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Yeah, John Romero explains that the famous e1m1 was the last level he designed for the original Doom, in this fantastic developer commentary he did for the game's first episode with IGN, for the game's 20th anniversary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUU7_BthBWM

'the classic horseshoe design' - show inaccessible teasers of later areas of the stage near the beginning to drive the player forward

If that's true, then throw away and redo the end levels.

One bad thing about this is that your game will get progressively worse as the player progresses, which isn't great.

An interleaved method will give better results.