/vr/ - Retro Games

>>1942328
>>1942323
Doom 2 as it was made, was pretty much made before development of Quake really got off the ground (though Carmack was more or less working on that engine at the time), it was a deal with GT Interactive, who basically said "Hey, how about you make a cool mission pack for Doom, and we'll publish it for you, we'll all make loadsamoney!", so they did. Doom 2 wasn't really planned in the way it happened, if it was even planned at all at that point.

While Doom 2 did add a lot of wonderful new stuff, monsters, textures, music, and the Super Shotgun, the new levelset was just not nearly as good, Tom Hall was off the team already, so the only real input he had on Doom 2 was that an unfinished/unused map meant for Doom was recycled and redone as Map 10 for Doom 2, John Romero, who made a lot of the really great levels in Doom (including pretty much all of E1), was high off his tits on the fame Doom brought to them, he was busy being out and famous, being a "rockstar", he wasn't doing as much of his job (this would later continue with Quake, and then a lot with Dai Katana), as a result, he only made six levels for Doom 2, and Sandy Petersen had to pick up Romero's slack, which was problematic, as even though Sandy's levels were fun and imaginative, they were ugly as shit, and don't work well in large doses.

The maps had less personality because one of the more colorful persons was less involved, and one who's colors are good when used sparingly had to fill that in.

Doom 2 is fun, sure, but it's not nearly as fun as Doom, even if it has a lot of cool new shit, because the maps just aren't as good, there's not nearly as much atmosphere, there's not nearly as much interesting themes, maps feel largely disjointed, in Doom, you felt much more that you really were in dark distant space stations, on far away moons.