Happy 20th anniversary to Doom 3! Everyone remembers this game for the tech (programmable shaders, render-to-texture’d normal maps, realtime stencil shadows), but this was also a great horror game! And the story was written by Matthew Costello, who also wrote the stories for The 7th Guest and The 11th Hour!

(IMO the BFG edition makes the game worse by removing the tension of using the flashlight, the levels were designed for the original flashlight switching mechanic. Use a source port like dhewm3 for playing on modern computers.)

Wikipeda Synopsis

Doom 3 is a 2004 survival horror first-person shooter video game developed by id Software and published by Activision. Doom 3 was originally released for Microsoft Windows on August 3, 2004, adapted for Linux later that year, and ported by Aspyr Media for Mac OS X in 2005. Developer Vicarious Visions ported the game to the Xbox, releasing it worldwide on April 4, 2005.

Doom 3 is set on Mars in 2145, where a military-industrial conglomerate has set up a scientific research facility into fields such as teleportation, biological research, and advanced weapons design. The teleportation experiments open a gateway to Hell, resulting in a catastrophic invasion of the Mars base by demons. The player controls a space marine who fights through the base to stop the demons attacking Mars and reaching Earth.

Doom 3 is the first reboot of the Doom series, ignoring the events of the previous games. Doom 3 utilizes the id Tech 4 game engine, which has since been licensed out to other developers, and later released under the GNU General Public License v3.0 or later in November 2011.

Doom 3 was a critical and commercial success; with more than 3.5 million copies of the game sold, it was the most successful game by developer id Software up to that date. Critics praised the game’s graphics, presentation, and atmosphere, although reviewers were divided by how close the gameplay was to that of the original Doom, focusing primarily on simply fighting through large numbers of enemy characters. The game was followed by Resurrection of Evil, an expansion pack developed by Nerve Software, in April 2005. A series of novelizations of Doom 3, written by Matthew J. Costello, debuted in February 2008. An expanded and remastered edition titled Doom 3: BFG Edition was released in the fourth quarter of 2012. It has been ported to various platforms, including some which enable portable and virtual reality gameplay.

Videos

John Carmack Announcing Doom 3 at MacWorld 2001 - “The final unification of lighting and shadowing across all surfaces in a game.”

Doom 3 - 16 Years Later: An LGR Retrospective

The Making of Doom 3 and the History of id Software

Links

IGDB Page

MobyGames Page

About !retrostatus@retrolemmy.com

This community is for big milestone anniversaries of retro games (15 years or older, every multiple of 5 years). See our sidebar for more info and resources for making your own posts here.

Post #1: [Retro Platinum] King’s Quest: Quest for the Crown (1984-05-10)

Post #2: [Retro Platinum] Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1989-05-12)

Post #3: [Retro Silver] Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike (1999-05-12)