(PR) (Danielle Partis, Xbox Wire) Today, during Xbox Developer Direct, the id Software team took us inside the studio to get an in-depth look at DOOM: The Dark Ages, the prequel to the critically acclaimed DOOM (2016) and DOOM Eternal, and the most ambitious DOOM game to date.
The segment gave us extended peeks into three of the title’s core pillars: Combat, Exploration and Story. As the Slayer, you’ll be invited to explore a dark fantasy/sci-fi world with DOOM’s immediately recognizable hellish twist, fighting your way across sprawling fantasy battlefields with an expanded arsenal of weapons and equipment.
With DOOM: The Dark Ages, the team has taken the opportunity to reimagine every aspect of the DOOM experience to create an explosive new action adventure for both long-time fans and newcomers.
Combat
The action in DOOM: The Dark Ages is a grounded experience focused on the sheer power that the Slayer wields – devastating melee abilities, and the return of strafing, a classic DOOM manoeuvre. The team puts it best: In DOOM Eternal, you felt like a fighter jet, but in DOOM: The Dark Ages you’ll be an iron tank, ready to stand and fight. A loadout of new melee weapons, plus a brand-new melee skill tree means you’ll be able to get up close and personal to your demons and deliver some serious damage.
During the show, we were introduced to the Shield Saw, packed with features to both block incoming fire, decapitate foes from afar, or traverse the environment. The segment also showed us a huge, spiked flail, an electric gauntlet built to pummel and paralyze incoming foes, and a fierce spiked mace; three new weapons that all come with their own combos and upgrade options.
It’s all about engagement; creating a loop or “dance” that’s intuitive, innovative and loaded with depth – fun on the outside smart on the inside,” Game Director Hugo Martin says. “An appealing power fantasy that’s new but familiar – who hasn’t wanted to feel like an iron tank in the middle of a medieval war against hell?”
Obviously, DOOM is also all about the guns, and that trademark top-shelf shooting is here in abundance too. We saw a handful of the ranged weapons in action – a hulking double-barrel shotgun packing a punch, a mean, energy-powered gun spewing paralysing shots, and, perhaps the most impressive – a preposterous-looking machine gun that fashions high-speed rounds by breaking down actual skulls. It’s an utterly menacing arsenal built to take on the biggest and baddest demons you’ve ever faced in a DOOM game.
Bigger demons means bigger battles, and mech fans, rejoice – you’re in for an absolute treat. In DOOM: The Dark Ages, you’ll be able to pilot your own gigantic Atlan, a mech of gargantuan proportion built to take on baddies on a colossal scale. One clip in the segment looks like a kaiju movie, showing the Atlan throwing annihilating hits at a demon the size of a building – it’s Doom’s epic, brutal combat moments on a literally next level scale.
If that wasn’t enough, the team has also leaned more into the fantasy flair with another new weapon – a giant cybernetic dragon complete with mounted gatling guns, able to swoop in from above and absolutely drill through anything standing in its way – letting you hop on and take the fight to the skies. While DOOM: The Dark Ages internal motto has been ‘Stand and Fight,’ this piece of equipment lets us mix it up with some fantasy style airborne combat, which looks extremely fun,
Both the dragon and the Atlan come with their own suite of upgrades too, so as you use them, they’ll actually get even more impressive and effective than they already are.
Exploration
In DOOM: The Dark Ages, we’re met with a mysterious world from the Slayer’s past, shrouded in dark forests and towering structures, alongside dangerous dungeons, and ancient battlefields. The setting blends DOOM’s signature, recognizable hellscapes with a menacing medieval twist, and the juxtaposition of hi-tech weapons and cybernetically enhanced demons against this imposing fantasy backdrop is truly remarkable.
You’ll also be able to fully explore these levels with a level of freedom that has rarely been possible in a DOOM game. The levels in DOOM: The Dark Ages are less linear than previous instalments – you have autonomy over which areas to explore and which objectives to pursue. It’s a DOOM sandbox, your playground to cause carnage in whichever you want, and the biggest player space ever seen in DOOM.
The Shield Saw we mentioned earlier also doubles up as a cool exploration tool – you can use it to traverse across broken bridges, scale up ledges, smash through hidden paths, and crack into treasure troves nestled in every corner of the world. Exploration isn’t just encouraged, it’s rewarded with loot, upgrades, and secrets.
“It’s power through progression – which leads to exploration,” Hugo adds. “Every critical item you need to dominate in Dark Ages is either held by your enemies or hidden in the world. Seek, discover, destroy!”
Story
The id team is going big on narrative in DOOM: The Dark Ages, with aims to make the story and lore much more approachable, bringing deep story beats out of the codex and into incredible cutscenes for maximum impact.
“With the Slayer imprisoned at the start of our story the balance of power between good and evil is shifting and time is running out,” Martin says. “Our hero is a feared outsider among an imperilled people, his strength controlled by the gods they serve, in a world under siege by an ancient evil.”
The main plot is being kept under wraps for now, but the team shares that we’re expected to meet exciting new characters alongside old allies and of course, terrifying new villains. This story also leads right into the Slayer’s testaments in DOOM (2016), serving as something of an origin story for the two previous games. It’s an action story worthy of the Slayer’s legend, and we can’t wait to uncover it.
The best part is that there’s not too long to wait before you can become a medieval super weapon. DOOM: The Dark Ages launches May 15, for Xbox Series X|S, the Xbox App for Windows PC, Steam, and PlayStation 5 – and you can play it day one with Game Pass.
Discussion (19 replies)
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So looks like the focus this time is on power over acrobatics. Hugo Martin said in Doom Eternal you were a fighter jet, but in this game game you're an iron tank. A balance between enemy projectiles and player movement that hearkens back to Doom 1 and 2. He said Doom 2016 was run-n-gun, Doom Eternal was jump-n-shoot, and now for The Dark Ages it's stand-and-fight.
The Shield Saw is for blocking, throwing, parrying, deflecting, and of course sawing.
You got the iron flail with the spike ball, electric gauntlets, and a spiked mace. You can also kick enemies.
I still say the game looks too dark and dull and bland compared to Eternal or even 2016. Eternal had a f*cking awesome use of color. The Dark Ages is reminding me of the 7th-gen era, when so many games were variations of brown and red and grey.
Interesting custom difficulty system with sliders, so you can change parameters like the parry window, daze duration, game speed, enemy projectile speed, damage to demons and players, enemy aggression level, and more.
And then of course there is the 30-story mech, and the flying cybernetic dragon, both of which were teased in the first trailer.
I see they brought back the swimming. I don't think anyone who played Eternal was really asking for more of that.
Seems like the environments are larger, more open, and more explorable. You have more freedom in how you go about exploring and completing mission objectives. They called it a "Doom sandbox".
This is the company doing the music for the game: https://www.finishingmoveinc.com/
"We've taken the narrative out of the codex and into the cutscenes". Yyeeaahh but we preferred it in the codex entries. And besides, they already kinda went heavy on cutscenes and story in Eternal - a bit too heavy. Doom 2016 had the right amount of story.
The game comes out May 15 2025. Though the Steam store page for the game still has a placeholder date: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3017860/DOOM_The_Dark_Ages/ (EDIT: not anymore)
Of course what I am looking forward to the most is the engine. I wonder if it will be an update of idTech 7, or if they moved to idTech 8.
I loved the f*ck outta Doom 2016, but Eternal was a disappointment to me. So I am approaching The Dark Ages with caution.
I've always liked doom more than Quake. Used to like the WWII shooter more than Doom but that's changed more recently.
so they made it a souls clone?
Well, it sounds good! I think the use of sliders to change specific elements of the difficulty is super cool. Looking forward to this!
Quake < Doom < Quake 2 < Doom II is how I'd rank the games. I could never get into the modern ones. Doom 3, Quake 4, the new Doom 2016 were all misses for me.
Totally agree.
I can remember in high school when Doom released. We lived in a dorm, and a bunch of us LAN partied it all weekend. Not a lot of multiplayer (I don't even remember if it had multiplayer on the original release right away, and we didn't exactly have Ethernet, it was all dialup for us) - mostly just all of us running through the campaign but floating around encouraging each other if someone got in deep. We kept it going all weekend and just dropped in and out around eating/sleeping/whatever.
One guy, well, he stayed awake playing the entire weekend. No sleep. Playing 90-some hours straight. He kept the lights off, blackout curtains on the windows, had that Soundblaster 16 and cheap non-powered speakers cranked to max, Mtn Dew and Papa Johns were free flowing all over, probably had the 2L piss bottle - he was in deep.
We get into class that Monday. I guess this guy finally nods off, because in the middle of math class, we are all there just working on some problem and it's pretty quiet, and he jumps straight up out of his chair, screaming about demons, starts making the Doom shotgun sound and runs out of the classroom. One of the best memories of high school right there.
Really wish Id would come out with a proper single player Quake game. It's been 20 years since Quake 4.
Q4 is a Raven software game, you need to go back to Q3 for a id quake
And you need to go back to Quake 2 for a single player one.
As one of the few people that actually liked Unreal 2, I wish for a proper single player Unreal even more.
I was beating that drum for many years. I wanted one more than a new UT. But then Epic started turning into the Epic we know now, and then I was glad they didn't attempt another single-player Unreal. Cuz then they couldn't ruin it. But it still rubs me the wrong way that the engine series continues to be called "Unreal" when there are no Unreal games on them. Closest we got was UT4 alpha, which I spent some time with, but that game never got far enough along to get its own feel and identity.
I did not mind Quake 4, but Quake 2 was much better. I've never revisited Quake 4 again, and have no real desire to. I played the RTX version of Quake 2 in 2023. Then the remaster hit but by then I was Quake'd out. I plan on revisiting Quake 1 with the remaster at some point.
I love the f*ck outta Doom 1 and 2 and still play those a decent amount (usually via the sourceport Zandronum). Recently went through both the new campaign for the Doom 2 remaster Legacy of Rust, and the community-made path-traced version of base Doom 2. Played Doom 64 for the first time with Nightdive's remaster in 2020, and within 2 years I had done a second playthrough. In 2016 at a LANParty three of us went through Doom 1 in co-op, which was a neat experience. Never cared for Doom 3 though.
This story had me rollin'!!!
Oh yeah, I forgot about that. Still thought it was fun, and I still want a new single player quake game.
I liked Unreal 2 as well, made me upgrade from my Geforce 2 whatever to a Geforce 3. What a huge difference that was.....sigh's wistfully.....
Oh yeah, I would not mind a new one, replayed Q2 with ray tracing not that long ago
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I think my aversion to modern doom games comes from the visuals. The original Doom I and II used earthly, flat colors, while these modern ones are so shiny and smooth. Everything looks like someone licked it smooth and shiny, even the monsters.
At least it looks better than Doom 3, where everything looked plastic, especially human skin.