Doom III

With id''s latest coming to the shelves early next year, speculation has arose. id has revealed that the only major advancements in the game will be with the technology, and the minor advancements basically consist of a professional story told by cutscenes and through PDA emails and logs picked off of corpses, SShock2 style, an intro chapter, as in Half-Life, and computer interfaces to interact with as a disguise for simple switch flipping. (of course, the advancements of Half-Life of NPC interaction, realistic level layouts, and item placements are taken into account as well) Will the new technology, with its fantastically realistic lighting being used to build moody scenes and the dolby 5.1 surround sound giving character environments make up for the fact that it''s simply a Half-Lifeized Doom with a good story? Can the usage of the new technology make it the scariest game ever and make it an instant classic as the original? In my opinion yes. With the original Doom, id Software barely innovated over Wolfenstein 3D in the gameplay department-it was all in the technology and the overall tone of the game... Using the new technology at the time, id Software was able to build a moody, suspenseful atmosphere that made playing a Wolf3d clone fun. Being the biggest leap in technology since Quake1, Doom3''s engine more than has the capability of transforming the way games look. . . but will id''s designers make good use of the technology to once again build a genre defining first-person shooter? Only time, and a new computer, will tell. . . but my opinion is id will.