http://youtu.be/1snCRIl16ks

This edit to the DOOM II game in the BFG Edition is unacceptable and unnecessary, especially to people outside of Germany. Not only did you make the secret levels boring, you removed all the SS soldiers and replaced them with zombiemen. Thanks a lot for being PC in a game that requires NO PCness!

5 out of 5 thumbs down for edited out Nazis and other content edits.

I am glad I got the original version without this edited crap.

WTF............. WTF

idSoftware WTF is wrong with you?
You can't show ultra-pixelated cartoony nazis? Really? Aren't we trying to get OUT of super-censorship?

The more complaints I see the more I see id is just falling into a deeper pit. Seriously. So you guys said "okay, no more console-focus" but here you are again focusing on consoles (limited-as-[censored] pc options) and now extreme censorship too? REALLY?

Huh? They even censored the red crosses on the med kits? What is wrong with you id/Bethesda?

Disgraceful. Id Software has lost their balls. Huge respect lost for them. And I remember an interview with Tim Willits saying it would be blasphemy to alter Doom 1 and 2 at all, and look what they've done!

If they weren't going to use the nazi enemies in those levesls, why didn't they use the Playstation Doom secret levels? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LryIc3_pgBQ and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNpho45LnhE.

This release is starting to look more half-assed than Skyrim's marriage system

Sorry guys for being affected by our stupid german laws.

I knew this would happen when they were talking about BFG Edition being released in the same version worldwide.
There's no way you can portray swastikas in germany in games without getting into serious trouble.

Stupidly enough, most germans interested in id's franchises have all the original Dooms and the good old Wolfenstein 3D as uncensored imports.

But my question to anyone in the USA who might have bought the XBLA version of Doom II (it's not available in Germany): Are the Wolfenstein maps intact in that version?
It might be that the XBLA version for Doom II had already been censored and noone took notice.

And is the new episode for the Doom II XBLA release also included in the BFG edition?

Just so you guys know, The red cross starting sueing a whole bunch of people for using their symbol without paying for it, so yeah they edited Doom I and II to remove it, that part i can explain, the removal of the nazi imagery from Doom II, while Doom I and II got delisted from the whatever board it is the list these things, nazi imagery is still illegal in germany so thats probably why its removed.

And yes the BFG Edition of Doom II has the XBLA Episode "No Rest For the Living" included.

I wonder if the US version is censored as well?

All versions are. They punished all regions for Germany's stupidity.

[censored].
Just [censored].
Why is the medical cross offensive? It's not even supposed to be taken as anything religious. Heck, I don't see atheists asking the cross to be removed. I don't even see Satanists asking the cross to be removed. Who complained, id/Bethesda, who?

Red Cross had a [censored]fit, that's why.

yes guys, this is a huge deal. let's all be really angry together

look, i understand you all love the originals, i do too. i also understand that willits said they would be untouched, and maybe to his knowledge they were. but this sort of feels like you're grasping at straws

has this even been confirmed by anyone other than the op? even if confirmed, and all of the images of nazi soldiers and crosses on health packs were replaced with other images, so what? i fell in love with the gameplay, not a couple of low res textures

just one opinion

Use of the red cross symbol is prohibited by international law. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emblems_of_the_International_Red_Cross_and_Red_Crescent_Movement#International_protection_of_images

Research before shouting "censored!" please.

Then why didn't they [censored] about it in 1992 and 1993?


I myself do not play on consoles (FPSes generally blow in terms of control for me) but I do not want a half-assed version with butchered content that the original 3.5" and CD versions have.

And why internationally and not Germany only? I mean you got a zillion Call of Duty games and a number of others depicting Nazis in their glory in North American regions and most of Europe, why not an 18 year old game?

www.youtube. com / watch?v=1snCRIl16ks&feature=player_embedded

I'm sorry, I had to register just to respond to this. Proof's in the video here.

This has importance beyond merely "oh hey they removed/modified content", too. Modified iWADs like this create incompatibilities with doom's various source ports, such as, say, Zdoom .
A lot of people can miss out on some of the great things the oldschool community's done just because of this bone-headed move. :\
I can understand removing the Nazi paraphernalia for Germany, but they couldn't be bothered to replace it with a functional equivalent? We couldn't have re-sprited resources to be a complete replacement of the Nazi stuff without it creating such major issues?

Bad form, iD. Bad form.

Okay, so they could do it in 1993 but they can't do it now?
Well aint that just [censored] dandy.

Not to mention there's still tons of games coming out nowadays with red crosses on heal items. It seems like Id Software has just sold out and is worried about being politically correct rather than appealing to it's long time fans. Oh how the mighty have fallen. First Bioware, then Capcom, now Id Software.

Video game industry is becoming such a joke nowadays. I miss the days when it was a breakthrough niche market. Now it's just a well oiled money making machine.

You know what the problem is?

iD's developers got old. The fact that only John Carmack of the old team's left there doesn't help.

Look back to the 90s. You had a bunch of twenty-somethings who had no reputation and nothing to lose. They had passion. A goal. Something to aspire to do, and [censored] all those who got in their way.

They had no issues whatsoever with being edgy with Wolfenstein 3D. They had no issues with being edgy with Doom, because they could do no wrong.

But times have changed. They're all going through the realms of mid-life and now such thoughts as comfortable retirements as well as descendants seeing their work come to mind. They can't be edgy like they used to, or, at least, don't feel like they can. They'd rather play it safe enough to ensure a profit. The passion for the raw tech is there with Carmack, but is it really there in any way for the others? I'm not convinced it is.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull had the same issue. Being two decades older changes you.

im not an id fan for the controversy. personally, i love carmacks constant strive to revolutionize an industry he's obviously passionate about. i love the idea of a big name developer that keeps a relatively small business model (although it has been expanding recently). between bfg and rage, i think id software have worked really closely with each other and i am excited to see how doom 4 turns out as a result.

carmack and willits and any other devs still around from the old days can be any age and i would trust them, as long as the game is in-house and they stay somewhat consistent with who they keep around the office

You're kind of misconstruing my point, but that might be my bad for not explaining it clearly enough.

Let me put it this way, under how I see things.
Outside of SNES Wolfenstein 3D, 90s iD would not have bothered with the butchery and censorship of Doom 2's secret levels for the international release. For Germany alone, maybe, but not for everyone.
Yet 2010s iD has.

90s iD was willing to innovate in gameplay as well as technology, which stopped with an argument between Romero and Carmack during quake's development.
2010s iD only innovates in technology. Rage tried, but it really didn't bring anything new to the table at all gameplay wise. It merely was an adequate shooter.

90s iD always polished a game enough for a good release.
Rage and Doom 3 BFG edition do not show this, albeit for different reasons.
Rage had a ton of hardware issues, mostly with ATI cards, that should've been discovered long ago and fixed by release date.
Doom 3 BFG is a miserable rehash of Doom 3, with some minor ini setting tweaks, a "new" set of levels which are mostly rehashed from the game with some different scripting, an underwhelming "new" boss, and a horribly butchered port of doom 1 and 2 where there's arbitrary removal of resources from doom 2, horrible sound code, bugs which should've been noticed a while ago , as well as other extreme issues that the BFG edition has.

iD was at their prime when it was John Romero, Tom Hall, Adrian Carmack, and John Carmack.
Only one of them remains, and iD's gradual decline has been noticeable with each person's release.

I speak from my perspective alone, but this is how I've seen things. I really am not pleased with what i'm seeing from the BFG edition.

BouncyTEM is right.

There was virtually nothing remastered. The face textures for the characters were given a nice uplift, and there are a few nice textures in the new levels.

There is already a HUGE list of things that id did wrong with this re-release.

I wanted to compile a list, but it was already getting very long (>9k?), and I don't even know all the things they did wrong

I suppose the 1 thing they did right was add multi-threading and a more efficient shadow system. But these things don't make the game "remastered," they are something that should've been a patch.

Well said Bouncy, someone else who knows history unlike some around here.

you're right bounce, I misinterpreted what you were trying to say. let me start over

i hate to be 'that guy' but this seems less like a '90s id' vs a '2010s id' issue than it is an 'id software surviving in a 90s industry' vs an 'id software surviving in a 2010s industry' issue
my post is going to be long so i'd rather not have to explain, but will if necessary

until confirmed otherwise, i'd like to believe this was either a simple mistake that will be fixed soon or something they were forced to alter by zenimax/bethesda. I would be very shocked to learn otherwise, although if the latter were the case I'm not sure if they'd tell us

this I more or less agree with, even though you contradict your point a bit with the last sentence in the quote (maybe just poor word choice?)
personally (and this sounds awful i know), i continue to come back to id games because they haven't strayed far from their formula. i pop in an id game when i want a quick fps fix. i dont need a story (what was rage even about? wait i dont care), i dont need COD-style matchmaking, and i definitely dont need lame set-pieces interrupting the flow of the game. these things are annoying to me. the id software logo on the box, to me, represents that I am purchasing a no frills, almost arcade-esque first person shooter with graphics that will still look great in a few years, controls that are incredibly responsive, and a campaign experience that is completely focused on fun. now, if you tilt your head a little to the side (left or right will do, it doesn't matter), you might see that in a strange way this style of fps game making is becoming more and more rare - and in turn, maybe will start to look... maybe not innovative, but fresh?
i did so much soul-searching just now

i'm not going to try to defend rage or doom 3 bfg... both have had issues out the ass in the eyes of the community, and while i roll my eyes at most of these problems (especially whats going on now with doom 3 bfg edition) these are ultimately for you guys and if they failed you then they failed you. i loved both, personally, and i am grateful that id is releasing more than one game a decade.

if this is directed at me please correct my paper and have it back to me by the weekend, i wont be in class for a while =/

Would just like to note before I continue, foxygutmeir, that I do appreciate your civility despite our differing views. :&--#62;

On the doom 2 censorship factor, I really don't see how you could replace all wolfenstein SS guys with zombiemen [wrecking the difficulty of the secret levels as zombiemen are much easier than SS to fight], removing all textures even remotely containing Nazi imagery, leaving the secret levels as bland empty shells of their former selves, remove the Map31 and Map32 songs and replace them both with Map05's, and rename the levels IDKFA and Keen instead of Wolfenstein and Grosse respectively by accident. That's far too much effort to be mere accident, and iD announced that they were going to make one massive single international version, which worried me as to the implications. My worries were justified.

On the rest, let me put it in these terms. I am a die hard fanatic of arcadey shooters. I still play the crap out of doom 1 and 2. They've been a part of my life as far back as I can remember, and they're why I can enjoy everything of iD's up to Quake 3. I disliked Quake 3, but I can stomach it more easily than I can Doom 3 , because it's still closer to the arcade-y style shooter that I prefer. I don't mind the more modern stuff too much when it's well done, but oldschool's really where I prefer.

For me, Doom 3 had those lame set-pieces interrupting gameplay. For me, Doom 3 compromised fun arcadey action for atmosphere [which ended up dating itself quickly], cheap scares, and an attempt at a story, which, between that and its real gameplay from time to time, places it in this weird psuedo-modern limbo for me where it's too modern for my oldschool liking and yet too oldschool for my more modern liking. It just feels muddled and wrong, and it compromised the fun aspect outright. The BFG edition's not particularly impressing me with things I'm hearing. iD claims they'd rewrite the renderer. They didn't. They did make some nicer textures here and there, but changing some ini settings wouldn't count to my eyes as rewriting, unless it's all under-the-hood sort of stuff, at which point, why advertise it? It makes no difference to the end consumer.

iD, I will agree with, are still the kings of the responsive controls. They've always gotten that right and it's always nice.

Regarding Rage, let me explain it this way. For iD themselves, they tried something new. Vehicles and big explorable locations and such, but by the time Rage was around, all of its new gameplay things have been made tried and true by other FPSes. It's very safe. It doesn't really gamble at all. iD's stuck in this little comfort bubble.

It kind of upsets me since back in the earlier days, Romero wanted to keep iD fresh and innovative, to not merely rest on their successful past labors, but to make things new and innovative at every possibility. I'm still intrigued by the ideas he had in mind for Quake. I would've liked to have seen a first person brawler. [and, as Action Doom 2 proves, it can work and be a lot of fun.]

Rage's gameplay's new for iD, but it's not really new. Does that make sense?
90s iD used to be about raising the bar on what could be done, at least until Quake.
2000s+ iD's just about making things that are adequate at best. Technologically the new engines with every revision are still superb, Carmack is a genius, but pure tech advances aren't as impressive as they used to be. Especially with so much more fierce competition staying right on the bar with what iD can do, if not more so.

I do respect that they try to keep small, though. I feel that's a healthy business decision and that it should help them in the long run.

I kind of feel like iD was best when the whole team were together. Kind of like the Beatles to my mind: Sure, all of them are competent and good, but their stride was when they were together.

The magic of their games is faded. I'd like to see it come back, but trends that have been consistent for the past decade and a half make me fear it won't.

Another German gamer here wants to say sorry! You should not suffer and get censored Games because of our Laws!

But Honestly i have no problem with the missing Nazis because this is DooM and not Wolfenstein and i got the Original DooM′s here too so the BFG Edition is just a nice Collection for Console only Players!

But anyway, Sorry!