My pet theory is: Doom's aesthetic is dark and scary. Being low-res helps with that, as does artifacting on distant surfaces (aliasing), and the way the 8-bit C

My pet theory is: Doom's aesthetic is dark and scary. Being low-res helps with that, as does artifacting on distant surfaces (aliasing), and the way the 8-bit COLORMAP [1] turns things gray and splotchy. The darkness is exaggerated, compared to a high-res image with trilinear texture filtering and 24-bit color. [1] https://doomwiki.org/wiki/COLORMAP https://doomwiki.org/wiki/COLORMAP