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It featured vertical dimensions, enhanced weaponry, trampolines and more. The level design was characterized by very high, straight walls, outdoor scenes, and digitized sprite-based enemies.
Although Rise of the Triad was based on (a highly enhanced version of) the Wolfenstein 3D engine, it was supposed to compete with DOOM. It did its best, but DOOM went down in history for non-orthagonal, height-difference maps.
The weapon system was ahead of its time in complexity, brutality, and realism. You could carry one or two pistols, a machine gun, and one of several different rocket launchers, considered a realistic limitation. If you picked up another rocket weapon, you dropped the first. The Split rocket launcher sent two heat-seeking rockets flying at 45 degree angles... unless you held down the fire button, in which case it sent a single rocket straight forward, which split as soon as you let go of the fire button. The homing missile fired a single heat-seeking rocket. The Firebomb's rocket exploded on impact, sending a twenty-foot-wide chain explosion outward. The Flamewall was nearly impossible to escape from; it sent a wall of flame in one direction, and any player not wearing an Asbestos Vest was instantly incinerated.
In addition, you could wield a baseball bat, enter God Mode for a short time (complete with invulnerability and the Hand Of God instant-kill weapon), or in a dyslexic gag, enter Dog Mode, in which you were shorter, and bit other players. Dog Mode also allows you to use the devastating Barkblast.
A few other features were noteworthy, such as bullet weapons leaving marks on walls, and player-character height, health, and speed differences.
Rise of the Triad is somewhat well known for its most unrealistic feature, Ludicrous Gibs. Gibs, short for giblets, rained down from the sky whenever an enemy exploded. These included chunks of charred flesh, and eyeballs. This was a gamer favorite, and was later featured in 3D Realms' next first person shooter, Duke Nukem 3D. The Quake series cemented the use of gibs as the remains of exploded characters, as opposed to characters merely shot to death. ( DOOM introduced the idea, with separate "explosion death" corpses for the grunt, sargeant, and imp; Rise of the Triad brought it to fruition.)