![]() This set a precedent for fan-made content and informed everything from the rise of Counter–Strike out of Half-Life and the sheer volume of mods for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim years later. John Cormack even went as far as releasing the source code for Doom in 1997. The programmers of tomorrow were building their own levels, playing with the game engine and finding new and ingenious ways to play online. Why? Because of how its developer had embraced the huge modding community. It made for more intricate levels, far more detailed enemies and set the stage for some of the decade’s best online multiplayer arenas, including the still-brilliant Quake 3 Arena.īy the late ‘90s, Doom’s popularity continued to grow, despite its age. While Doom employed the use of flat sprites in a 3D environment, Quake’s new engine used fully-rendered 3D assets, and the difference was night and day. Quake was a giant leap forwards in every way for the genre, taking countless elements that made Doom so quintessentially addictive and making it even more irresistible. Of course, another big game launched in 1996, and it just happened to be from the makers of Doom itself. In all honesty, it was a world away from the flat The Elder Scrolls Arena in 1994, but even as an antithesis to the speed and mechanical purity of Doom (especially with its heavy focus on story and world-building), it still owed much to Doom’s pioneering presence. In the same year, Bethesda Softworks unleashed The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall on the world, finally freeing the corridor shooter from its traditional linear environments.Įmbracing more of a traditional RPG setup, Daggerfall was a revelation in its approach to ‘open–world’ level design (an entirely new term at the time) and grander storytelling. It was satire, but Doom’s legacy was there for all to see. Levels were filled with secret rooms and shortcuts, weapons were over-the-top in their sheer violence and no one had managed to make a shooter quite as humorous as one starring the titular Duke. Duke Nukem 3D was less of trendsetter and more of a pastiche, but it still took countless features from Doom and riffed on them. In the three years after Doom’s first release in December 1993, 3D graphics evolved in leaps and bounds, and studios began finding new ways to innovate in terms of both aesthetics and programming ideas. ![]() Thanks in part to the in-house Jedi engine, players in Dark Forces could look around in true 3D fashion, which – when coupled with the game’s innovative use of multi-tiered levels – created one of the most immersive shooters yet. Previously, shooters had mostly stuck to using an X–Y axis for movement (where you could look left and right, but not up or down). So, when LucasArts unleashed Star Wars: Dark Forces it presented a considerable step forwards for the genre. ![]() Who would have thought it would be this genre that would help rejuvenate the Star Wars licence? Not only that, but those core tenants would evolve as a result. Right away, the formula of Doom’s DNA continued to thrive in the burgeoning ‘corridor shooter’ scene. The result was a game that was well ahead of its time in the early ’90s, especially in regards to its 3D visuals and physics engine. It took the sense of dread Doom had captured so well and made you even more vulnerable, placing more emphasis on puzzle solving and storyline. In the same year, System Shock – the precursor to BioShock and its own gaggle of copycats – also dropped, and it too took considerable inspiration from Id’s seminal corridor shooter. It would take another five years for deathmatches to fund their feet online in 1999, but Doom’s influence was already spreading its roots. Marathon, for example – which arrived a good year later in 1994 – made a far smoother and more user–friendly take on networked multiplayer (a concept which Bungie would take countless steps further with Halo: Combat Evolved seven years later). ![]() However, among all those forgettable instalments you could finally see developers taking the principles Doom set in place and taking them one step further. Of course, when you’ve created your own gaming subculture and established a flashpoint in the development scene, you’re always going to get copycats.
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