Editorial

id Software, Doom 3 BFG Edition and how the mighty has fallen in the eyes of PC gamers

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Man, things are not looking good for the relationship between id Software and PC gamers. It’s ironic, but the company fromTexas was once upon a time THE PC developer. Fast forward a couple of years and here we are today with id Software dropping on the ball on yet another PC game. Doom 3: BFG was released a couple of days ago and let us tell you that it is worse (when it comes to its tech) than the eight year old game that was offered by the very same studio. It’s ironic, but the id you knew is dead and won’t come back anytime soon.
Let’s start this editorial with Doom 3: BFG’s release. This new Doom 3 version is based on id Tech 5 and as you may have guessed, it is not friendly to mods. What this means is that all those mind-blowing mods and texture packs – such as Sikkmod and Wulfen’s textures – are not compatible with it. What’s also sad is that this new version looks worse in some areas than the vanilla version did back in the days. Yes, shaders have been tweaked in this new version but the flashlight does not cast shadows. It’s true that id Software had troubles with the console version of Doom 3: BFG. Our guess is that Carmack decided to ditch the dynamic shadows that are casted by the flashlight in order to gain a bit more performance on consoles. And as you may have guessed, that console limitation was ported to the PC version. Oh, and did we mention that some levels of Doom 2 were altered due to the console release? And that they are still ‘butchered’ on the PC, even though there wasn’t any obvious reason for something like that? And did you know that id Software has reused a lot of assets and maps for the new Lost Mission maps?
Doom 3: The Lost Mission - Reused Maps

Truth be told, Carmack has tweeted earlier this weekend that Doom 3: BFG will go GPL. This might be the push PC gamers wanted for mod support on Doom 3: BFG but… hold on a second… what happened with the rumored RAGE Editor? Yes, the one that was promised when RAGE was not even released yet and was supposed to initially come out in March and then in Summer? Even if the Editor gets out now, it will be too little, too late. It’s ironic but the company has decided and managed to port the whole Doom 3 game in id Tech 5 and could not get out those promised mod tools.
It’s really sad, because Carmack tried to calm PC gamers down during this year’s Quakecon. Carmack apologized to PC gamers, back then, for the shoddy PCport ofRAGE. However, id Software is doing the exact same thing with Doom 3: BFG PC. They are merely porting a – ironically – worse version of a eight year old game. Carmack  had also admitted in Quakecon that PCs are superior to consoles, yet here we are with a simple consoleport ofDoom 3: BFG and no additional features. Well, okay. There is one PC feature that was included and that was a new method of motion blurring. Hooray. We don’t get shadows or mods or higher resolution textures, but we get blurrier images due to that effect. How awesome. Not only that, but Steam has ‘suddenly’ stopped offering the original Doom 3 game. PC gamers will have to either buy the inferior BFG edition or the id Software Mega-Pack (that includes the original Doom 3 version… at least for now).
All in all, this is definitely not the id you all PC gamers loved back in the DOS days, which is something most of you already know. The sad thing is that id Software made the same mistakes that happened with RAGE’s release. Not only that, but the fact that they have not released yet the mod tools for RAGE – yet found time to port an entire game on a new engine – speaks for itself. Like it or not, id Software does not currently care so much for the PC crowd, as the main reason that Doom 3: BFG got re-released was to introduce the franchise to the console crowd. It’s hard to accept, and even though Carmack tried to calm PC gamers in Quakecon, id Software’s actions speak for themselves.