There’s a lot of Frank Miller in the new Doom from id Software. According to game director Hugo Martin, Doom: The Dark Ages was heavily inspired by three of Miller’s works: seminal Batman comics Year One and The Dark Knight Returns, and the movie adaptation of 300.
The influence of Year One may be obvious: The Dark Ages serves as an origin story for the Doom Slayer. Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns and 300 added inspiration for the heavier, more powerful style of the Slayer; Martin said during a press event this week that Returns’ thick, monster truck-like Batman and the unstoppable assault of Leonidas battling his way out of the Hot Gates in 300 similarly influenced id this time around.
Doom: The Dark Ages is also heavily influenced by past Dooms. It’s part throwback to the very first Doom from 1993, and part reaction to players’ response to 2020’s Doom Eternal. Whereas Eternal made players feel like a fighter jet or a Ferrari, thanks to the game’s focus on speedy movement and acrobatics, The Dark Ages aims to make players feel like an iron tank — heavy, strong, but still fast. This time, it’s not just strafe and shoot; it’s also stand your ground and fight.
In a new look at the game on Thursday, Martin and Doom: The Dark Ages executive producer Marty Stratton walked fans of the shooter franchise through the medieval world and design goals of the newest Doom game. As previously revealed, The Dark Ages takes the franchise back in time, where players will learn the story of the Slayer before he became a world-saving sci-fi hero, fleshing out the period when he was “the superweapon of gods and kings.”
The Dark Ages is “not all about nostalgia,” Martin said, as players will have new tools and mechanics to master, starting with the Shield Saw, which is basically like if you added a ring of demon-slicing chainsaw teeth to Captain America’s physics-defying shield.
With the Shield Saw, the Slayer can block, throw, parry, and deflect, “all from one input,” Martin said. It’s a single-button, contextual device that can bash foes and deflect their projectiles back at them, stunning them into a vulnerable state. You can also brrrr the heads off of demons with it.
Then there are the guns. The developers describe The Dark Ages’ arsenal as featuring “the most powerful weapons we’ve ever created,” likening them to mean, ancient torture machines. “Only in Doom” was the mission statement, the game’s leads said. One of my favorites — a gun that certainly aligns to the “Only in Doom” philosophy — is the Skull Crusher, a weapon that chops up skulls and fires bone fragments at enemies.
The Slayer will also have a variety of melee weapons at his disposal, including a gauntlet, a chunky iron mace, and a whipping flail. Those weapons’ attacks are contextual too, as id Software aims to simplify the game’s inputs, a course correction from the more complicated control scheme of Eternal.
Martin and Stratton noted multiple times that they’re aiming to streamline the Doom gameplay experience in The Dark Ages. Martin described Eternal as “too complex,” explaining that “you want to be fighting your enemies, not your controls.” Stratton said that The Dark Ages is focused on approachability, saying that the game is not just a good entry point for new players because of its setting in the Doom timeline, but because it will be easy to learn.
In the same breath, the game’s leads also stressed that Doom: The Dark Ages will be hard to master, and that hardcore difficulty modes like Nightmare and Ultra Nightmare will be back. So too will challenging enemies on par with Doom Eternal’s Marauder that will test players’ skill and knowledge with the shield parry system. Both casual and hardcore players will be able to tweak Doom: The Dark Ages’ challenge to their liking, thanks to a series of difficulty sliders that offer granular adjustments. Options include game speed, enemy projectile speed, damage given and taken, length of parry windows, and an enemy aggression setting.
In addition to tailored challenge and variety, id is also going for spectacle with The Dark Ages. The developers promised bigger-than-ever battlefields and sandbox play spaces that are expansive (but not quite open world, Stratton said), and players will assume control of the 30-story mech known as the Atlan and ride on the back of a dragon in certain levels. Each giant vehicle has its own bosses, so expect oversized fights.
Here’s one thing not to expect from Doom: The Dark Ages, though: multiplayer. Stratton said that the team’s goal from the get-go was to focus on The Dark Ages’ single-player campaign. But after the game is done, expect some DLC, he said.
Doom: The Dark Ages will be released on May 15, for PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X. It will be available day one through Game Pass.
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