E3 is rapidly approaching with only two months separating us from some (hopefully) great gaming reveals, but one publisher that hasn't been building the hype for the latter half of this year is DOOM and Skyrim wonder-studio, Bethesda. Until now...

In a conversation with Dualshockers, Bethesda Softworks’ Senior Vice President of Marketing Pete Hines was asked about any potential news surrounding the company's presence at E3 and what fans could expect to see. Aside from teasing "a lot of new stuff", one phrase in particular has us wondering if there might be a little more than meets the eye.

“I couldn’t give you any guesses as to what we’re going to announce and when those games will be out. But I will say, we have a lot of new stuff to talk about at E3. Whether or not folks realize it, this is the hell on Earth time for us with E3. We are in the midst of so much planning and work for all of that content but I’m really excited.

In case you've missed the reference, describing E3 as "hell on Earth" time for Bethesda could absolutely be a subtle nod towards an upcoming DOOM sequel. The original series of id Software's DOOM games, released back in the '90s, saw its second release be titled DOOM II: Hell On Earth, launching for the MS-DOS shortly before arriving on the likes of the Playstation and Sega Saturn. Could an upcoming second entry in the recently rebooted franchise be released under the same name? It's definitely possible.

What do you think? Does this seem like a cheeky little reference to you? Or are we looking into things a little too hopefully? Let us know if you'd like to see DOOM 2 revealed at E3 this year in the comments.