Links: legacy.3drealms.com/rott/originalspec.html tcrf.net/Proto:Rise_of_the_Triad_(1994)/September_1993_Prototype Some notes on the video: -I know I kind of mixed up the barrels and TNT crates, but you get the idea. Some stuff goes boom, other stuff goes more boom. -It's possible the Enforcers were the ones throwing nets, I just went by how it's done in the final game there. -It's also possible the brown officers were actually just an early version of Esau Guderian, considering they're next to each other in the same sprite sheet (and share the same clothes and weapons). But considering how similar General Darian looks to other enemies in the final game, it might be a coincidence.
The knife dropping from statues reminds me of the axe in brutal Wolfenstein, a melee weapon you grt by breaking said statues that is slower than the knife but stronger and throwable
I doubt it would affect Return To Castle Wolfenstein since, "Triad: Return to San Nicholas Island" and "Blake Stone: Return to STAR Institute" don't exist.
Well, technically "Return to San Nicholas Island" does exist, though it's called "Extreme Rise of the Triad", and is just a map pack for the main game. I've actually got the CD for it. Most of what's on the disc is miscellaneous bonus content, like images of the maps to print out. The actual levels could have been shipped on a floppy disk with room to spare.
I'm pretty sure rights issues got in the way of Apogge making a Wolfenstein 3d Sequel. The Wolfenstein IP rights were pretty complecated being between ID Software, Apogge and Muse who developed the original Castle Wolfenstein, that Wolfenstein 3d was originally based on as Wolfenstein 3d was orignally supposed to be a stealth game like it's predecessor.
I think Rise of the Triad had issues with verticality and level design are not that well done because it was pretty much one of the first games to do this. Like, that platforms allow a simple version of "room over room" years before Duke 3D and Quake or even Descent. So I think people figuring out what works and what doesn't was important for game development as a whole - Rise of the Triad walked so Duke 3D could run.
The thing is, Doom had already been in production at that point. So Tom Hall knew very well what 3D games could be like, and yet he decided to go for it anyway. Admirable, sure, but it still fell flat.
@@GermanPeterDoom didn't have room over room. In Doom it was completely impossible to walk on a floor that was above another floor - while Rise of the Triad could do that thanks to floating platforms.
Yeah, but they almost never utilized it well. It's just really gimmicky and doesn't work well and they'd have done far better if they hadn't had any floating platforms at all.
@@GermanPeter Besides, you can do a lot more with a level design that uses lines over giant blocks. The build engine was considered for ROTT, since a version of it was already given and shown for Apogee in late 1993, games like Duke Nukem 3D were already being developed using that really old Build Engine version by late 1993, so was Rise of The Triad, but yeah, for some reason they did decide to go with the Wolfenstein-based levels.
I don't want to sound like that guy, but ROTT and Descent came out around the same time, early 1995 (or late 1994 if considering their respective demo/shareware versions). Also Marathon had also released at that time which could also do some limited Room over room stuff via Portals
@4:45ish, the smarter officers who were to seek out health as well as being upgraded over their regular officer counterparts, that *has* actually been done. Bioshock features enemies who can and will use health items on the ground or the healing stations, and you can even sabotage the healing stations to further injure wounded enemies trying to use them.
I think losing the Nazi angle would have completely robbed Wolfenstein of its identity. For better or for worse, Wolfenstein is the Nazi Killing Shooter, just as Doom is the Demon Killing Shooter. Rise of the Triad is cool, but it works better as its own series rather than just being a Wolfenstein in name only. Also, I think one of the bosses being named Esau, an actual Old Testament *Jewish* name, is both hilarious and kinda problematic because he is part of this shadowy company that controls everything, which you know gives off certain bad vibes.
Yeah but I still think it's cool when you can kill angels in Doom, too. I was confused by the switch from outer gods to alien cyborgs in Quake 2 but that was a long time ago and I'm perfectly happy with both. Quake doesn't really have a clear identity post q2 because of that shift but in the long term they wrapped the dimension hopping aspect back around on itself and tried to connect the Strogg to Shub so it's a little more cohesive now, and I do think you can no longer do something like make a Quake 5 and have it be about some third, completely different antagonist that has nothing to do with Yog-Sothothery or Stroggs, so it's still kind of of closed box. And of course Doom gets away with going to heaven because it's the natural question to ask if you already know hell is there. I agree it's harder with Wolf, though, because it's the only one with an evil antagonistic force that's real. So there's a gravity to it that does feel very awkward to just abandon, because the games don't have to prove to you how fucked up and evil the bad guys are, you already know going in, and when it does take the time to show you it's incredibly distressing because of that connection to reality. No matter how horrifying they make hell or stroggification you can always just turn that off. BUT, I think Wolf does have variety and doesn't always do the same thing over and over, but that's in the specific flavor of pulp they're going for. Some focus on superscience, some on paranormal stuff, some on a mixture, but it's all still over the top pulp stuff. In that sense Wolf has the most satisfying level of variety in the series between id's unholy trinity. Doom FINALLY gave us angels only in the most recent game, and aside from a few levels in the new q2 expansion in the remaster the 3 single player Quakes are all either only one or the other, you fight Lovecraftian horrors OR Strogg, not both. But Wolf can throw zombies at you in one level and robots in the next and you'll never bat an eye, and that's really cool.
4:43 The closest to enemies taking health is human enemies from Blake Stone picking up ammo when they run out. Many of the features that you see in this prototype were definitely used in advanced Wolf 3D/SOD mods such as "Spear Resurrection" and "Spear End of Destiny".
Guess Heinrich Krist was the inspiration for a boss in Wolfenstein: Blade of Agony. Great total conversion mod btw. Think it might be worth covering on your channel.
6:22 maybe they were gonna either be the main three bosses coming back from the dead(a trope in old 90s media) OR maybe all 3 types of enemies from each triad attacked BJ all at once
As a huge fan of Wolfenstein, I hope someone mods the last DOS version of Rise of the Triad into the Wolfenstein 2 (1.0) we never got, with sprites and textures from the canceled sequel, which have been leaked online in the posterity, as well as the features from Wolfenstein 2, which are not in Rise of the Tria, are also added. Now I've never played Rise of the Triad so I don't know if all the Wolfenstein 2 features are in Rise of the Triad or not. The way I describe Wolfenstein 2 as a Rise of the Triad mod is how I imagine the canceled Wolfenstein 2 would be as a fully developed game.
Hey Peter, Thank you for digging into these things are presenting them with such a high quality. I do have a question though: How much of Hexen, Heretic, RoTT, and id Games and Daikatana can be traced back to the gang's DnD sessions back in the day? I have a feeling Quake was gonna be the culmination of all of their wildest ideas but the project went nowhere.
Yeah, sprites in FPS games are a lost art. They're such a nice mix between cartoony graphics and realism, and that's just cute. Very vibrant colors, too.
What I think is really fun is that it doesn't even really meaningfully matter that Rise of the Triad isn't "technically" a Wolfenstein game. According to Romero, the triad is related somehow to the serpent riders, with that trilogy being a prequel to ROTT. That's already good enough for me, because I don't need any extra convincing that the serpent rider trilogy is part of the id multiverse, but it gets explicit when you take into account the presence of tomes of power in Wolf2 and the fact that Simon the Wanderer uses was looks like Corvus's staff and uses Corvus's grunts too. It's not super clear what the connection is, but... ...basically, when you put it all together, the triad still exists in Wolfenstein, the supernatural element which is kind of vague in ROTT becomes more clear with it's connection to the serpent riders being related to hell, and the three hell priest thing was again reused in Doom Eternal, showing that the three hell priest thing is just something that's been going on for a long time. Since ROTT would then presumably take place in the classic Wolf & Doom timeline where BJ killed Hitler in 1945, and the new Doom timeline is explicitly not the classic one because of world-hopping shenanigans (although it does seem like it's the same timeline as Doom 3), that probably means the Deag priests don't exist in the classic timeline and instead that dimension's positions are filled by Darian, Krist, and Oscuro. The serpent rider trilogy being a prequel and the Deag priests being around for a long ass time means the serpent riders are way way in the past (or maybe another dimension entirely) which predate them. So, it probably goes like this: D'Sparil, Korax, and Eidolon are first, each conquering a different world, killed by Corvus and the Hexen protagonists who's names I don't remember. In the new Doom timeline, the Deag priests Nilox, Ranak, and Grav take over the role and with all three of them together they can absorb a whole planet into hell, which they attempt to do twice. In the classic timeline, we don't see an explicitly named complete triad again until ROTT, with Darian, Krist, and Oscuro, who all operate on Earth and were presumably all originally human. They never attempt to absorb Earth but Oscuro is definitely no longer human, or maybe never was. And so ROTT is kind of its own thing, sure, and the plot about Hitler being a subordinate of the triad was dropped... but is it really, though? Think about it: ROTT's triad consists of a military guy, a tech guy, and a magic guy. Hitler was a military guy. In RTCW, a character connected to a slayer of a previous hell priest, D'Sparil, is shown tracking down and defeating Heinrich I, who has a bunch of weird evil magic occult powers I assume the real Heinrich never actually had. So there's your magic guy. More importantly: these are nazis we're talking about here, and while I don't really think these games are interested in tackling something as heady and philosophical as the problem of evil, I think most of us are pretty comfortable accepting that maybe they were just demons. Military power + pure evil... I mean, that's them, right? So sure, ROTT isn't *really* a sequel to Wolfenstein, not directly, but I fully believe that in the lore of this stuff, Hitler was at one point a member of the triad and a serpent rider, as was Heinrich before him. This would make Darian a replacement for Hitler, who himself was a replacement for one of the serpent riders, and Oscuro a replacement for Heinrich, who was probably a replacement for D'Sparil, who conquered Pathoris through religious means, making him probably the magic guy, I guess. OR maybe you're not a weirdo like me and have a life and you DON'T think way too hard about the story of games where the developers never really gave much of a shit about the story to begin with most of the time. But, as far as I'm concerned, the nazis were absolutely working for hell, and I don't really need a five paragraph youtube comment about video game lore to justify that claim, sure, but it's a hell of a lot more fun than talking about the real life lore of the piss babies.
That's a really interesting theory, but I'm not that big of a fan of connecting ROTT with Wolfenstein. They're two different universes going for different vibes. ROTT is completely goofy, Wolf is (mostly) not. I also feel like these connections don't really do anything. I mean, how is ROTT different if it takes place after Wolfenstein? Can you see the game in a new light, appreciate it in different ways? Not really, since it does its own thing. The same goes for the Heretic/Hexen connections, they're just kind of... there.
Also, too me an evil that's more evil than the Nazis might have a been a bit too much. Because it feels kind of like an excuse for more content. So I doubt Wolfenstein 3D needs a sequel. Also the triad symbol reminds me of those triad symbols in the German version of Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus.
Yeah, didn't even consider that. Would probably have muddied waters a bit too much to go "Yeah, this awful Hitler guy? There's someone EVEN MORE AWFUL." Just kinda disrespectful.
As I understood it initially was that they strayed away too much from the original Wolfenstein 3D aesthetic that with so many changes being made they had to remove 'Wolfenstein' from the title as it started to become its own thing and not that they had scrapped it for the reason you brought up here. Pretty interesting and this might be more believable as this is what brought us "The Developers of Incredible Power" (IIRC). I also think that if it were possible that both Wolfenstein 3D Part 2 and RoTT both got created and released at that time that one would have outsold the other by a large margin and like you said additionally brings up a good point, if Wolf3D-2 was a thing - the following sequels and prequels would have either been wholly different or even non-existant.
From what I've read, Tom Hall really was just unsatisfied that he had to restrict it to the Wolfenstein universe, so he decided to branch out. I don't know if he'd have licensed the Wolfenstein IP after leaving id, but I'm sure that was a big factor too.
Wolfenstein name got changed to ROTT for 1 simple reason. Id software cut ties with Apogee at around late 1993 and revoked the Wolfenstein brand from them.
I always knew that rise of the triad was originally a sequel to Wolfenstein 3D I just never knew that much about it until now! I'd like to see somebody try to make this original a reality as like a fangame or something that would be sick
The Wolfenstein engine did its rounds and was used for example in Shadowcaster, a 3D action adventure RPG. John Carmack played around with the Wolf engine and Raven got one of the research results to do their game. If you don't mind the retro graphics it is still a very nice game. From what i understand ROTT also uses a heavily modified Wolf engine by the way. Apogee got the engine and wanted to do Wolfenstein 2 but forgot one little detail, they bought the engine but not the IP. So they changed halfway from Wolfenstein 2: Rise of the Triad to simply Rise of the Triad, removing all Wolfenstein references.
Yeah, it's obvious that it's still the Wolfenstein engine, and if you look at the original spec, you can see that they implemented a lot of things that Tom Hall wanted to put into Wolfenstein 2 (like actual lighting). From what I've read though, Tom Hall was more than happy to ditch the Wolfenstein IP because he wanted to do his own thing. Heck, he even implemented things from his Doom bible!
Oh and this one doesn't look bad! There's been millions of these around and they never get past the first level and just badly port the ROTT sprites into Wolfenstein. This one looks great! Here's hoping it actually gets finished.
I love ROTT for its humor and uniqueness. And of course it has a great soundtrack. And Wolfenstein did get some great sequels (or reboots) so it worked out in the end. Nice channel by the way.
Developing ROTT as a standalone game with changing the atmosphere entirely feels like a genius move to me. Wolf3D was already a big hit back then, and tech demos of Doom that had been slowly leaked through the net and press were getting all the attention. Doom was a serious business, and nothing could possibly drag more attention than shooting demons on Mars with most believable graphics. ROTT then changed its atmosphere to have lesser serious moments, and more comedical and ludicrous situations that can be seen in the retail version. I was like, "Of course they should try in another way because that'll be more memorable then just shooting post-Nazis on an outdated grid raycasting engine" when I first played the shareware, but it was so ludicrous that it almost got in the second best game in my personal chart. It has a certain addictive feeling, and I found myself keep coming back and challenge this weird masterpiece of a game, a level and another. Yeah, it worns me out if I play it more than an hour because of its labyrinthine nature, but it has been always satisfying when I finally found an exit after all those secret hunting through walkthrough videos and maps. (Ludicrous Edition has its alternative automap and you won't have to rely on guide pages anymore) And then, exit the game, play another game, sleep, work, and come back to play another level. ROTT was most enjoyable to me only when I play in short intervals, as if it was not meant to be played in long continuous marathon in the first place.
I think ROTT would have really benefited from smaller stages. Like bite-sized puzzle arenas, some centered around combat, some around traps, others about platforming. They tried to squeeze all of them together and it just doesn't work that well.
In end I think making the RoTT we got was the better idea. I think back then the dev had to choose between keeping working with the Wolf 3d (with ended up being extended to hell and back) and an early version of Build. Thankfully they didn't choose the jankiness of wolf 3d then the brokenness of early Build Engine. And since they knew that they loss the technical race, they choose to bonkers with it giving it its unique charm (I don't think to this day there is another game with Dog Mode) Note : I may be wrong about the engines choice, so if someone could confirm if it was the case or not would be nice
@@marcasdebarun6879 oh yeah I remember, and in Heretic there was the Morph Ovum that transforms enemies into chickens (and they can still peck at you if I'm not wrong)
wow, it's really interesting to see how much actually got ported from this canned concept to the actual ROTT. still wish we got that upgraded chaingun though! personally I do think it would've been better, but as you said, it probably would've been less well received and probably less interesting overall. which is definitely something to consider tbh.
I'd have loved for a better chaingun, or one at all, really. I used the machine gun so much throughout the game, it's unbelievable. If there had been a better version, that'd have been sick.
I like to think that both ROTT (and Blake Stone) exist in the same universe as Wolfenstein, just in the future after the Nazis have been defeated once and for all. (I also like to think that all of the Wolfenstein games are part of a cohesive storyline.)
Honestly, if they went through with keeping rise of the triad as part of the wolfenstein series, they probably would have expanded the kinds of alternate history they were doing with the connecting tissue of the triad linking seemingly random organizations throughout history
I can see that, but notice how ROTT doesn't take itself seriously one bit. I could never imagine them doing a New Order-type game with concentration camps and all.
Your references in video are accurate, just check robots, especially Zitadelle from new colossus, concept pretty similar to NME from rise of the triad.
While "Ian Paul Freely" was an obvious joke name, somehow it never occurred to me that Thi Barrett might be a funny take on "Thigh, Bare It". Or maybe I'm reading too much into it.
@@GermanPeterAh. Just figured they'd get a slight mention since Wolf 3D was apparently meant to carry over some of their stealth mechanics. OTOH they haven't gotten a solid rerelease in ages and are probably fully irrelevant now. I just thought since they came first...well yeah.
I don't even consider them part of the Wolfenstein series is all. It'd be like talking about Super Mario and including the first Donkey Kong. Sure, that's where it started, but like... is it really relevant?
@@GermanPeterFair enough. Though I bet most would argue with you on the point of Castle Wolfenstein sharing the name with later games unlike Mario and DK. That and people saying how Id bought the rights to it years later. Shame they never rereleased it in some fashion as like a novelty though but yeah I get you.
Tom Hall's documents are rather interesting to read through. The amount of features that he envisioned that became staples of FPS games in the future is impressive, given the majority of them didn't implement into the games he wrote them about. I do find it funny how the planned lore pretty much made Germans sound like a part of a large cult rather than a nation. "You see all this atrocities committed by these fellas? Well what if I told you... there are even more evil Germans that controlled these guys" like... what in the heck, lmao. Also, Esau being a name of Hebrew origin and having him work with the organization that caused the genocides is... a bit fricked up O_o To think, all of this can be implemented in and turned into a mod for Doom. With the majority of source ports now supporting Tom's ideas, it'll be fun to see the community turn it into reality.
I think this could have worked so much better with the German ports of Wolfenstein, which already turned all the Pee Babies into "Wolves", making them more like a cult. So it'd be way more believable if one cult was part of a much bigger one, and it'd get rid of the uncomfortable implications.
I wish the dogs and demon-dogs were retained in some capacity. Some more projectile-using enemies would be good too, and some flying enemies as well. Extra rocket launchers aren't as exciting when you just have a bunch of similar hitscanners to fight with them. Also, I wonder how ammo would work in the original... with the chaingun/super-chaingun existing, and the missile weapons having their own slots, I imagine they could function similar to wolf3d and doom, all carried at once with finite ammo... this would give more variety to secrets and sidepaths, as most of the time you're just collecting health and score items in ROTT, with an occasional powerup here and there. And without being able to amass guns and ammo, there's not as much sense of progression as in Doom. Another thing that always bugged me is the abstract nature of ROTT's levels. Wolf3D added immersion through sprites, while Doom added immersion through geometry. ROTT has this weird limitation of each level only having a singular ceiling height and floor/ceiling texture, which enforces a certain uniformity for each level regardless of the wall textures being used. There's actually an approximation of a shooting range in an obscure secret on E1L1... and it's a pretty good attempt, but it took me a while to realize because I already stopped expecting realism from ROTT's weird architecture.
Pretty sure all the weapons would have used their own ammo. I'd imagine the rocket launchers would have shared rockets, the same way all weapons in regular Wolfenstein 3D share the same ammo. As for details, ROTT really isn't that great. The only levels that stood out to me were Rocky Plateau because it's like an early Doom 2 city map, and the big factory level, I forgot the name. The latter was just completely ominous with its dark, straight walls made out metal. Very much felt like you were inside a machine. The others... ehhh, could do without.
The only issue I would have had with Wolf2 ROTT existing is that the actual ROTT has one of the best soundtracks of all time, and... I wouldn't want to risk that not existing or being turned into some humdrum Wolfenstein marching tunes.
Aw come on, Wolfenstein 3D had some banger tunes in there. Zero Hour? The Nazi Rap? There's a reason Funk You is chosen as the first level theme for the Mac Family ports.
@@GermanPeterI mean, yes, some of them are really good. But I wasn't kidding when I call Rise of the Triad's soundtrack as the best of all time, and it sounds nothing like Wolfenstein's soundtrack. We may have ended up getting something that was merely really good!
Wether or not Wolfenstein 2 should have been released is a matter of taste. What we can all agree on however is that Extreme Rott should have never been released.
"When Tom Hall, the creative director of the company ended up leaving..." Dude was fired because he wanted to put a story in Doom. It's where the infamous quote from John Carmack about how the _"story in a video-game is as important as a story in a porno"_ comes from. As someone who loved the original Doom for what it was... _Tom was right._
Links:
legacy.3drealms.com/rott/originalspec.html
tcrf.net/Proto:Rise_of_the_Triad_(1994)/September_1993_Prototype
Some notes on the video:
-I know I kind of mixed up the barrels and TNT crates, but you get the idea. Some stuff goes boom, other stuff goes more boom.
-It's possible the Enforcers were the ones throwing nets, I just went by how it's done in the final game there.
-It's also possible the brown officers were actually just an early version of Esau Guderian, considering they're next to each other in the same sprite sheet (and share the same clothes and weapons). But considering how similar General Darian looks to other enemies in the final game, it might be a coincidence.
If you haven't yet, look into "Wolfenstein - Blade of Agony", It's a doom 2 mod that tries (and imo succeeds) to be a Wolfenstein 2
“BJ and Doomguy are both related to Commander Keen” is out. “Thi Barrett is a Wolfenstein and Doom character” is in!
The knife dropping from statues reminds me of the axe in brutal Wolfenstein, a melee weapon you grt by breaking said statues that is slower than the knife but stronger and throwable
I doubt it would affect Return To Castle Wolfenstein since, "Triad: Return to San Nicholas Island" and "Blake Stone: Return to STAR Institute" don't exist.
Well, technically "Return to San Nicholas Island" does exist, though it's called "Extreme Rise of the Triad", and is just a map pack for the main game. I've actually got the CD for it. Most of what's on the disc is miscellaneous bonus content, like images of the maps to print out. The actual levels could have been shipped on a floppy disk with room to spare.
I'm pretty sure rights issues got in the way of Apogge making a Wolfenstein 3d Sequel. The Wolfenstein IP rights were pretty complecated being between ID Software, Apogge and Muse who developed the original Castle Wolfenstein, that Wolfenstein 3d was originally based on as Wolfenstein 3d was orignally supposed to be a stealth game like it's predecessor.
I think Rise of the Triad had issues with verticality and level design are not that well done because it was pretty much one of the first games to do this. Like, that platforms allow a simple version of "room over room" years before Duke 3D and Quake or even Descent. So I think people figuring out what works and what doesn't was important for game development as a whole - Rise of the Triad walked so Duke 3D could run.
The thing is, Doom had already been in production at that point. So Tom Hall knew very well what 3D games could be like, and yet he decided to go for it anyway.
Admirable, sure, but it still fell flat.
@@GermanPeterDoom didn't have room over room. In Doom it was completely impossible to walk on a floor that was above another floor - while Rise of the Triad could do that thanks to floating platforms.
Yeah, but they almost never utilized it well. It's just really gimmicky and doesn't work well and they'd have done far better if they hadn't had any floating platforms at all.
@@GermanPeter Besides, you can do a lot more with a level design that uses lines over giant blocks.
The build engine was considered for ROTT, since a version of it was already given and shown for Apogee in late 1993, games like Duke Nukem 3D were already being developed using that really old Build Engine version by late 1993, so was Rise of The Triad, but yeah, for some reason they did decide to go with the Wolfenstein-based levels.
I don't want to sound like that guy, but ROTT and Descent came out around the same time, early 1995 (or late 1994 if considering their respective demo/shareware versions). Also Marathon had also released at that time which could also do some limited Room over room stuff via Portals
@4:45ish, the smarter officers who were to seek out health as well as being upgraded over their regular officer counterparts, that *has* actually been done. Bioshock features enemies who can and will use health items on the ground or the healing stations, and you can even sabotage the healing stations to further injure wounded enemies trying to use them.
The original Prey (another Tom Hall design) also did this.
The enemies in Spear Resurrection (admittedly a Wolf3D mod) do this, too.
I think losing the Nazi angle would have completely robbed Wolfenstein of its identity. For better or for worse, Wolfenstein is the Nazi Killing Shooter, just as Doom is the Demon Killing Shooter.
Rise of the Triad is cool, but it works better as its own series rather than just being a Wolfenstein in name only.
Also, I think one of the bosses being named Esau, an actual Old Testament *Jewish* name, is both hilarious and kinda problematic because he is part of this shadowy company that controls everything, which you know gives off certain bad vibes.
AND he's working together with literal Nazis.
ah yes. working to exterminate your own damn people
that last bit is so based
Yeah but I still think it's cool when you can kill angels in Doom, too. I was confused by the switch from outer gods to alien cyborgs in Quake 2 but that was a long time ago and I'm perfectly happy with both. Quake doesn't really have a clear identity post q2 because of that shift but in the long term they wrapped the dimension hopping aspect back around on itself and tried to connect the Strogg to Shub so it's a little more cohesive now, and I do think you can no longer do something like make a Quake 5 and have it be about some third, completely different antagonist that has nothing to do with Yog-Sothothery or Stroggs, so it's still kind of of closed box. And of course Doom gets away with going to heaven because it's the natural question to ask if you already know hell is there.
I agree it's harder with Wolf, though, because it's the only one with an evil antagonistic force that's real. So there's a gravity to it that does feel very awkward to just abandon, because the games don't have to prove to you how fucked up and evil the bad guys are, you already know going in, and when it does take the time to show you it's incredibly distressing because of that connection to reality. No matter how horrifying they make hell or stroggification you can always just turn that off.
BUT, I think Wolf does have variety and doesn't always do the same thing over and over, but that's in the specific flavor of pulp they're going for. Some focus on superscience, some on paranormal stuff, some on a mixture, but it's all still over the top pulp stuff. In that sense Wolf has the most satisfying level of variety in the series between id's unholy trinity. Doom FINALLY gave us angels only in the most recent game, and aside from a few levels in the new q2 expansion in the remaster the 3 single player Quakes are all either only one or the other, you fight Lovecraftian horrors OR Strogg, not both. But Wolf can throw zombies at you in one level and robots in the next and you'll never bat an eye, and that's really cool.
Great video as usual. I actually had no idea about this! Fascinating!
Thank you! Looking forward to your next video ;)
4:43 The closest to enemies taking health is human enemies from Blake Stone picking up ammo when they run out. Many of the features that you see in this prototype were definitely used in advanced Wolf 3D/SOD mods such as "Spear Resurrection" and "Spear End of Destiny".
It's so weird to see these early concepts and realise how many of them were kept in the RotT we've got
Guess Heinrich Krist was the inspiration for a boss in Wolfenstein: Blade of Agony. Great total conversion mod btw. Think it might be worth covering on your channel.
Blade of agony feel very much like a reimagining of Wolfenstein 3D. I love it so much. Realm667 knocked it out of the park
I think the skeleton monks appeared there too. And yes, the mod is a 100/10.
6:22 maybe they were gonna either be the main three bosses coming back from the dead(a trope in old 90s media) OR maybe all 3 types of enemies from each triad attacked BJ all at once
As a huge fan of Wolfenstein, I hope someone mods the last DOS version of Rise of the Triad into the Wolfenstein 2 (1.0) we never got, with sprites and textures from the canceled sequel, which have been leaked online in the posterity, as well as the features from Wolfenstein 2, which are not in Rise of the Tria, are also added. Now I've never played Rise of the Triad so I don't know if all the Wolfenstein 2 features are in Rise of the Triad or not.
The way I describe Wolfenstein 2 as a Rise of the Triad mod is how I imagine the canceled Wolfenstein 2 would be as a fully developed game.
Someone on ModDB is trying to do that.
Hey Peter, Thank you for digging into these things are presenting them with such a high quality. I do have a question though: How much of Hexen, Heretic, RoTT, and id Games and Daikatana can be traced back to the gang's DnD sessions back in the day? I have a feeling Quake was gonna be the culmination of all of their wildest ideas but the project went nowhere.
No clue, sorry!
hexen and heretic? that was Raven. did Raven employees play DnD with id staff?
Man!
Having projectile weapons would've been so cool!
Something i always wished was a thing after seeing projectiles being used by certain enemies.
Go play Jaguar Wolfenstein, the best port!
@@GermanPeter I definitely will!
4:42 enemies seeking health is something that has been done, splicers in bioshock will sometimes seek out health stations and you can rig them
Despite being lower resolution, the Wolfenstein sprites are so much better.
Yeah, sprites in FPS games are a lost art. They're such a nice mix between cartoony graphics and realism, and that's just cute. Very vibrant colors, too.
What I think is really fun is that it doesn't even really meaningfully matter that Rise of the Triad isn't "technically" a Wolfenstein game. According to Romero, the triad is related somehow to the serpent riders, with that trilogy being a prequel to ROTT. That's already good enough for me, because I don't need any extra convincing that the serpent rider trilogy is part of the id multiverse, but it gets explicit when you take into account the presence of tomes of power in Wolf2 and the fact that Simon the Wanderer uses was looks like Corvus's staff and uses Corvus's grunts too. It's not super clear what the connection is, but...
...basically, when you put it all together, the triad still exists in Wolfenstein, the supernatural element which is kind of vague in ROTT becomes more clear with it's connection to the serpent riders being related to hell, and the three hell priest thing was again reused in Doom Eternal, showing that the three hell priest thing is just something that's been going on for a long time. Since ROTT would then presumably take place in the classic Wolf & Doom timeline where BJ killed Hitler in 1945, and the new Doom timeline is explicitly not the classic one because of world-hopping shenanigans (although it does seem like it's the same timeline as Doom 3), that probably means the Deag priests don't exist in the classic timeline and instead that dimension's positions are filled by Darian, Krist, and Oscuro. The serpent rider trilogy being a prequel and the Deag priests being around for a long ass time means the serpent riders are way way in the past (or maybe another dimension entirely) which predate them.
So, it probably goes like this:
D'Sparil, Korax, and Eidolon are first, each conquering a different world, killed by Corvus and the Hexen protagonists who's names I don't remember. In the new Doom timeline, the Deag priests Nilox, Ranak, and Grav take over the role and with all three of them together they can absorb a whole planet into hell, which they attempt to do twice. In the classic timeline, we don't see an explicitly named complete triad again until ROTT, with Darian, Krist, and Oscuro, who all operate on Earth and were presumably all originally human. They never attempt to absorb Earth but Oscuro is definitely no longer human, or maybe never was.
And so ROTT is kind of its own thing, sure, and the plot about Hitler being a subordinate of the triad was dropped... but is it really, though? Think about it: ROTT's triad consists of a military guy, a tech guy, and a magic guy. Hitler was a military guy. In RTCW, a character connected to a slayer of a previous hell priest, D'Sparil, is shown tracking down and defeating Heinrich I, who has a bunch of weird evil magic occult powers I assume the real Heinrich never actually had. So there's your magic guy. More importantly: these are nazis we're talking about here, and while I don't really think these games are interested in tackling something as heady and philosophical as the problem of evil, I think most of us are pretty comfortable accepting that maybe they were just demons. Military power + pure evil... I mean, that's them, right? So sure, ROTT isn't *really* a sequel to Wolfenstein, not directly, but I fully believe that in the lore of this stuff, Hitler was at one point a member of the triad and a serpent rider, as was Heinrich before him. This would make Darian a replacement for Hitler, who himself was a replacement for one of the serpent riders, and Oscuro a replacement for Heinrich, who was probably a replacement for D'Sparil, who conquered Pathoris through religious means, making him probably the magic guy, I guess.
OR maybe you're not a weirdo like me and have a life and you DON'T think way too hard about the story of games where the developers never really gave much of a shit about the story to begin with most of the time. But, as far as I'm concerned, the nazis were absolutely working for hell, and I don't really need a five paragraph youtube comment about video game lore to justify that claim, sure, but it's a hell of a lot more fun than talking about the real life lore of the piss babies.
That's a really interesting theory, but I'm not that big of a fan of connecting ROTT with Wolfenstein. They're two different universes going for different vibes. ROTT is completely goofy, Wolf is (mostly) not. I also feel like these connections don't really do anything. I mean, how is ROTT different if it takes place after Wolfenstein? Can you see the game in a new light, appreciate it in different ways? Not really, since it does its own thing. The same goes for the Heretic/Hexen connections, they're just kind of... there.
Also, too me an evil that's more evil than the Nazis might have a been a bit too much. Because it feels kind of like an excuse for more content. So I doubt Wolfenstein 3D needs a sequel. Also the triad symbol reminds me of those triad symbols in the German version of Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus.
Yeah, didn't even consider that. Would probably have muddied waters a bit too much to go "Yeah, this awful Hitler guy? There's someone EVEN MORE AWFUL." Just kinda disrespectful.
never been this early lol, i love your content dude! keep it up :0
Having finally played Rise of the Triad, it is interesting seeing how much of it was kept from that early document.
It's good to see that many of the ideas not get scrapped but re-used in Rise of The Triad. We didn't get a sequel but we got an unique FPS.
As I understood it initially was that they strayed away too much from the original Wolfenstein 3D aesthetic that with so many changes being made they had to remove 'Wolfenstein' from the title as it started to become its own thing and not that they had scrapped it for the reason you brought up here. Pretty interesting and this might be more believable as this is what brought us "The Developers of Incredible Power" (IIRC). I also think that if it were possible that both Wolfenstein 3D Part 2 and RoTT both got created and released at that time that one would have outsold the other by a large margin and like you said additionally brings up a good point, if Wolf3D-2 was a thing - the following sequels and prequels would have either been wholly different or even non-existant.
From what I've read, Tom Hall really was just unsatisfied that he had to restrict it to the Wolfenstein universe, so he decided to branch out. I don't know if he'd have licensed the Wolfenstein IP after leaving id, but I'm sure that was a big factor too.
Wolfenstein name got changed to ROTT for 1 simple reason. Id software cut ties with Apogee at around late 1993 and revoked the Wolfenstein brand from them.
I always knew that rise of the triad was originally a sequel to Wolfenstein 3D I just never knew that much about it until now! I'd like to see somebody try to make this original a reality as like a fangame or something that would be sick
The Wolfenstein engine did its rounds and was used for example in Shadowcaster, a 3D action adventure RPG. John Carmack played around with the Wolf engine and Raven got one of the research results to do their game. If you don't mind the retro graphics it is still a very nice game.
From what i understand ROTT also uses a heavily modified Wolf engine by the way. Apogee got the engine and wanted to do Wolfenstein 2 but forgot one little detail, they bought the engine but not the IP. So they changed halfway from Wolfenstein 2: Rise of the Triad to simply Rise of the Triad, removing all Wolfenstein references.
Yeah, it's obvious that it's still the Wolfenstein engine, and if you look at the original spec, you can see that they implemented a lot of things that Tom Hall wanted to put into Wolfenstein 2 (like actual lighting). From what I've read though, Tom Hall was more than happy to ditch the Wolfenstein IP because he wanted to do his own thing. Heck, he even implemented things from his Doom bible!
I was about to quip that at least there were no monks. Then you showed the monks and I audibly swore. (The NME was also there already!)
There is a Wolfenstein 3D 2 mod in the works right now, only the first episode was released fairly recently so you can try that one out if you want
Oh and this one doesn't look bad! There's been millions of these around and they never get past the first level and just badly port the ROTT sprites into Wolfenstein. This one looks great! Here's hoping it actually gets finished.
Those monks with the red glowing eyes looks kind of like the evil Wizard in the intro screen of the Apogee game Hocus Pocus.
I love ROTT for its humor and uniqueness. And of course it has a great soundtrack. And Wolfenstein did get some great sequels (or reboots) so it worked out in the end. Nice channel by the way.
i cant believe you said “in the end, it wouldn't have mattered anyways”
imo it was probably for the best that original spec was scrapped, but it would be cool if someone modded the sprites into ROTT.
This game used to give me severe motion sickness, but i always came back for more.
Developing ROTT as a standalone game with changing the atmosphere entirely feels like a genius move to me. Wolf3D was already a big hit back then, and tech demos of Doom that had been slowly leaked through the net and press were getting all the attention. Doom was a serious business, and nothing could possibly drag more attention than shooting demons on Mars with most believable graphics. ROTT then changed its atmosphere to have lesser serious moments, and more comedical and ludicrous situations that can be seen in the retail version.
I was like, "Of course they should try in another way because that'll be more memorable then just shooting post-Nazis on an outdated grid raycasting engine" when I first played the shareware, but it was so ludicrous that it almost got in the second best game in my personal chart. It has a certain addictive feeling, and I found myself keep coming back and challenge this weird masterpiece of a game, a level and another. Yeah, it worns me out if I play it more than an hour because of its labyrinthine nature, but it has been always satisfying when I finally found an exit after all those secret hunting through walkthrough videos and maps. (Ludicrous Edition has its alternative automap and you won't have to rely on guide pages anymore)
And then, exit the game, play another game, sleep, work, and come back to play another level. ROTT was most enjoyable to me only when I play in short intervals, as if it was not meant to be played in long continuous marathon in the first place.
I think ROTT would have really benefited from smaller stages. Like bite-sized puzzle arenas, some centered around combat, some around traps, others about platforming. They tried to squeeze all of them together and it just doesn't work that well.
In end I think making the RoTT we got was the better idea.
I think back then the dev had to choose between keeping working with the Wolf 3d (with ended up being extended to hell and back) and an early version of Build. Thankfully they didn't choose the jankiness of wolf 3d then the brokenness of early Build Engine.
And since they knew that they loss the technical race, they choose to bonkers with it giving it its unique charm (I don't think to this day there is another game with Dog Mode)
Note : I may be wrong about the engines choice, so if someone could confirm if it was the case or not would be nice
HeXen did let you turn into a pig, which is sort of similar
@@marcasdebarun6879 oh yeah I remember, and in Heretic there was the Morph Ovum that transforms enemies into chickens (and they can still peck at you if I'm not wrong)
Spear of destiny was released in same year which is a prequel to wolf 3d so it did get a follow up of sorts
If only I had mentioned that within the first minute of the video
wow, it's really interesting to see how much actually got ported from this canned concept to the actual ROTT. still wish we got that upgraded chaingun though!
personally I do think it would've been better, but as you said, it probably would've been less well received and probably less interesting overall. which is definitely something to consider tbh.
I'd have loved for a better chaingun, or one at all, really. I used the machine gun so much throughout the game, it's unbelievable. If there had been a better version, that'd have been sick.
Mom, grab the camera, new GermanPeter upload!
I like to think that both ROTT (and Blake Stone) exist in the same universe as Wolfenstein, just in the future after the Nazis have been defeated once and for all.
(I also like to think that all of the Wolfenstein games are part of a cohesive storyline.)
Funny that today I had a dream about how you posted about some deleted Wolfenstein content XD
Honestly, if they went through with keeping rise of the triad as part of the wolfenstein series, they probably would have expanded the kinds of alternate history they were doing with the connecting tissue of the triad linking seemingly random organizations throughout history
I can see that, but notice how ROTT doesn't take itself seriously one bit. I could never imagine them doing a New Order-type game with concentration camps and all.
Your references in video are accurate, just check robots, especially Zitadelle from new colossus, concept pretty similar to NME from rise of the triad.
While "Ian Paul Freely" was an obvious joke name, somehow it never occurred to me that Thi Barrett might be a funny take on "Thigh, Bare It". Or maybe I'm reading too much into it.
It's pronounced like "tea", though.
Try Blade of Agony if you want a proper Wolfenstein 3D sequel.
EAT LEAD
Here catch!
*EAT LEAD!*
What about the old Apple II Castle Wolfensteins?
Yes, what about them?
@@GermanPeterAh. Just figured they'd get a slight mention since Wolf 3D was apparently meant to carry over some of their stealth mechanics. OTOH they haven't gotten a solid rerelease in ages and are probably fully irrelevant now. I just thought since they came first...well yeah.
I don't even consider them part of the Wolfenstein series is all. It'd be like talking about Super Mario and including the first Donkey Kong. Sure, that's where it started, but like... is it really relevant?
@@GermanPeterFair enough. Though I bet most would argue with you on the point of Castle Wolfenstein sharing the name with later games unlike Mario and DK. That and people saying how Id bought the rights to it years later.
Shame they never rereleased it in some fashion as like a novelty though but yeah I get you.
Peter, talk about Brutal Wolfenstein, it's like Brutal Doom but for Wolfenstein!
No thank you!
Tom Hall's documents are rather interesting to read through. The amount of features that he envisioned that became staples of FPS games in the future is impressive, given the majority of them didn't implement into the games he wrote them about.
I do find it funny how the planned lore pretty much made Germans sound like a part of a large cult rather than a nation. "You see all this atrocities committed by these fellas? Well what if I told you... there are even more evil Germans that controlled these guys" like... what in the heck, lmao. Also, Esau being a name of Hebrew origin and having him work with the organization that caused the genocides is... a bit fricked up O_o
To think, all of this can be implemented in and turned into a mod for Doom. With the majority of source ports now supporting Tom's ideas, it'll be fun to see the community turn it into reality.
I think this could have worked so much better with the German ports of Wolfenstein, which already turned all the Pee Babies into "Wolves", making them more like a cult. So it'd be way more believable if one cult was part of a much bigger one, and it'd get rid of the uncomfortable implications.
I wish the dogs and demon-dogs were retained in some capacity. Some more projectile-using enemies would be good too, and some flying enemies as well. Extra rocket launchers aren't as exciting when you just have a bunch of similar hitscanners to fight with them.
Also, I wonder how ammo would work in the original... with the chaingun/super-chaingun existing, and the missile weapons having their own slots, I imagine they could function similar to wolf3d and doom, all carried at once with finite ammo... this would give more variety to secrets and sidepaths, as most of the time you're just collecting health and score items in ROTT, with an occasional powerup here and there. And without being able to amass guns and ammo, there's not as much sense of progression as in Doom.
Another thing that always bugged me is the abstract nature of ROTT's levels. Wolf3D added immersion through sprites, while Doom added immersion through geometry. ROTT has this weird limitation of each level only having a singular ceiling height and floor/ceiling texture, which enforces a certain uniformity for each level regardless of the wall textures being used. There's actually an approximation of a shooting range in an obscure secret on E1L1... and it's a pretty good attempt, but it took me a while to realize because I already stopped expecting realism from ROTT's weird architecture.
Pretty sure all the weapons would have used their own ammo. I'd imagine the rocket launchers would have shared rockets, the same way all weapons in regular Wolfenstein 3D share the same ammo.
As for details, ROTT really isn't that great. The only levels that stood out to me were Rocky Plateau because it's like an early Doom 2 city map, and the big factory level, I forgot the name. The latter was just completely ominous with its dark, straight walls made out metal. Very much felt like you were inside a machine. The others... ehhh, could do without.
The only issue I would have had with Wolf2 ROTT existing is that the actual ROTT has one of the best soundtracks of all time, and... I wouldn't want to risk that not existing or being turned into some humdrum Wolfenstein marching tunes.
Aw come on, Wolfenstein 3D had some banger tunes in there. Zero Hour? The Nazi Rap? There's a reason Funk You is chosen as the first level theme for the Mac Family ports.
@@GermanPeterI mean, yes, some of them are really good. But I wasn't kidding when I call Rise of the Triad's soundtrack as the best of all time, and it sounds nothing like Wolfenstein's soundtrack. We may have ended up getting something that was merely really good!
@@GermanPeterGoing down the fast way:
Basically Rise of the Triads
Rise of the Triad is the sequel to Wolfenstein.
Commented this before watching the video....
discord link is dead
I thought this was going to lead into WWII 2
It would have been cool seeing BJ Blazkowich fighting something dofferent other than nazis.
Someone should try making a mod based on this
Impressive…very nice…let's see Paul Allen's card.
Wether or not Wolfenstein 2 should have been released is a matter of taste.
What we can all agree on however is that Extreme Rott should have never been released.
IT'S ALL MONKS
Gimme a Wolfenstein game where I get to play as
Who?
"Rise of the Triad was boring."
There's more rocket launchers than guns.
Still didn't help the game much, in my opinion.
I have a question, why do you sound out a bunch of sentences as questions when they clearly aren’t questions?
Because I was unsure of the pronunciation.
@@GermanPeteri see, fair enough.
MP5
"When Tom Hall, the creative director of the company ended up leaving..."
Dude was fired because he wanted to put a story in Doom. It's where the infamous quote from John Carmack about how the _"story in a video-game is as important as a story in a porno"_ comes from.
As someone who loved the original Doom for what it was... _Tom was right._
Rise of the Triad will forever be the ugliest FPS ever made, somehow looking even worse than a meme retextured mod for HL2 😂
They'll bury you in a lunchbox
6h ago