Now, now. I know what you are thinking "This is stupid, YOU are stupid! The story in Doom might be dumb fun but that doesn't mean it's good or fucking perfect! Idiot!". And yes, it is not a great story, of course not. But, it is the PERFECT story for a Doom game. Think about it.
Here is a game that realises how utterly stupid it's scenario is. Demons invade Mars cause we found a portal to hell. You can't tell some amazing story in this scenario. You just can't. But pretty much everything iD did to the story and, more importantly, how the story is told, was just the right decision.
In some alternate dark timeline the Doom Guy would have been written by Gearbox. He would have been some gravely voiced macho man, constantly spouting one liners like "I'll see you in Hell! So...RIGHT NOW" or "HELL-o!" or something stupid like that. And really, did anybody expect this much amount of restraint from this game? Would anybody here have been surprised if the game had been starring Doom Nukem? But thankfully he is a mute. But despite being a mute, he still has a LOT of personality. I actually can't think off many mute characters with this much personality. That's because his personality is really simple: He is a dumb, angry, angry, angry man who just wants to kill stuff. All of this is conveyed perfectly without being completely over-the-top. And his comical angriness is actually important because...
The world takes itself JUST serious enough
Again: You can easily see this game taking a Borderlands approach and making the whole entire world SUPER comical and over the top on purpose. There would be a scene were a scientist says something like "What could possibly go wrong?" seconds before being eaten by a monster and somebody would hand you the BFG saying "This version has never been tested but I'm sure it won't explode immidiately....again". And then the game would show a close up of Doom Guy's face going "Whaaaaaaaa" and there would be a laughtrack. But the world itself actually takes itself kinda serious. It has a ludicrous premise, yes, but it just rolls with it as if that's just the most normal thing ever. Getting energy from hell? Sure, why not? Seems fine to me! And that itself COULD be a problem too. The game could have also taken itself serious, which is what happened to Doom 3. But the serious world contrasted with the actually kinda subtly idiocy of our main character creates an almost perfect blend. I feel like if they would change one of those aspects, it would ruin the game. (Well, obviously the gameplay would still kick ass, but I'm going to admit the presentation of the story did A LOT for me.).
There are other things the game does just soo right. In so many games, you can kill thousands of enemies but you still never get the feeling that the enemy "respects" you. I seriously HATE it (especially in RPGs) when you get to some boss and he acts all snide and abov-it-all "Now, little one, you are going to die.." etc. and then you just kill him. In Skyrim I killed a magic fucking dragon in heaven, became the master of all the guilds in the world and can disintegrate people by shouting at them AND summon not one but two dragons, one of them being an UNDEAD DRAGON, and yet random people on the street tell me that I smell like a dog. This happens just way too often. Why not have a boss that might actually be nervous fighting you? At least once in a while? And that's kinda what they did in Doom. While all the enemies are obviously just demons and don't show much emotion, the backstory you can find in Hell just feel good man. It just feels good. It's nice knowing that for once the enemy is actually as afraid of you as it probably should be. Even if that's not really represented in the game, it still makes you feel like a badass when they talk about the unstoppable Doomslayer. And again: This shows just the right level of stupidity and restraint to be really enjoyable. It's neither super over-the-top nor super serious. And really....you don't have to go out of your way to make "Demons from hell are afraid of some dude" seem like stupid fun. You can just present it as subdued as you want and it's still going to be dumb fun. No need to HAMMER IT IN how ridiculous it is.
And that's why I respect Doom's story so much. Cause I felt like the developers actually trusted me to be smart enough to get it. They didn't felt the need to be super over the top to make sure even the dumbest idiot understands that this isn't supposed to be taken 100% seriously. There really aren't a lot of "jokes" in the game, and yet it's constantly dumb fun. So yeah, obviously Doom would have been a good game regardless of the story. But really, I was (and still am) super impressed what they did with it. And who would have ever thought people might say this about the story of a Doom game in 2016?
