Yeah, I was disappointed when I encountered Hayden. I wanted Doomguy to be the one to bring him proper justice, but next time you meet him he's already wrecked. Although honestly I think they still did him more justice than Ashley in REmake 4. Everyone seems to love the new Ashley, but I think she's just really awful. They completely changed her and also turned her into a boring do good girl. The secret agent talk scene on the elevator was just so bad, it's the kind of thing a 12 year old girl would say. Not a mature 20 year old student who knows very well that she can't ever be a secret agent because she's the f***ing president's daughter and would be recognized everywhere. And that's just 1 of the many issues I have with the new Ashley.
you can tell with how suddenly he had a holier than thou attitude in eternal that they remade his personality so they could unveil his new angelic origins
I came up with a fix to Samuel/Samur years ago. Samuel discovered the tomb containing Samur, and The Father's consciousness. It's established by The Father's story and existence that you can separate a being into 3 parts, their body, their soul, and their mind. (Oh my god why is so much of Doom lore identical to Kingdom Hearts???) Samuel was possessed by Samur's mind when he came into contact with his body, becoming a host for him to enact his will through. Samur gradually begins overtaking Samuel, who isn't aware of his presence in his mind, as he rises through the ranks in the UAC, Samur's knowledge and intellect giving them a distinct advantage. Samuel's human brain cannot fully contain Samur's mind, thus resulting in his brain cancer. Samur then influences Samuel to come up with the idea to create a synthetic body, suspiciously similar in design to Samur's original Maykr body. Over the course their time in this new body, Samur takes over even more of Samuel's personality, making him perceive thoughts that Samur came up with as his own. In the time between 2016 and Eternal, Samur takes over completely, explaining the complete shift in his demeanor and way of speaking when you meet with him again. Instead of retrieving the "Seraphim's Key" in UAC Atlantica, you retrieve Samur's Soul Sphere. Once he has both his soul and body back, he abandons his living human disguise completely. This would then open up the opportunity for Samuel himself to return in the future, now separated from Samur, who probably didn't expect his consciousness to have survived throughout the whole ordeal. Samuel wouldn't be too pleased about having his life literally stolen, and not having any achievements to his name that were actually his own, leading to him likely allying with The Slayer for the sake of getting revenge, and potentially making something with his life on his own terms, with his own skills, with his own intellect. Self control and agency over your own existence, no longer being a puppet for someone else's machinations, this would be the throughline that would tie Samuel Hayden and the Doom Slayer together.
I spite so much eternal's "show don't tell" thing. Doom 2016 felt like both Slayer and player had no idea where they were but knew only one thing - rip and tear, with perhaps memories of past massacres (old doom games and Slayer's backstory though it was from Eternal too). Eternal is, like Slayer had whole journey between two games, got whole-ass lobby space shuttle, goes on quests we know nothing about until we complete them, this somewhat connection between player and character completely gone, you just here to shoot and he's here to save mankind, not "you"
I feel like with the tutorials, the devs wanted you to treat your first play through of the campaign like a tutorial. Kind of like Devil May Cry or any other character action game, where your first play through is you getting new weapons and buying moves/upgrades. And then once you finish the first play through, you can now switch to higher difficulties and tackle them now that you have everything you need to do so. This isn’t me trying to defend the tutorials, it’s just me trying to understand why the tutorial pop ups even exist, I agree with everything that you said and I think they did them poorly. My personal biggest issue would have to be the rpg like upgrade menus. Suit upgrades, sentinel crystals, weapon upgrades, all this stuff just feels pointless and tacked on for the sake of dragging out playtime, and it cripples the game play until you get it all. Like why are there upgrades for the rad suit of all things? You know, that thing that only appears in one or two sections? And why lock away important stuff like faster weapon or mod swaps as upgrades? And while I think the runes are fine, why make air control a rune at all?
As much as I morn the loss of Hay Hays original potential, I don't really hate where he went either. I think what they did with him is cool, tho I have to agree that the original concepts was also equally cool, if not even better as a storytelling concept. But since we are talking about DOOM, I don't care all too much about it in the end, I'm only here to kill anything and everything that's in front of me, so using words like "they ruined him" seems silly in my opinion, since the characters were never meant to be the focus resulting in them obviously not being focused on all to much. But all that is just my own opinion and everyone can think what they want about the game or the character.
In 2016 he was a man that was trying to give the cleanest and most powerful form of energy to humanity to erase poverty. He wanted it "for the good of humanity" so that we wouldn't have an energy/resource crisis. He was willing to accept casualties in the pursuit of energy because he thought that providing for mankind was more important than losses occurred during production. Then in Eternal he says *one* good line "You can't just blow a hole in the surface of Mars!" and the rest is Doom wiki. Him being the Seraphim isn't even a good twist, and the hype around the game and rampant Doom theory vids on RU-vid basically seeded the idea in most fans' heads anyway - so a lot of us already expected it to happen. Now if he based his robot frame on the Seraphim, or injected himself with Seraphim DNA like some kind of Bioshock/Resident Evil attempt to upgrade himself, that would've been better - and maybe the Seraphim takes over afterwards. Maybe he could've been involved with the Dark Lords of hell or something and slowly become possessed, leading to him going crazy in Eternal and later in the TAG 1 & TAG 2 DLC campaigns.
I kinda headcanon that 2016 hayden was replaced at some point by the consciousness of their captive angel in the UAC atlantica. The voice was similar enough for the slayer and even vega to buy it, but ultimately, Samuel himself is just gone. replaced. and it'd be easier to do so with him especially, since dude's 98% robot. So dude magically knowing about things he shouldn't, having views and stances completely contradictory to what he had in 2016, it's all because that body hasn't been inhabited by Hayden for a very long time, since Samur needed a way to free himself, and saw samuel as the perfect trojan horse.
Love so much this game at the time... but nobody on ps3...😢 even the first year. Love the marins campaign. It could be so cool in VR But yeah... have to be a hardcore avp fan to love it..
9:35 I actually liked that part, Slayer doesn't hold a grudge, he doesn't care about what happened between them, he just cares about killing more demons and Hayden knows that he doesn't give a shit so he just tells him what he wants to know, no sorry, no nothing and that just gave me straight DOOM vibes - you aren't here to make history, you are here to kill demons.
For me persinaly its like a "reverse" situation about Doom slayer and Samuel, i wish Samuel stayed a mere human just ballsy enough to screw around with hell's energy and keep Hell at bay, without external intervention and Doom slayer be like an eternal warrior, the one and only who could posibly make demons fear him through his strength and will power, and he turned out to be a regular army man with cool suit and a magick power up, still a good concept, i just wish they went with "doom 3 aproach" when he is the last of his kind, carrying the sacrifice of his entire world in order to stop Hell's invasion.
Making everything connect back to everything else only works in the Hero's Journey. "Luke I am your father" is full of gravitas and pathos of the highest order ... "DOOM GUY, I am the Seraphim!" ... ok, huh? Who cares. It's like they wanted instant-pathos-just-add-character-reveal and it doesn't work in that type of story.
I was never cincidering him as badguy...more so fool but i agree that eternal ruins...almoust everything about doom artstyle and lore...boses aren't that fun either
THANK YOU, he was MORE, more interesting as a human with a savior complex butting heads with Doomguy. It just was the best stuff done in a Doom game in terms of characterization. Very, very angry that they made a bunch of convoluted choices for the sake of a twist. Thanks for this video. i just hate what they did.
To be clear, the Argent being used by the UAC in doom 2016 originates from “the well” and is created by the hibernating wraiths. The Argent being created in nekrovol for the makyrs is made by torturing billions of souls. They’re both Argent but are created in different ways. This would be why Samuel expresses disgust when he talks about nekrovol. It’s worth noting too that Samuel likely put his consciousness into a robot to get away from the makyrs altogether, as they were corrupt for sometime. He’s also not the reason the demons showed up on Earth, the khan maker is. Samuel is also not driven by profit; in doom 2016 he didn’t care even remotely about profit. The money seemed to be incidental to Samuel, trivial even. Doom guys defiance and vandalism is more of an annoyance. Why? Because Samuel everything is about ego. He wanted to solve Earth’s energy crisis because it served his ego, he probably fled the makyrs because he couldn’t stomach serving the khan maker, and his efforts to save earth was also due to ego. I’d even argue that his antagonism towards doom guy is simply due to ego. He takes jabs frequently in eternal. He mocks doom guy for using the crucible to power his ship, and mocks doom guy for not saving Tara’s nabad, chastising him for failing despite all his power and rage.
So the reason the story elements work the way they do is because they focused on making the best game they could and story came after, they still created one of the best lore sets for everything though
I played eternal before 2016, and all I knew about Hayden was that he was an antagonist in 2016. I was a bit confused why we were working with him suddenly, but I just chalked it up to not knowing 2016’s lore. I now know the lore and still don’t have the answer like you said.
The guy is like Brainiac; we really don't know what he's cooking. It doesn't help that he's attached to Doomguy's Fortress & left unintended....with a training room full of Demonic Spawns and... ...the Demon Cruciable.... Ah shit..........
I think we will eventually get something between 16 and eternal that at least does something about this. We also have to remember this was released during covid. Not saying it’s the only reason, but it contributed. I also take a bit of issue with the assessment that Samuel was a villain in 2016. Olivia is the true villain. She’s the one who colluded with the demons in secret. She’s the one who opened the hell portal. She responsible for most if not all of the cultist division, and she kept most of it hidden as I understood it. Samuels only interest was in harvesting argent to resooolve the energy crisis on earth. Was he willing to do questionable things to get that goal, yes, but he still was interested in doing the greater good as he saw it. He picked up the slayer as the backup plan. Granted he woke up the slayer far too late, mostly because in his mind without his company earth has no hope for survival. He was never foolish enough to worship the demons as Olivia did. I also assume that, at the time he as a makyr before taking human form, the Kahn was only interested in siphoning energy from hell. It’s when the Kahn began feeding worlds to hell that Sammy was in favor of destroying argent. He was never an enemy of humanity, a cocky, arrogant leader trying to play hero. Also, I don’t love that the slayer destroyed the father’s soul sphere. It was entirely unnecessary to the plot and lazy writing. Sammy boy was already undergoing transfiguration, all that needed to happen was for the slayer to walk right by the sphere and pick up the dark lords sphere instead. As far the seraphim trying to stop the slayer and needed to stun him? Gee, if only the slayer had a way of inflicting damage on something?? Oh right, just fucking shoot him. Unmaykr, BFG, hell arbalist shot from the ballista. Anything would’ve sufficed. Would’ve left the door open for Vega to take physical form in the future instead of killing him off for good. If they decide to go past eternal in lore chronological they’ll have a lot of Rettconning to do to bring back the father.
The thing is that by technicality he's always been the seraphim but his seraphim Consciousness was transferred into an artificial human body witch caught cancer I think it was I forgot exactly and then he had to be transferred into a human robot body
Yeah, the out-of-nowhere lore in Eternal was pretty stupid, in my opinion. Samuel Hayden being the Seraphim and VEGA being God all of a sudden. Hugo Martin knows how to design a fun game. But his writing is pure shit.
