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Since id Software and Bethesda Softworks both belong to Zenimax and the two companies worked together on the latest Doom game, what would you all think of the idea of a crossover between Doom and The Elder Scrolls?

Think of this: In the Doom series, Hell's depicted not as existing below the Earth's surface, but as a demon-infested world in a parallel dimension from the one that contains Earth, Mars, etc., before it was connected to our dimension by a malfunctioning teleporter. But...

What if this "Hell" was actually a plane of Oblivion? There's hundreds, even thousands of realms of Oblivion that haven't been explored in The Elder Scrolls lore, and Daedra come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, just like the legions of Hell in Doom and its sequels. Those demons, imps, etc. could very well be species of Daedra that haven't yet been sighted in Tamriel/Nirn/Mundus, or are known there, but under different names. Compare Battlespire's Vermai to Doom 3's Imps, or the Ogrims from Morrowind to the Mancubi from Doom II: Hell on Earth.

Could this work? Could Doom and TES actually be compatible for a shared universe/multiverse/whatever? Please discuss.

The lore doesn't fit. Not only were our (assuming Doom is set in our universe, perhaps an alternate future) and TES's universes created differently and are a different age, but the sciences are different. For example, in our universe, stars are balls of gas whereas in the TES universe, stars are rips in space which lead to Aetherius.

And don't say Earth is in TES cause of the Space Core "DLC". It's a joke, albeit official, mod which is likely non-canon.

Why tho

Hypertime: It's all true. It all happened. The separation lies between the loose, transient, immeasurable arcs that split off from and return to the great stream of time, and that river itself. We need only to dig canals.

What part of "parallel dimensions" do you not understand? The physics can change from one to the other. Need I remind you that the Earth/Mars dimension and Hell's weren't connected until a freak accident with a teleporter bridged the two together?

And also, the Doom games don't have to occur during a specific period of time in TES's timeline. It could be anytime. Maybe the events of Morrowind and Oblivion are congruent to our own, why Skyrim takes place in roughly the same time period as Doom?

It could simply be a mild crossover. Just retcon Hell as a plane of Oblivion, and the various demons and other supernatural creatures that Doomguy fights as Daedra.

Why not?

C'mon, can't we think of something fun for a change? I know there's cynicism in every corner of the Internet, but there's plenty of good, too.

Anyway, when you think about it: there's some parallels between Doom and The Elder Scrolls. Both started out in the early 1990s as DOS games with an emphasis on first-person action. Both games helped put their respective companies on the map, and inspired a number of spin-offs and clones, including ones made by the same companies.

Both series have featured similar gameplay elements: in addition to the aforementioned first-person perspective and action/exploration elements, both series involve the supernatural/occult, science-fiction (the Dwemer and their machines are a dead give-away of this!), and interdimensional travel.

The idea of battling an interdimensional invasion by demons, which is central to Doom, is even touched upon in TES IV: Oblivion and the spin-off title Battlespire. In fact, Battlespire's premise is pretty much Doom's, but with a high fantasy theme and RPG elements: a lone member of an elite fighting force is forced to battle with a supernatural force from a parallel dimension in a remote location far from their home, while traveling through portals to other dimensions, including the one where the supernatural force came from.

There's also quite a few realms of Oblivion that resemble your typical depiction of Hell: a volcanic wasteland with fire and brimstone, dotted with grim architecture, and infested with unspeakable horrors. The best examples are Mehrunes Dagon's Deadlands and Peryite's Pits.

And like I said in the OP, some of the Daedra from TES and the creatures from the Doom series seem to overlap in terms of design.

The Doom 3 incarnation of the Imp could easily be interchangeable with the Vermai.



The Mancubus from Doom II is essentially an Ogrim with cybernetics and machine guns. Yes, I know the Ogrim was introduced AFTER Doom II, but still.




And the Hunger has an extraordinarily similar body structure to the Arch-Vile.

I think the Skyrim easteregg in Doom was already pushing it. So, no. At all. This is like everyone wanting TES to push forward and develop guns. Just, no.

The great god of crossovers, quotes, references, scripts, nostalgia, styles and the past teaches us that lore is not always important to fit a crossover; there are styles of crossovers that involve a proper lore merging with either fitting or unfitting lore (in which case a wider lore system is usually created to explain the differences in each separate system) as a as well as the more fun styles to which the fitting of the lore systems of the separate lore system is not required, as it would be the result that matters - and usually the more ridiculous the result is, the better.

For an example of the latter, think Pazudora. It is basically a separate lore system that hosts a lot of crossovers with many absolutely different folklore assets, but it has it's own style, to which those lore pieces are bent to the point they become absurd if you look at it outside of Pazudora style.

Short answer: No.

Doom is sci-fi and is the original over the top FPS. Ok, Wolfestein may be the original FPS but Doom taught us that when in doubt, use a shotgun and ultra violence to solve problems.

TES is a fantasy RPG franchise. The lore doesn't fit even if they went "Oh, it's erm... Molag's thing." and no, Mehrune Dagon's deadlands are not hell. Just destruction personified. Doom guy is one bad ass [&@%!] that uses the Biggest [&@%!] Gun from the 90s whenever possible. He [&@%!] out bullets and punches entire legions of demons to death. A crossover wouldn't work. TES has no set main character. Doom does. Doom set in TES wouldn't work. TES set in Doom, wouldn't work.

Crossovers rarely work in games with different sets of lore. TESIV's plot is not similiar to Doom's. Doom's plot is well, a massive excuse for non-stop violence that is fun and gets very stupid with some mods. Oblivion's plot was much deeper then Doom's. Doomguy was just a guy that got sent to Mars for kicking his superior's ass and demons happened. He then kills everything. Doom 2? Hell gets destroyed because they killed his pet bunny.

TES plots are there for narrative. Doom plots are excuses. Excluding Doom 3: Er... we forgot to bring the fun.

And plenty of people tend to want guns in TES. It is a bit of a pet peeve of mine whenever someone forces in guns. It's a RPG. It's fantasy. Swords and magic. Not guns.

I played the new DOOM. It's pretty much the same basic premise as Oblivion, except it takes place in a futuristic sci-fantasy version of our own timeline.

They could definitely use some of the demon designs for Daedric minions, and some of the Hell maps for zones in some of the Daedric realms, and those physical assets would work just fine within the context of TES. There are millions of lesser Daedra and pocket realms we've never seen before, because they're super obscure and rarely interact with Nirn, so there's no reason some of these enemy types couldn't appear in TES.


edit: Also, that Titan corpse in the one zone in DOOM could totally work for Akulakhan from Morrowind. The hell sword thing from the end of the game and some of the statues could work as an alternate Bound weapon or artifact. The BFG particle effect and Plasma and Gauss effects could be used for spells, etc.

I'll concede the futuristic weapons as well. Oblivion is often depicted as very futuristic, and some of the Daedric machines we've seen are even more complex than anything achieved by the Dwemer. My main issue is the Earth cross-over, which gets an absolute no from me. The space cores already pushed it.

All it takes is for Doom Guy to end up in Bethesda's basement where they keep their Elder Scroll.

Well, now that you mention the Scrolls, the Doomguy/Doomslayer was associated with a prophecy on an ancient world of knights and magic. This was always an intention going back to the DOOM Bible, I believe, but the newest game actually explores this lore in depth the farther into the game you go. The "Hell" you visit is a world conquered by demons in the ancient past - like how Mehrunes Dagon overthrew the planet called Lyg to create his realm. (If you're not familiar, read Mankar Camoran's Commentaries from Oblivion.) So, there's a lore parallel there, including prophecy and demons overthrowing planets, even if the essential universe setting is different.

Never heard that interpretation before. Is that based solely on the Commentaries?

Details, details. There are lots of differences between the two series, but they're very minor in the grand scheme of things and could be overlooked. Even if the games are two different styles (which isn't necessarily true), simply establishing that the two series are in a shared universe wouldn't be too far-fetched. Zenimax owns both Bethesda and id Software, so it can happen. Capcom's Street Fighter and Final Fight have two different gameplay styles, but they still exist perfectly well in the same continuity. Same thing for Rockstar's GTA and Manhunt.

Just because the Doom games are primarily first-person shooters doesn't mean we can't have RPG titles based on it. In fact, they already exist. And games like Hexen and Heretic show that you can have a Doom-style game with a fantasy setting, medieval weapons, and magic.

Doom doesn't have much of a story, but that's what retcons are for. I imagine that the events of the Doom games would be a footnote in the Elder Scrolls history, and vice-versa, but at least they'd still be able to co-exist. All they'd really need to do is say "Yes. Those demons that attacked Mars and Earth are Daedra."

There are many, many, MANY realms of Oblivion that we haven't seen yet in TES. So even if Hell was one of them, it might just be some backwoods pocket realm that's mostly ignored by the princes and cults outside of a passing mention or rumor.

Also, that whole "avenging the pet bunny" thing is not from Doom II. It's from "Thy Flesh Consumed", the final episode of The Ultimate Doom (an updated version of the original Doom).



Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman all exist in the same universe. Doesn't mean that we're gonna have Kryptonians and Greek gods show up to fight all of Batman's battles for him.



The idea of Earth being linked to Oblivion may seem weird and would not work in a realistic situation, but just remember that the Earth in Doom/Wolfenstein/etc. is already pretty different from the real world and hardly what I'd call "realistic". Wolfenstein 3D alone had: Undead Nazi super-soldiers, giant mutated rats (depending on the version), Hitler in a mech-suit, and portable chainguns with pistol grips...all during WW2, mind you!

I think it's safe to say that the Earth in the Wolfenstein/Doom universe already has a certain degree of weirdness to it as it is. A weirdness that would hardly be tainted by the sudden appearance of an interdimensional demonic force (which is basically what Daedra are). Like what Pilaf said, you could easily have designs of characters, creatures, and settings overlap between the two series without causing too much of a fuss. The demons from Doom 4 would actually fit pretty well with the countless lesser Daedra seen/mentioned in TES lore. I could certainly see Clannfears and Scamps roaming around Hell, or Imps, Cacodemons, etc. in Peryite's Pits or one of the many other realms of Oblivion.



I was thinking that we could actually have the series overlap a little, beyond simple aesthetics. It doesn't have to be anything major. We don't need to have Dremora with BFGs or Doomguy teaming up with the Dragonborn or anything like that to establish that they co-exist. Maybe a book could be written about a soldier that travelled between dimensions and single-handedly conquered a lesser realm of Oblivion with an arsenal of strange weapons. Or...

Hell is/was in fact Peryite's Pits? After all, 200 years passed between Oblivion and Skyrim, so there'd be plenty of time for the Pits to undergo a major design overhaul from how we saw it in that shrine quest. And we don't see what it actually looks like in Skyrim; mortals from Nirn rarely ever get a chance to visit the Pits and Peryite's not exactly the most respected Daedric Prince, so it's not like there's gonna be much traffic to and from Earth/Mars and Nirn, or any circulation of UAC technology between Nirn and the realms of Oblivion.

This is why I think Doom 4/2016 could potentially take place in the Pits (which can easily be mistaken by people of Earth for "Hell"), while Peryite was away in Tamriel. Or he was there, but there was not much he could do about it, what with being the weakest of the Daedric Princes, and this wouldn't be the first time that he needed a mortal to clean up a mess in his realm.

Yes. The Commentaries are largely about how a world called Lyg was overthrown by a Dagonite revolution. It also mentions how the previous Nirnic Kalpa, ran by Dreugh kings, was similarly overthrown by Dagonites.



The two stories already overlap, in that they're owned by Bethesda, and there's this meta-RP story wherein the Elder Scrolls are physical objects kept in the basement at Bethesda. The games they publish are prophecies scried from the Scrolls. Now that Bethesda owns many studios and IPs, all of these game universes can be said to be prophecies from the Elder Scrolls, just not necessarily stories of Nirn or Tamriel.

I always thought lyg was a continent on nirn, or even tamriel itself, before the history known to us.

Yeah, I really don't think the Commentaries alone are enough to claim that the Deadlands were Lyg. It's even called the realm of Lorkhan:


That corroborates directly with Camoran's in-game dialogue on the "true" nature of Nirn and why Dagon seeks to reclaim it. Unless there's some other source to go on, Lyg = pre-Dawn dreughland.

They already made one, and called it Battlespire.

Doom has been retconned and rebooted twice. Doom 3 tried to reboot and failed. Doom is the latest and successful reboot. Doomguy is kinda not suited for TES. He is the original space marine. You can't turn him into anything else. Swords? Nope. Arrows? Nope. Big [&@%!] Guns? Yes. A footnote in history would be a rubbish way to do a crossover and well, it wouldn't really work. Hell is Hell in Doom. Nothing more, nothing less. The Realms of Oblivion are completely different and Earth doesn't exist in TES. Nirn does and it is seldom implied that Nirn is Lorkhan's realm that was stolen from him.

Doom and TES are two games that should never crossover.

The great god of crossovers, quotes, references, scripts, nostalgia, styles and the past would disagree with you. It is possible to make a successful, fun and epic crossover there.

Doom Guy uses a chainsaw, which might as well be an enchanted sword.

What is a fireball if not a rocket-propelled grenade?

It's not an enchanted sword. That said, TES swords can't even lop off limbs. Only heads. Doom's chainsaws chop people in half.

Gunpowder is a product of alchemy. A steam driven Dwemer crossbow might be enhanced to have a high cyclic rate of fire. Earth, Mars, Mundus, Jotunheim, Hades, Gaia, Termina, etc., etc., etc. - all reflections of one another. Where is Hell? What is magic? How does one destroy a monster? Ones and zeroes, mash the buttons 'til they all fall down.

I like it. That's some Joseph Campbell stuff right there. This is the way we should be approaching this idea, not trying to find reasons it should never work. Like Dr. Campbell said, people are too caught up in their own myths to realize it's all the same story over and over again.