as a longtime half-life liker, finally sitting down and playing quake 1 was a shock, to realize how much enemy design carried over

headcrabs are slow small fiends, vorts are slow small shamblers, controllers are reskinned scrags, houndeyes are dogs, snarks are safer spawns, hgrunts are sorta like enforcers

feels like "give a cool attack type its own enemy type, and make it slower / smaller / weaker" is a good design method

@radiatoryang HL1 assassins feel like the most paradigm-breaking, they need a lot of level support but there's nothing in quake or doom remotely like em.
i can't remember if they were added earlier or later in HL1 dev, my guess would be later as an dialing-up of the hgrunt's LoS awareness and lethality.

@radiatoryang the blast pit tentacles are maybe a bit like chthon, if chthon got more usage in different custom setups.

@radiatoryang the angle i've thought of all this from a lot is which archetypes are "missing" from doom that were successful in quake, half life et al. the fiend/lunger being an obvious one (though its coolness is boosted significantly by having a 3D model that whizzes past when you dodge).
making a new monster type Good takes a lot of work honestly but i still want a game that has like, a fully appointed pantry of all the best monsters. and for that game to have an easy level editor obvs.

@jplebreton I blame cover shooters, now we're just cursed with bland humanoid enemies forever

@jplebreton imo playing Redfall reminded me how Left 4 Dead was maybe the last fps to represent a big leap in enemy design