Trivia / Doom II

• Author's Saving Throw: While Doom II is a textbook definition of Mission-Pack Sequel, it does make a few changes that significantly improved the gameplay over the first Doom offered, which would be important for keeping interest in the game and its map making + modding scene alive for decades after its release:
  • While Barons Of Hell serve a strong role in being an unflinching Stone Wall enemy that can soak up a ton of punishment and dish out a meaty hit, an enemy of such great durability with mediocre threat couldn't really be used that frequently without slowing the game down. Sandy Petersen remarked in an interview that once he lost his patience when having to kill a Baron with just the Shotgun, leading to the creation of the Hell Knight, a Palette Swap version of the Baron that shares its attack and all stats but with half the HP, allowing it to be used effectively as a mid tier enemy that acts as a beefed up Imp. The Baron meanwhile was used much less frequently in Doom II than it was in Ultimate Doom, mainly being reserved for the occasion where an enemy with such high durability and difficulty in stunlocking would be a big threat, like in a sudden close quarters ambush and to block ledges.
  • The rest of the new enemies introduced in Doom II served this purpose in general; the original Doom bestiary had a glaring flaw in that other than the Cyberdemon, all its enemies attacked by throwing/spitting a single basic fireball, by melee, or by hitscan. It additionally only had two higher tier demons available that weren't boss monsters; the Cacodemon and Baron of Hell, both of which had what was essentially just a stronger variation of the Imp's attack. Besides the limited enemy variety, this significantly limited the tactical potential in combat encounters, since there was very little middle ground between The Goomba-type enemies that die in one shotgun blast and bullet sponges that took half a dozen at the least, and meant that high level players would usually have to be put into severely disadvantageous positions (e.g. being boxed into a tight dead end with limited ammo), deprived of resources, or faced with an overabundance of enemies (particularly Shotgunners and Cyberdemons) to really be challenged. Faced with this problem, ID introduced a slew of new higher tier enemies with more unique behaviors and attacks that not only greatly expanded the possible combat scenarios, but also better actively tested the player in their time awareness, immediate spacial awareness, and general spacial awareness, as explained in depth by this Doom World post. It's safe to say that without the new Doom II enemies, Doom map making and modding wouldn't have been close to as popular and enduring as it has been, as most players likely would have gotten bored long ago with just the Doom 1 enemies to play around with.
  • In Ultimate Doom, killing enemies bigger than the Pinkies with the Shotgun could be a drag with its mediocre damage output and firing rate, while the Chaingun was too ammo inefficient to be used as a primary weapon (and ultimately not much better DPS-wise over the Shotgun), and rockets and plasma were generally too powerful to be given in abundance to the player without killing a typical map's difficulty. With Doom II introducing several new mid and high tier enemies that are a lot more durable than the Pinky, being stuck with the Shotgun would have made for an absolute slog. So in response to this need for a middle-ground weapon, the Super Shotgun was introduced; a shotgun that in close range packs as much punch as a direct hit from the Rocket Launcher, making a much more effective primary weapon that can deal with stronger enemies at a reasonable pace when you don't have or don't want to use rockets/plasma, and it can blow through hordes of the small fry too. The Super Shotgun served it purpose so effectively that it became about as popular and iconic as the BFG, and helped set the trend of the Short-Range Shotgun; even in the modern day where more "realistic" shooters reign, they still often find a way to incorporate a sawed-down double-barreled shotgun in the vein of Doom II's iconic Super Shotgun.
• Dummied Out: A piece of code that was dummied out was intended to allow for doors to slide sideways. This was meant to be used in the secret levels which are based on Wolfenstein 3-D, which had doors that slid open to the sides. The code was commented out when id decided to scale down the amount of Wolf3D assets in the WAD file. Therefore, the doors in the secret levels still open just like those found throughout the rest of the game.
• Refitted for Sequel: Map 10, "Refueling Base", was originally designed for the first game by Tom Hall, but was ultimately excluded until the second, giving Hall the odd distinction of contributing to Doom II despite having left id before it even started production.
• Throw It In!: Bobby Prince originally composed the music track "Into Sandy's City" with a MIDI piano tone playing the primary melody, but the id Software team disapproved of its sound, feeling that it didn't fit the mood of the game. As a joke, Prince replaced the tone with a harpsichord effect, assuming it would be even more poorly received, but to everyone's surprise, it sounded perfect, and was included in the game.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The game's source code includes Dummied Out lines that would have allowed for the doors in the two Wolfenstein 3D maps to open to the sides as they did in that game rather than opening upwards like they do normally. It would not be possible to replicate that sort of behavior on the Doom engine until the version that Hexen was built on introduced polyobjects.
  • According to Romero, Doom II was supposed to have a different version of its box art painted by fantasy artist Julie Bell, but her version was scrapped in favor of the one created by illustrator Gerald Brom due to the Cyberdemon being Off-Model. Hilariously, while Brom's version got the Cyberdemon right, his version of Doomguy was off-model compared to the one in Julie's painting.

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