The Pit, my favorite map to hate

This past weekend my partner and I were sitting for two twelve-year olds. The daughter, Izzy and Izzy's friend Logan, who both enjoy playing video games on the playstation 4. They also both started their entry into first person games through games like minecraft and fortnite. This weekend they cycled through a bunch of games together, and one of them was Doom 2. They liked it. The combat is addictive, the monsters are fun, and there's a lot of levels. But...

People don't talk about this enough; having to explain how to navigate Sandy Petersen's absurd level designs in spoken english words is a literal nightmare.

Look, I'm a fan of Sandy Petersen's work, and I'll even say that his mapping is seminal for the enormous creative range that community doom mapping has expanded into. I think Sandy Petersen is uniquely the pioneer for slaughter maps, platforming, and challenge gameplay that doom players often crave. Other classic shooter franchises wish they could touch the amount of territory that Doom covers. Sandy's way of 'finding the fun' in doom level design makes everything in the real world feel like inspiration for a potential Doom map. I don't think we would all be here if only Romero, Hall, McGee, and Green were the designers alone. I think Sandy Petersen really made Doom what it is today.

But the reality, unfortunately, is that Sandy Petersen's maps are full of ridiculous moon logic. Everything looks like anything. No interaction makes any sense without trial and error and nothing is consistent. I feel like an idiot anytime I have to justify that this game is good anytime I watch someone playing his maps for the first time in the year 2023.



I was helping the two twelve year olds navigate MAP09: The Pit on a two player coop session. This map made me into a fool. They put their trust in me as their "Doom Master" as they named me, and I helped them navigate through the deadly mazes thus far. They trusted in me, but by the time they got to Sandy's maps starting with Tricks and Traps (excepting entryway, of course; nothing confusing about that one) their trust in me started to fall like sand in between my fingers.

There were unfortunately, more than a few times where they experienced certain death because I couldn't explain the strategy with all of the qualifying details fast and clear enough. And other times, I had to persuade them to do things that were convincingly suicidal just to reach mandatory progression. Nevermind the problem that immediately becomes obvious for anyone who's ever helped someone find their way in any Doom map. Nearly every map is made of bricks, nondescript metal, and wood, which makes every map utterly featureless and impossible to describe as visual landmarks. Sandy Petersen's cacophonous texture choices and sector mayhem takes it a step further by making everything banefully unreal. I often stumbled on my words at questions like "how do I get out of here" "where do I go next," and "ok what did that do." And the consequences of not knowing these answers often led to horrible traps and damaging pitfalls. Vanilla Doom cooperative doesn't keep your inventory after you die, so sometimes my instructions got these kids killed, causing them to lose their megaarmors, backpacks, BFGs, super shotguns and eventually their faith in me as their guiding light. They often couldn't tell if I was trolling them or not.

The bastion of Sandy Petersen is absolutely insane. Here's some examples:

If you fall in this pit with damaging liquid, there are two teleports. But one of the two teleports (that look exactly the same) takes you here, which is also a pit with damaging floors + lost souls. What the fuck is the point of this?



There's three identical doors here. Two of the three of them can be opened from the outside, but one of them cannot. Why?



To get this rocket launcher, you have to step over this middle line (marked in green) that seperates the floor from a cliffdive over a pit of damaging brown sludge. But if you miss it by crossing one of the other two lines (marked in red) the bridge doesn't raise and you will fall and boil to death in hot mud. Why is there only one way? Not only does there appear to be no way out if you fall in (no stairs, no lift, no teleport, no items, no tunnels, etc) there actually is no way out. None of the floors lower, not even the new bridge if you succeed in raising it. The rocket launcher is clearly too far to jump to, and there's no indication that this bridge will raise at all...? Why isn't there a switch for this? This makes no sense. Moreover, who cares that there's a rocket launcher and a soulsphere in this room because you'll definitely use up all of your rocket ammo for it, (there's only two rockets plus the two you get with the weapon.) The trap is 8 shotgunners, 13 chaingunners plus lost souls which will almost definitely kill you, or horribly maim you on your first try if the inescapable death pits don't get you first. This room sucks.



The starting room is surrounded in molten goo and four lifts. Thanks for the blue armor, but I have to step off the island I spawned on take a dip into the ouch liquid to activate the lifts, run back to the only safe floor to wait for the lift to finish coming down, then splash around in hurt water again to make it to the lift in time to get out of the pit. Fuck you if you start this map with 5 health (and fuck you double if you autosave) because I don't think there is a way you can leave this starting room without getting hurt. It is perfectly symmetrical in four ways. Yes, the correct path that gives you the shotgun and eventual progress is directly forward from the player 1 start, but if it's your first time in here, you'll definitely spin around to look at the surroundings, then immediately get disoriented. Additionally, two of the four ways take you to an immediate dead end with doors that each require a fucking unauthorized colonoscopy of a back and forth trip for the yellow keycard (more on that later.) For three of the four paths, there's monsters up at the top ready to shoot you, no weapons, and barely any health or ammo to make any choice other than the correct one worth any of the trouble.

Also can I just add that there's no point of entry into this pit? How did we even get here? Every path is already populated with monsters? Why did we go here? Everything in Doom up to this point has been teaching us not to dive into pits because you're pretty much guaranteed to get hurt or killed. This start area sucks just like every other pit does. It doesn't make any sense? The last map ended with a switch press followed by narrowly escaping one of the most difficult platform jumps over damaging death pits in the entire game? The very next area we arrive to after succeeding at conquering it is to just arbitrarily start in one?

Every time the wrong path is chose, the only (clear) way back is to fall back into the pit and take even more damage to ride one of the other lifts again. I don't know why there aren't extra paths between the upper levels since there's really only one good one and you have to keep using this stupid pit. I get that the map is called "The Pit" but it's a terrible feature. Did anyone ask for this?



The sequence to get the blue key in this map is absolutely bonkers. The only blue door on this map is this little tunnel attached to this ledge with no apparent way on it yet so you wouldn't even think you even need it, yet. But you will eventually and by the time you do it's very trivial. This ledge has two switches up here, one of which requires the blue key. But neither switch is what gives you the blue key. To get the blue key, you have to jump from an opening that is not yet revealed and 'land' on the ledge. The process of touching the top of this ledge activates the ominously dark platform the blue key is resting on to lower so you can get it. You have to get it quickly before the lift goes back up or you'll have to go back to the opening to make the jump and land on the ledge again to activate the blue key's platform again. Don't forget to press the switch up there before running for the blue key! The switch raises a step that lets you come back up to the ledge, which is handy but not required. Otherwise you need to go back and make the jump again and again even if you get the blue key because the blue door is here too. Unless you know this in advance you'll definitely be making this jump more than once.



But to even get to this part is even more ridiculous. One of the first objectives for progression is that you have to press a switch to raise this platform. It just looks like a wall trapping you in but it's a bridge. It bridges a gap between these two rooms but neither of them are open yet! Nor are they marked with any kind of door texture. They're just walls. It makes you think you're trapped in and once you figure out how to get on top of it, it's not immediately clear how you're supposed to use it to advance in the map.



Ok so you figured out that if you angle yourself right, you can make this awkward jump to this new area that looks like you probably weren't even supposed to be allowed to get to it. And your reward is this cool tower you found outside, but fuck all of that. Don't be a distracted goldfish-brain that likes pretty stuff because none of this entirely new area is important at all. We're still getting the blue key, remember? All you have to do is see the tower to progress at this point. The next switch to press is actually back here where you just came from.

That opens up the next wall across this now identifiable bridge, which has another switch which opens the next wall, which, now opened, allows you to make yet another poorly signposted jump to this unmarked platform that has the unmarked trigger of giving us access to the blue key. If you can't remember how we got here, it's ok because neither can I.



But wait there's more!

That thing in middle of the room, that's a switch. Step on that switch. No it's not a teleport. Yes I know it looks like a teleport. Yes I know its what the teleport looked like in another level. It's not a teleport. It's a switch. Yes you have to step on it.



What does it do? Now there are stairs that go into a wall. Ummm.. I promise this will be useful later.. I think... (scratches head)



This is a door texture but it is not a door.



This does not have a door texture but IT IS A DOOR!
This wall looks almost exactly like the rest of the walls in this room, but it is a door, a very important door that is required progression to complete the map and you need to figure that out to proceed. What the fuck?



Speaking of the above, inevitably, every player I've ever watched play this map for the first time is cognitively spent by the time they get to this unmarked door. Whenever I'm watching someone, I can predict with nearly 100% accuracy that they get stuck in a endless loop here, haplessly checking each of these three paths again and again, hungry for a single breadcrumb of progression until they're ready to bite the serial number sticker off their monitor. I suspect there's more to this mystery than the mere fact that the humiliating dOoR out of the pit's infinite torture chamber is visually featureless. Something more sinister, I presume. My theory is players are so drained from all of the previous debacles of unsatisfying gameplay and inordinate puzzle piecing that I think even touching previous areas with a ten foot pole feels like the least satiating thing they could possibly do in this game. The trauma creates a blindspot that doesn't allow them to think that anything helpful is back there. Not only do they not see a way back, they don't want a way back. Shudder...

Mercilessly, Sandy Petersen wears these players down to nothing with damaging itchy nukage sauce that's conveniently dumped in each of the three wings because:

1. They completely forgot that there are yellow doors all the way back to the start of the map.
2. There is no indication that this part of the map is over and you're free to go.
3. They never realized they even got the yellow key while they were in here.