What's the diference between the original and DE, aside DLCs and enhancements?

Thanks for the info...most all of this is new to me other than draw distance which I would kind of expect.

Not specific to Skyrim, but there's also the sense of game preservation which I think is important for GOG to foster (unfortunately their stance went in the opposite direction of "old games run on modern machines, but we'll happily break compatibility on old machines in order to push our precious Galaxy"...sorry, you know I have to get my digs in).

Certainly one can say an older version is inferior but there are old games on here that are considered by many as inferior (famously, Arabian Nights) so it shouldn't preclude it from coming here (though I'm aware you're not necessarily arguing that it should preclude it...I'm just elaborating on my point).

Are the serial keys needed even for single-player Doom 3? If so, why?

It's been a debate for a while about what version is actually better:
-> https://kotaku.com/should-you-get-sleeping-dogs-definitive-edition-depe-1645773296
-> https://steamcommunity.com/app/307690/discussions/0/1496741765140251086/

Some DLC's are part of the actual base-game's campaign, except for Nightmare DLC and Year of the Snake DLC ( those are separate and can be done at any time).

My biggest thing: saves don't work from Original to DE.

So, for me to do the main DE campaign and any DLC's that take place within the game world - yeah, I got to start from scratch on the DE.

So, I need a Complete Original version, to pick-up where I left off w/ Original. I ain't bought all the DLC's there, since it ain't always cheap. It's not like the best prices for the DLC's happen for the Original version on Steam. Steam with SD Original also got rid of the Full DLC Only Package that they used to have, too.

In many cases, it usually winds up being way more expensive to buy all the DLC's for the OG version than say buying the DE in a $3-4 by a mile.

It's built into the game. That's why he asks. But once entered quiet.

Fair enough. Thanks.

I'm sorry, but this doesn't make much sense. I need further clarification.

It means that once you enter your cd-key in, it won't ask for it again on that install. They are stored within "doomkey" and "xpkey" files inside the doom3/base subfolder for d3 and roe respectively.

Thanks.

Oh absolutely. I guess I'm just saying if I were to pick my battles Skyrim would be a lot lower on the list than Doom 3 was and Deus Ex 3 is.

I'm guessing the reason Quake 4 can just come with a preset key and run without complaining that it's already in use is that it supports only LAN multiplayer, similar to how D3BFG had multiplayer stripped out. So D3 vanilla still has online multiplayer but the upshot is that 'DRM FREE. No activation [...] required to play' is true only of D3BFG.