Lets Talk About Pistol Start In Doom
In one of his twitch streams while developing Sigil, his first full Wad for the original Doom in two decades, John Romero briefly spoke about how he prefers to play the game on Pistol Start without Save-Scumming. Although I was familiar with these terms, it was the first time I'd heard them from the creator himself.
Basically in classic Doom, if you die you are thrown back to the start of the level with no guns. It penalises dying but as a player you can avoid this it by saving the game. This leads to a massive difference in how levels play out in their design. Not only can the player stock-pile weapons and ammo, they can also find powerful new weapons hidden in each level.
The alternative to this approach is to play Pistol Start, whereby you find what weapons you can in every stage. Most levels are constructed in such a way as to make this a viable option for the player, but it's led to a bit of a schism in how Doom levels are designed.
Sandy Peterson, who contributed to over half of Doom 2 noted he was disappointed in the first game; he felt they had not adequately accounted for the fact players were carrying their weapons over between levels:
"Most people started levels with some kind of significant equipment. However, almost all our playtesting was done starting each level with just a pistol. We made the game too easy for the average player."
It’s probably for this reason I’ve felt the levels in Doom 2 are extremely frustrating compared to the first game. Doom 2 spams enemies at you in such hordes that it almost expects you to have a constant supply of plasma gun ammo. I even prefer the much more difficult, yet fair TNT WAD which was made by fans.
The fact that each level of that WAD was designed by different authors means they were more focused in accounting for pistol start. It may even be the reason why TNT has gone on to become one of the more influential WADS over the years.
Now as for save-scumming, a term which certainly has its abrasive Gen X internet charm, I’m not going to get into the arguments for or against. A great video on the subject has been uploaded by Dean of Doom on Youtube already.
By all means people should play the way they want. I’m more interested in how it’s been accounted for in game design. Older PC shooters from the nineties, which have affectionately come to be known as boomer shooters, are praised for their difficulty and probably require it.
Recently I played through Jedi Outcast on the switch. Aside from the fact it’s cumbersome to play with a control pad, the game seemed to me to assume the player would save at every turn. This game really makes you “feel like a jedi”; since only a force wielder would have the level of precognition required to navigate it’s mean-spirited traps and far too accurate enemies. Save-scumming in this scenario just seems to be the sane way to play if you ask me.
There is no Pistol Start either; death simply reverts you to your last save, so you are encouraged to make your own checkpoint system, and this leads to the possibility you may lose all your progress in the game if you save it with a small amount of health left, for instance. It hasn’t happened to me yet, but the fear is enough to make me keep a few save files on hand at all times.
But even in games like Jedi Outcast, people will state a preference for certain levels or sections of the game they like playing through, and weapons are taken away at certain points. So it's still a key aspect to think about when looking at difficulty.
In this way, the creators of Doom using the Pistol Start system was a forward thinking idea. They may not have known the extent to which players would enjoy designing their own levels at the time of its implementation, but it certainly informed level design going forward.
It would be interesting how a hybrid system like this could work in a Souls game. Or other genres. Carrying over your weapons and inventory seems to be such a given in modern games these days, that there may be scope to design an experience around this not being the case.
In the original Doom Pistol Start was a kind of compromise born out of a time when save-points, passwords and level skips were still being ironed out into the smooth hassle free experience we expect today. That said, it might be interesting to see Pistol Start, Sword Start or even Pokemon Start make a return.
