Looking back,does Doom 2016 feature better(indoor) graphics than its successor ?

Right off the bat, I know 2016 is kind of an old game(relatively speaking )

At this point Eternal is basically the poster child of good optimization. Gets dev attention in 2021, gets new engine optimizations ray tracing new master levels native vulkan support blah blah.

Decided to give 2016 a go after not touching it for nearly a year, mostly to see how it holds up now.

And boy does it hold up! Some of the later levels in 2016 feature graphically amazing indoor arenas, Cant remember anything of the like in its successor.

It could mostly be down to art style but the quality of the models and indoor surfaces in doom 2016 almost give it a unique, high end diorama-like look.

Going back to eternal was a bit of a let down. Colours all over the place, unnecessary clutter and a completely different art direction- some of it feels like its hiding engine downgrades.

Best I could do was these screenshots featuring more or less similar elements from the two games:


2016-Glossy interiors,subtle colours,limited objects.


Eternal-generally matte (to hide material downgrades?), expanded colour palette,lot more clutter.

Clearly the engine was built for 2016, then expanded upon for Eternal. They probably realized after a point that the engine could only handle so many objects before performance/stability became an issue.

Looks like per object sample counts for SSR and physically based rendering were toned down to free resources for the object density, especially since the game struggles with 8gb vram with HDR mode on a meager resolution of 2560x1080. I also saw some typical CPU usage patterns in Eternal that were suggestive of this.

Also generally speaking, the art style changed with the new game to include/replace objects and surfaces featuring diffuse bounce lighting instead of the polished sheen of its predecessor. This is something that would have otherwise been obvious. This also makes sense since Doom Eternal features a lot more and bigger outdoor areas.

Of course,it could be a purely level design based choice with the underlying tech intact but its unlikely that they would want to hide such a strong point on their rendering tech !

Update: On a side note, neither game has HDR on. Both have "fake" HDR profiles I created with the following GeForce Game Filter settings :

Brightness/Contrast.

Exposure: 23%
Contrast: 15%
Highlights: 30%
Shadows: 35%
Gamma: 5%

Details.

Sharpen: 0%(in-game sharpening is more performant, sharpen on lower PPI screens. I use 2.5, reduce if things start to look too cell-shaded)
Clarity: 32%
HDR Toning: 19%
Bloom: 0%

Film Grain disabled in settings.
Render Mode: Default.

Just reset all you other colour settings, including brigtness/contrast adjustments you may have made in the control panel.

You may need to play around a bit, this preset is perfect for my LG monitor.

BETTER THAN THE REAL THING,TRUST ME !

 

hey your right doom looks better than doom 2021.....better looking i prefer the clean look sleek look of doom 2016

 

There is an artistic difference between 2016 and eternal. Some people were put off with it and I nearly was as well but the game is hard to put down regardless lol

Doom 2016 feels cleaner and slightly darker where as eternal is a little brighter and cartoonish in the art style. 2016 and eternal differ quite a bit in play style, art and story.

I think the real question is if those changes are warranted. Most would say yes but some would say no, the issue with saying no is you'd be going further back than just character models and would need to revisit many core pillars of what made eternal. Key piece likely being the narrative in the game

 

Wash, rinse and repeat.
Welcome to the Doom franchise.

 

Could not disagree more.

Doom is far from typical annual franchise a la Call Of Duty.

 

Yes and no, Eternal feels both recycled and different at the same time.
Technically it feels like both an upgrade and downgrade !

 

Doom feels like Doom and Eternal feels like Eternal.

Doom was a middle finger to strong narratives, Eternal is a 180 on that position. They both do well in what they attempt to do and that is by design.

Eternal feels that way to you because you expected a continuation of 2016. While I almost fell trap to some of the reviews I was seeing on Day 1, I thoroughly enjoy both.

 

Narratively yes, but what about the tech ? Would you say they simply changed the art style to make it look cartoonier ?
What I'm trying to say is-Could they remake doom like for like using the updated engine if they wanted to ? I'm guessing no,they did drop a few things here and there...

 

That's the forefront of game "optimization" these days. Doom runs well because the engine was made to handle, well doom.
I don't think it would hold up that well at say a warzone or battlefield style map.
Stuff like cryengine 2 was so flexible,they basically streamlined it and made CE3 to run on consoles. CE5 is a complete rewrite of the code though, because CE2 and by definition CE3 to an extent are basically dogshit at multi-threaded instruction handling.

 

Yes, as Doom 2016 while not slow, is quite slow compared to Eternal, making the enemies brighter is to compensate for that.

 

That's the boat I'm in, I've liked them both, not yet finished both expansions yet for Eternal. I really don't care much about slight divergences in art direction too much they seem extremely similar. I don't begrudge people that want to pick them apart, but that's not the headspace I'm in just playing and enjoying them.

 

Yeah I would agree with this. Doom 2016 feels more than Doom3 than eternal does. Eternal is way more cartoony.