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HALF-LIFE2 vs DOOM3: Storyline. POLL

V

VIAN

Diamond Member
Based soley on what is described in the OP, vote. Which do you think is cooler?

DOOM3:
There is a base on Mars owned by a company called UAC who's main project is to try and figure out how to work these teleporting machines left here by an older civilization. Lately though people who used the teleportators sometimes died or just really weird things started happening to them. You are a replacement for one of those inujured.

The lead scientist seems to have gone a little crazy or made a deal with the devil. In the process of maintaining it, an explosion happens and the teleporter releases all these demons into the mars facility. You try and follow the Sarges orders, but begin to doubt his judgement, also influenced by the evil doctor, who later seems to want nothing but Hell to take over.

Later on, you find out that when UAC first excavated on Mars, they found these stones with writings unknown to them and some curiously advanced technology, the teleporter. Without deciphering all the stones, the scientists started to study the technology, which led to this present day disaster. The stones told of a previous civilization that had lived in Mars. They invented the teleporter, but found that when they used it they opened the gates to hell. There was a big war in, which some people lefte Mars and headed towards Earth, which was ended when some scientists created the ultimate weapon called the Soul Cube. This weapon was weilded by one man alone to close hell's gate. (I'm not sure if this is a prophecy or if it is what really happened. If they did invent the Soul Cube, then why not use it.)

So you go to hell to get the soul cube, and find the demon, boss, and kick his ass and end the carnage by closing the gates.


HALF-LIFE2:
You are thrown by the Gman into being chased by guards. You have very little idea of what's going on. Somehow, since Black Mesa, the world was taken over by aliens who rule the world like a prison, through a pawn name Dr. Breen, who organized earth's surrender in exchange to be treated as a higher authority figure than just regular people. They want to control population growth it seems.

So you try and escape to a safe place using the help of a rebel force, that thinks you're their savior until you find out that Eli Vance, one of your old colligues and major player in the rebel force, has been kidnapped by one of his colligues, Dr. Mossman for Dr. Breen. You join with Vance's daughter, Alyx, to rescue him, heading back towards the City you were trying to escape from, City 17.

You attack the Dr. Breens base, the Citadel, formed of some advanced alien technology, at least it seems, and stop him from teleporting to safety by exploding his teleporter. You don't get to know what happens after the explosion other than the Gman will let you rest once more till the next job. He seems to be selling your services to some higher power.
 
I beat both these games a long time ago, so I'm not likely to remember everything, but here it goes...
Out of Doom 3, I got:

There are some crazy experiments going on on Mars. It looks as if this lead scientist guy is going a lil crazy. Suddenly, something goes wrong, and the gates to Hell are opened. You keep communications up with Sarge, but you begin to doubt his judgement. In actuality, he has been corrupted by Hell's forces, and you are forced to kill him. You begin to find some information and artifacts that seem to imply that humans were planted on earth by some alien race. Now you teleport to hell to kill some devil-like force directly and seal the portal, and of course you are successful, etc.

HL2:

You have no idea exactly what is going on, but you know from the words of GMan that you are needed for something. It quickly becomes evident that the world has been taken control of by hostile aliens, but curiously enough they appear to have a human spokesperson. You later find that he organized the earth's surrender in exchange for power. Later, Eli Vance is kidnapped, and you and his daughter are forced to infiltrate an alien facility to free him. It becomes increasingly clear that the old administrator from Black Mesa is losing any sympathy for his people, and you assault the aliens' main base. You make it up to the guy but all of your weapons are taken and he flees, attempting to teleport out. In the end, you manage to stop his teleportation and kill him, but there is a massive explosion, and it's not clear what happens after this.


While on paper the Doom 3 story looks a little better, IMO, I think when people talk about HL2 having the better storyline they're talking about how it's presented. Whereas in Doom 3 you're pretty much either shooting things or examining PDA's 95% of the time, HL2 spends more time on plot development (the two lab sequences, the fight with gregory in ravenholm, the defense of the small town with a nervous leader from an air strike, etc) that you really can't consider a part of the actual storyline but still add a lot to the game. This, to me, is why I enjoyed HL2 more. Maybe I'm expecting more of an RPG at this point than a tried-and-true FPS, but I would certainly hope that FPS's are expected to advanced past constant combat to include more RPG-like elements.

 
Originally posted by: NYHoustonman
I beat both these games a long time ago, so I'm not likely to remember everything, but here it goes...
Out of Doom 3, I got:

There are some crazy experiments going on on Mars. It looks as if this lead scientist guy is going a lil crazy. Suddenly, something goes wrong, and the gates to Hell are opened. You keep communications up with Sarge, but you begin to doubt his judgement. In actuality, he has been corrupted by Hell's forces, and you are forced to kill him. You begin to find some information and artifacts that seem to imply that humans were planted on earth by some alien race. Now you teleport to hell to kill some devil-like force directly and seal the portal, and of course you are successful, etc.

HL2:

You have no idea exactly what is going on, but you know from the words of GMan that you are needed for something. It quickly becomes evident that the world has been taken control of by hostile aliens, but curiously enough they appear to have a human spokesperson. You later find that he organized the earth's surrender in exchange for power. Later, Eli Vance is kidnapped, and you and his daughter are forced to infiltrate an alien facility to free him. It becomes increasingly clear that the old administrator from Black Mesa is losing any sympathy for his people, and you assault the aliens' main base. You make it up to the guy but all of your weapons are taken and he flees, attempting to teleport out. In the end, you manage to stop his teleportation and kill him, but there is a massive explosion, and it's not clear what happens after this.


While on paper the Doom 3 story looks a little better, IMO, I think when people talk about HL2 having the better storyline they're talking about how it's presented. Whereas in Doom 3 you're pretty much either shooting things or examining PDA's 95% of the time, HL2 spends more time on plot development (the two lab sequences, the fight with gregory in ravenholm, the defense of the small town with a nervous leader from an air strike, etc) that you really can't consider a part of the actual storyline but still add a lot to the game. This, to me, is why I enjoyed HL2 more. Maybe I'm expecting more of an RPG at this point than a tried-and-true FPS, but I would certainly hope that FPS's are expected to advanced past constant combat to include more RPG-like elements.
Click to expand...

you're only half right about the doom3 plot.. it turns out that the artifacts from the ancient race were the ancestors to humans - the ancient martians relocated to earth after a demon invasion or two were pushed back. (it's implied that the martians are human ancestors)
 
Originally posted by: NYHoustonman
I beat both these games a long time ago, so I'm not likely to remember everything, but here it goes...
Out of Doom 3, I got:

There are some crazy experiments going on on Mars. It looks as if this lead scientist guy is going a lil crazy. Suddenly, something goes wrong, and the gates to Hell are opened. You keep communications up with Sarge, but you begin to doubt his judgement. In actuality, he has been corrupted by Hell's forces, and you are forced to kill him. You begin to find some information and artifacts that seem to imply that humans were planted on earth by some alien race. Now you teleport to hell to kill some devil-like force directly and seal the portal, and of course you are successful, etc.

HL2:

You have no idea exactly what is going on, but you know from the words of GMan that you are needed for something. It quickly becomes evident that the world has been taken control of by hostile aliens, but curiously enough they appear to have a human spokesperson. You later find that he organized the earth's surrender in exchange for power. Later, Eli Vance is kidnapped, and you and his daughter are forced to infiltrate an alien facility to free him. It becomes increasingly clear that the old administrator from Black Mesa is losing any sympathy for his people, and you assault the aliens' main base. You make it up to the guy but all of your weapons are taken and he flees, attempting to teleport out. In the end, you manage to stop his teleportation and kill him, but there is a massive explosion, and it's not clear what happens after this.


While on paper the Doom 3 story looks a little better, IMO, I think when people talk about HL2 having the better storyline they're talking about how it's presented. Whereas in Doom 3 you're pretty much either shooting things or examining PDA's 95% of the time, HL2 spends more time on plot development (the two lab sequences, the fight with gregory in ravenholm, the defense of the small town with a nervous leader from an air strike, etc) that you really can't consider a part of the actual storyline but still add a lot to the game. This, to me, is why I enjoyed HL2 more. Maybe I'm expecting more of an RPG at this point than a tried-and-true FPS, but I would certainly hope that FPS's are expected to advanced past constant combat to include more RPG-like elements.
Click to expand...
That's a good HL2 summary. D3's isn't completely correct IIRC.

DOOM3 {
There is a base on Mars owned by a company called UAC who's main project is to try and figure out how to work these teleporting machines left here by an older civilization. Lately though people who used the teleportators sometimes died or just really weird things started happening to them. You are a replacement for one of those inujured.

The lead scientist seems to have gone a little crazy or made a deal with the devil. In the process of maintaining it, an explosion happens and the teleporter releases all these demons into the mars facility. You try and follow the Sarges orders, but begin to doubt his judgement, also influenced by the evil doctor, who later seems to want nothing but Hell to take over.

Later on, you find out that when UAC first excavated on Mars, they found these stones with writings unknown to them and some curiously advanced technology, the teleporter. Without deciphering all the stones, the scientists started to study the technology, which led to this present day disaster. The stones told of a previous civilization that had lived in Mars. They invented the teleporter, but found that when they used it they opened the gates to hell. There was a big war in, which some people lefte Mars and headed towards Earth, which was ended when some scientists created the ultimate weapon called the Soul Cube. This weapon was weilded by one man alone to close hell's gate. (I'm not sure if this is a prophecy or if it is what really happened. If they did invent the Soul Cube, then why not use it.)

So you go to hell to get the soul cube, and find the demon, boss, and kick his ass and end the carnage by closing the gates.
} DOOM3

The PDA's told most of the back story, but mostly the emails shown were to keep the atmosphere up and freaky.

HALF-LIFE2 {
You are thrown by the Gman into being chased by guards. You have very little idea of what's going on. Somehow, since Black Mesa, the world was taken over by aliens who rule the world like a prison, through a pawn name Dr. Breen, who organized earth's surrender in exchange to be treated as a higher authority figure than just regular people. They want to control the population it seems.

So you try and escape to a safe place until you find out that Eli Vance, one of your old colligues, Eli Vance has been kidnapped by one of his colligues, Dr. Mossman for Dr. Breen. You join with Vanc's daughter, Alyx, to rescue him, heading back towards the City you were trying to escape from, City 17.

You attack the Dr. Breens base, the Citadel, formed of some advanced alien technology, at least it seems, and stop him from teleporting to safety by exploding his teleporter. You don't get to know what happens after the explosion other than the Gman will let you rest once more till the next job. He seems to be selling your services to some higher power.
} HALF-LIFE2

I think you maybe right on why people like HL2's story line. There technically are more things happening since you go through more of a vareity of environments compared to Doom3. There is more character development in HL2.
 
You didn't go to hell with the soul cube, you went to hell to get the soul cube. The evil doctor had brought it there so that it couldn't be used to seal the gate, you had to go into hell to get it.

The stones seem to prophecise (sp?) a single hero fighting the demons and sealing the gate to hell, which is obviously you...especially since the stones clearly depict a space marine.

The "mars was the original home of humanity" concept is interesting, but of course its not exactly a new idea. I've seen it in anime movies and regular movies before.

I'd actually say doom3 had a better, more coherent story, but it didn't have enough of it...because game was just way to fvcking long. HL2's story had less potential, but was much better executed...plus it had more characters and better character development.
 
Originally posted by: PingSpike
You didn't go to hell with the soul cube, you went to hell to get the soul cube. The evil doctor had brought it there so that it couldn't be used to seal the gate, you had to go into hell to get it.

The stones seem to prophecise (sp?) a single hero fighting the demons and sealing the gate to hell, which is obviously you...especially since the stones clearly depict a space marine.

The "mars was the original home of humanity" concept is interesting, but of course its not exactly a new idea. I've seen it in anime movies and regular movies before.

I'd actually say doom3 had a better, more coherent story, but it didn't have enough of it...because game was just way to fvcking long. HL2's story had less potential, but was much better executed...plus it had more characters and better character development.
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I fixed it.

Do the stones prophecise? They had the soul cube previously. They could have used it. It could be recorded history.

I'd also say that Doom3's story was better, and that the game should have been cut much shorter to maybe 18 hours instead of those 23 hours that it took for me to beat it. HL2's seems to have a lot of potential, but never excerised it. In my opinion, the game should have been the length of Doom3 and the story should have branched off into much more complications than it did. It would have been an epic. That would have totally made up for the lack of challenge. Too many quesitons left unanswered in situations where they could have been answered, but didn't bother.

 
I took the stones to mean a prophecy not recorded history. But it isn't really clear so whatever works for you is good.
 
Yeah, I think gorcorps is right. Although I thought there was a prophecy mentioned in some data log or something...I could be wrong on that one. If you look at one of the last stones, I think it has the "warrior" weilding the soul cube, and the warrior is basically a stone version of the marine usually shown on the cover of the original doom box. Now you could look at that a few ways, it could be a prophecy of you coming to save the day...or it could just be an interesting way of viewing this current game as a sequel. Or it could just be a kind of easteregg-joke deal. 🙂

I do remember the story went that the ancient martians sacrificed themselves to create the soul cube, and their strongest warrior used it to the seal the gate originally. They sealed the gate and the soul cube was left behind...I'm not sure if their civilization continued with a dwindled population before eventually dying out, or that in closing the gate/creating the soul cube they were all lost. The cube was found in the dig site, and put on display in that museum style level. But by the time you get there the cube has already been stolen and brought to hell.
 
HL2's story is overrated, IMO. Its like an episode of lost. Anyone can make a story that doesn't make any sense, and just create more questions instead of answering any. The thing that made HL2 feel better though was there were more characters and character interaction. And the attention paid to facial expressions, animation and voice really made a lot of the characters feel real. I was genuinely sad when I saw rebels fighting alongside me die. Not many games do that for me. If they'd actually made the buddy AI a little less retarded it would have helped a lot there too...you stop feeling sorry for in game characters when they block your path while running away from a live grenade.

Not that I think doom3 is anything spectacular story wise either.
 
For me at least, HL2 had a more immersive story - I felt like my character was actually taking part in something, working towards changing objectives. D3 seemed to solely provide action, and then wrap a nice story line around it. On the flip side, D3 had a more extensive story via the notes and PDA emails you find littered across the levels, while HL2 had some glaringly frustrating omissions.
 
Originally posted by: PingSpike
HL2's story is overrated, IMO. Its like an episode of lost. Anyone can make a story that doesn't make any sense, and just create more questions instead of answering any. The thing that made HL2 feel better though was there were more characters and character interaction. And the attention paid to facial expressions, animation and voice really made a lot of the characters feel real. I was genuinely sad when I saw rebels fighting alongside me die. Not many games do that for me. If they'd actually made the buddy AI a little less retarded it would have helped a lot there too...you stop feeling sorry for in game characters when they block your path while running away from a live grenade.

Not that I think doom3 is anything spectacular story wise either.
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Heh, I was rather happy when they died, having them around in small areas was a PITA 🙂

Can't say either story was very interesting really, though I did kinda like the ancients part of the Doom III story.
 
Originally posted by: VIAN
You're just sayin that cause you prolly saw the Doom movie and thought it sucked. 😛
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Not to mention the movie had little in common with the story line in the game, other than it was on mars.
 
Originally posted by: PingSpike
HL2's story is overrated, IMO. Its like an episode of lost. Anyone can make a story that doesn't make any sense, and just create more questions instead of answering any. The thing that made HL2 feel better though was there were more characters and character interaction. And the attention paid to facial expressions, animation and voice really made a lot of the characters feel real. I was genuinely sad when I saw rebels fighting alongside me die. Not many games do that for me. If they'd actually made the buddy AI a little less retarded it would have helped a lot there too...you stop feeling sorry for in game characters when they block your path while running away from a live grenade.

Not that I think doom3 is anything spectacular story wise either.
Click to expand...

I agree and this is a very good point. HL2's story wasn't any better, but it's storytelling mechanisms were better. And this really comes down to 1 simple thing, Doom3 did not have much social interaction in the game and I think that hurts in the long run. You'd find people, they'd lead you down a hall only to die to an imp. It was very depressing.

One of HL2's only really decent storytelling piece comes down to the G-Man. He is mysterious and confusing and also a badass (see end of HL1). This really captures the audience and is the reason people look for G-man sightings. If it wasn't for g-man, I think it is safe to say HL2 would be almost completely devoid of story. Whoever thought his character up deserves a lot of credit.
 
I'm usually pretty open minded...but I just simply cannot imagine ANYONE choosing D3 in this poll. IMHO, HL2 has the greatest story of any game on any console ever.
 
D3 had a decent story, poor presentation. HL2 had a decent story, great presentation. I actually prefer the HL2 story-line, as I'm not too into the hell-spawn type story lines and prefer a bit more 'realism'. Yeah, yeah, there are aliens in HL2 etc., but the environments were much more true to life.
 
Originally posted by: Stangs55
I'm usually pretty open minded...but I just simply cannot imagine ANYONE choosing D3 in this poll. IMHO, HL2 has the greatest story of any game on any console ever.
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A better storyline than Xenogears? I think not. Let me elaborate, I think Xenogears sh!ts all over HL2. Not only that, HL2 can't even pretend to high five SS2, Deus Ex, or any other game with a decent storyline. HL2 didn't even win most improved player. This is not even mentioning a single adventure game. I'm guessing you didn't think your viewpoint through when you posted it.
 
Originally posted by: Stangs55
I'm usually pretty open minded...but I just simply cannot imagine ANYONE choosing D3 in this poll. IMHO, HL2 has the greatest story of any game on any console ever.
Click to expand...

I could see how some people would like it, but anyone claiming it's got the greatest story ever...well said person can't have played a whole lot of games.
There are so many games, old and new, that puts HL2 to shame in a big way.
 
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