me in a very unique way. And I returned with a story to tell.
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