Sigil is a Love Letter to DOOM

Yeah, yeah, I'm talking about DOOM again. Look, I had grand designs of writing up my GOTY list next, but it turns out I didn't finish this before going on vacation and then I came back from vacation and now we're here. Please look forward to my GOTY list, which will probably include an extended digression on Sword of Berserk: Rage of Guts for the Sega Dreamcast, among other things.

There is something special about DOOM – you know this, if you’ve seen anything I’ve written recently on this site, or are unfortunate to have decided following me on bluesky was a good idea – and when it comes right down to it there’s something specifically about the original 1993 version of DOOM (its weapons and enemy lineup, specifically) that is basically perfect. I think I might have mentioned this before.

The “classic” id Software stopped existing just after Quake released, and while id has continued to put out stuff that is extremely good (again, I think I might’ve mentioned this before) there’s certainly something to be said for those early id days. You almost wish they’d stuck around a little longer – imagine what we might’ve had if Romero and Carmack hadn’t had their parting of the ways! Imagine more DOOM from Romero!

Oh wait, we don’t have to dream we’ve got real shit now – have, in fact, for quite some time.

Romero got Bored

“Bored” is probably not the right way to look at it. He’d spent a lot of time out in the wilderness post-Ion Storm; teaching courses, making mobile games, and generally doing his thing. Then, in 2016, he suddenly surfaced with two new DOOM levels: “Tech Gone Bad” and “Phobos Mission Control.”

As you might imagine, people were pretty goddamned happy to have a couple new levels made by The DOOM Guy himself. You probably could’ve stopped there and people would be pretty pleased about this! There weren’t many ex-id devs running around making new DOOM maps, after all, and what the two maps showed was that John Romero still knew how to make a good fuckin’ DOOM level. Not just that, but he had a plan – what if, Romero said, he made a full-blown DOOM episode (what we here call a Megawad) in time for the 25^th anniversary of DOOM’s release.

So, Romero installed a copy of Doom Builder and went to work – mostly while traveling on vacation, as the supplemental materials show – putting together a proper eight map episode (plus a secret level, naturally). As this was mostly done in his free time in between I guess setting up Romero Games and whatever else it was Romero was getting up to professionally, the development of SIGIL took a year and then some – he started work on it in 2017, announced its more-or-less completion in December 2018, and intended to release it in February 2019.

This would fail to happen – production issues meant the wad wasn’t released until May – but to be fair, one of the things Romero decided to do with the release of SIGIL was offer two versions: a free version with a MIDI soundtrack by the Cacoward-winning composer James Paddock (seriously, the man’s a machine that produces superb soundtracks), and a version with a CD soundtrack consisting of selected tracks from Buckethead – including a brand-new composition which would be the track for E5M1 – which would be available for download at the thematically appropriate price of €6.66. Romero also offered a physical edition in two flavors (regular and Beast Box) which came signed, included a CD copy of the Buckethead soundtrack, and also included a documentary showing him put the whole episode together. It’s good! I did not spring for the Beast Box (I did not in fact get a physical copy until a couple years later).

The Buckethead soundtrack is pretty good

So How is It, Anyway?

My love for DOOM is already a matter of public record – and when I tell you that SIGIL is my favorite DOOM episode I want you to know I’m being completely serious. This is down to some of the ways I feel about DOOM on a philosophical level, and also the way that I am a sucker for good art direction and Romero’s use of lighting and some of the less-common textures in this one absolutely rules.

I generally tend to play any version of DOOM on Ultraviolence – it’s not the default setting (that’s Hurt Me Plenty), it’s in fact one of the only games where I increase the difficulty, and the reason is simply that I have played a lot of FPSes in my day and DOOM is not a particularly difficult game on its default setting to me (this is not a brag, do not put in the paper that this is a brag, I promise you I fuckin’ suck at DOOM and am just weirdly accustomed to it at this point). Ultraviolence is what the devs played at, and it is how Romero tunes his maps – with SIGIL, his stated goal was to make levels difficult but not so difficult that he couldn’t pistol start them and finish a level in a single shot without saving. I cannot do this, although I can get through the first two levels without dying if I am having a particularly good run.

Now, consider that John Romero is not just one of the guys who made DOOM, he also happens to be one of the best DOOM players alive, and then consider how hard a dude like that might have to make something in order to give himself a challenge. SIGIL will beat your ass into the goddamn center of the earth if you approach it with a light heart. This is an episode that doesn’t just assume you’ve played through the previous four episodes of the game, it assumes you have gotten pretty fucking good at playing through the previous four episodes of the game. You know, something like 25 years of DOOM-playing experience.

Romero One Mind Any Weapon

This is where it is important to stress I mean DOOM playing experience. Not DOOM II – no, there are no Archviles here, no Heavy Weapons Dudes, no Revenants (wait for Hellion, coming to a PC near you… whenever Romero gets around to it): it’s the 1993 roster or bust out here. The same goes for the weapons, though all that means is there’s no Super Shotgun. Fortunately, it has the second-best thing: the normal-ass shotgun.

If you’ve read my rankings, you know that my own tastes do tend to run to the 1993 roster – and if there’s one thing Romero does in SIGIL, it is make the case that you can do a whole hell of a lot with that roster. Not just that, but the amount of care put into the construction of the levels is downright delightful. Unique to SIGIL is the addition of the Evil Eye switches. The Evil Eye was just a (fairly under-used) bit of environmental flavor in the original DOOM, but for SIGIL, they become how you progress.

Romero teaches you this in the first map (titled Baphomet’s Demesene, because all the levels have titles that are uniformly metal as hell) – in the first room, in fact! You are trapped in there with some imps and a specter, along with a shotgun and a single pickup of shells which are, if you do it right, enough to get you through the fight without much fuss. So of course, the first time I ever booted it up, it took me something like five tries to get out of there alive, then I immediately got shot in the face by a shotgun and died. It’s a real bastard (although not as brutal as SIGIL II’s opening), but it sets the tone for the rest of the episode both mechanically and visually. You literally start out in a satanic conversation pit (no really, it’s a pentagram-shaped conversation pit). You cannot exit this pit unless you spot the evil eye and shoot it – and to help you figure out that is what you need to do, it’s got some pistol ammo sitting on a ledge right in front of it to give you a good idea.

You wouldn’t think this mechanic would add a lot to the game – I mean, you’re already well-versed in finding keys and switches to open doors – but surprisingly, it absolutely does. Not just because Romero can be a little devious in hiding them, forcing you to scan the environment carefully whilst also trying not to be ripped apart by all the demons he’s crammed into the level, but because it gives him the opportunity to make the player spend a valuable resource (bullets) to progress. It also means he can set up traps where triggering an evil eye alerts demons in the map to your presence – meaning that in order to progress you have to start a fight. It also means that you can soft-lock yourself if your aim is particularly bad and you run out of ammunition, but it’s plentiful enough that I certainly never ran into that problem, and my aim is terrible.

That’s the only new mechanic, really – Romero added more secrets (including timed ones) but that’s not quite as big of a deal to me, someone who only ever accidentally finds all the secrets in a level and sure as hell never came close to it in SIGIL. “Some of the best maps DOOM has ever had, by the guy who made the levels of DOOM ’93 that you probably remember the most (apart from Slough of Despair, which people remember because Sandy was extremely on one)” is all that’s left.

Surprising no one, this is more than enough to make SIGIL whip ass. They aren’t all perfect maps, but if you asked me to pick a map I hate, I wouldn’t be able to do so. Maybe Cages of the Damned gets a little rough (the corridor that is all lava that you have no choice but to sprint down is pretty fucking unreasonable), but it’s in a way that is just being mean to you, the player, and not in a way that is badly designed or anything. Hell, it’s downright elegant! Romero’s ability to build an encounter that will almost, but not quite, entirely fuck your shit right up is unmatched, and it makes escaping a level with only a few HP and a dream immensely satisfying.

One of my favorite examples is an encounter with a pit in the center – not a conversation pit, an actual pit. Out of this pit come cacodemons – which are teleported in below and slowly make their way up to where you are. You hear them way before you see them! It’s devious! I kinda love it! Also the image of those meatball bastards floating up out of the maw of hell is just… perfect. It’s everything DOOM Hell should be.

I especially love the penultimate level – Nightmare Underworld, if you’re curious – which is where the aforementioned cacodemon pit is located. It’s a brutal challenge that makes the most out of the game’s demon roster. It helps that Romero puts just enough Barons of Hell in there to make it a pain in the ass and ensure you’re painfully aware of just how much ammo you have before the end. The game doesn’t starve you of resources, but it does expect you to make use of the entire arsenal – especially the shotgun, if you’re me. I think I killed more Barons with a shotgun in SIGIL than in the original four episodes and DOOM II combined – and I’m counting Super Shotgun kills here too! I’d say this is all hyperbole, but then I remember Cages of the Damned and think better of it.

There’s Only One Romero

If, for some reason, you haven’t played SIGIL yet – and hey, there’s a lot of games out there so I can forgive you, almost – you probably should correct that error. Thanks to the (significantly improved, though I still have a philosophical beef with how they’re running the mod browser) DOOM I + II release, you don’t even have to hunt down SIGIL! It’s just there in the main menu for you to launch. If you have a copy of DOOM I + II, and you probably do, it’s well worth checking out. I’ve said it before, but if not for the fact that I just plain didn’t get around to playing it the year it came out, it would’ve probably ended up my game of the year!

Now I need to stress something here, which is that in terms of what SIGIL actually does, the thing pales in comparison to what a lot of DOOM mapmakers are out there doing these days. You can find any number of absolutely incredible levels designed by fans that are complex and tricky and satisfying as shit to play – but there’s only one John Romero, and damn if the dude still doesn’t have the juice. It’s the old stuff – SIGIL can’t run on stock DOOM due to limitations in enemy amounts and a few geometric things that require a source port (GZDoom, specifically), but it’s not doing things with custom enemy designs and spritework the way something like EVILTERNITY is doing. Those wads are incredible in their own right, but for me they lose something when extra stuff starts getting brought in. DOOM is, after all, perfection – so why not see just what it has to offer?

It's a lot. It has a lot to offer. So much so that Romero put out a SIGIL II, which we’ll talk about one of these days.