Doom Eternal – Hell comes to Earth, at last (pic: Bethesda)

After 26 years Doom finally gets a proper sequel, as the combat puzzle gameplay of the 2016 reboot is refined to perfection.

Thanks to the seemingly endless series of delays that have characterised 2020’s first month in gaming, Doom Eternal is going to end up being the first major multiformat release of the year. Which is ironic given it was supposed to be out last year, until it suffered its own delay. Having now played several hours of an almost finished version though we can confirm that it will be absolutely worth the wait.

Although it was certainly a very good game, we never seemed to like the 2016 Doom reboot quite as much as some others, so we were a bit hesitant to see what the approach would be for the sequel. But introducing the game before the hands-on, director Marty Stratton immediately began talking about addressing issues such as the reboot’s repetition and perceived mindlessness.



As we discussed with him later in our interview, the latter is an unfair criticism, but it’s certainly true that the original began to run out of new ideas by the halfway mark and had some uninspired art design that never seemed as outrageous as it needed to be to match the gameplay. From the two hours or so we played last week though it seems as if those are no longer problems at all.


One peculiar detail to emerge from the interview is that Doom Eternal is not only the first proper sequel in the series’ 26 year history (Doom 2 was more of an expansion pack and Doom 3 essentially a remake) but it’s the only proper sequel id Software have ever made (the Quake sequels have almost nothing to do with each other and Rage 2 was eight years later). But Eternal really does show the benefits of a timely sequel, and how it can be used to address the flaws of the original while maintaining all that it got right.

In Doom Eternal you’re once again cast as the mythical Doom Slayer and while we missed the first level, that would’ve properly explained the story, Earth has been invaded by the powers of Hell and other factions, including Heaven, seem to be lurking in the background. It’s all nicely tongue in cheek, and if anyone is stupid enough to try another film adaptation it seems perfect material for Evil Dead director Sam Raimi.

Most of what we played was set on an Earth split apart by hellish tentacles but there were also sections set in what we think was Hell itself, dotted with giant suits of magical armour, and a section in some sort of wood-panelled dungeon where you fight demonic cultists. In the space of a couple of hours it all seemed much more varied and visually interesting than the whole of the original, with Stratton promising other much wilder sights later in the game.

Doom Eternal – chainsaws = health (pic: Bethesda)

The basic gunplay of the reboot is largely unchanged, which makes sense as it was already near perfect. The gameplay loop and the unusual pacing, that vacillates between surprisingly long periods of inaction (now peppered by some interestingly difficult platforming and wall climbing) and equally lengthy sequences of all-out action where a seemingly endless array of demons will assail you from every direction.

Doom Eternal is absolutely not mindless, but it’s also very different from most other first person shooters. There are far too many demons to memorise a section and formulate an exact route through it, and so instead you have to come up with a more general plan of attack and react moment-to-moment. You have a wide range of different weapons to help with this, from the iconic shotgun to a machinegun with a sight, and each of these can be equipped with different secondary fire options such as sticky bombs and rapid fire.



You’ve also got a shoulder-mounted grenade launcher, a flamethrower that works on a cooldown, and glory kills where staggered enemies can be rendered limb from limb. What adds the tactical depth though is that each of these different methods provides a different reward. Enemies killed with the flamethrower drop armour, glory kills produce health, and chainsaw attacks cause demons to drop ammo.

There are other unique attacks and customisation options beyond this, to the point where it can all start to sound a bit complicated when you explain it, but in practice it feels very natural and obvious. If you’re playing smartly then every kill has a specific purpose behind it, whether it’s to procure more ammo or set off a chain of glory kills that will trigger rage mode. Monsters can be tricked into fighting each other and many of the bigger ones have weak points, such as gun emplacements, that can be shot off to make them easier to deal with.

Sometimes you purposefully don’t kill a demon until you need a specific resource, keeping them on the edge of death until the moment that’s most advantageous to you. It’s a wonderfully versatile system where you can feel yourself getting better and better with every go, as you learn to read the room with a more tactical eye and, as Stratton himself says, almost become your own fight choreographer.

There will be standard multiplayer modes, but there doesn’t seem to be any pretence that they’re going to be a main attraction. The idea of invasions, where you can join other player’s games as demons, sounds fun though. That wasn’t turned on in the preview we played but at one point we were told a demon was extra powerful because it’d killed a lot of other players, which was an interesting Dark Souls-inspired addition.


Doom Eternal looks and plays fantastically well and seems certain to go down as one of the best first person shooters – or indeed one of the best action games of any kind – this year. Sequels get a bad rap for obvious reasons but sometimes it doesn’t take much to turn a good game into a great one and Doom Eternal seems to be proof of exactly that. If nothing else it finally offers the vision of Hell on Earth that fans have been waiting decades for, and it’s just as much fun as was always hoped.

Formats: PC (previewed), Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, and Stadia

Publisher: Bethesda

Developer: id Software

Release Date: 20th March 2020 (Switch TBC)

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The interview begins with a preamble about Little Big Adventure 2, which we discover Stratton was the producer on. But it turns out he never met the French developers and so he can say nothing about the chances of another game.

GC: So you were the director on the Doom reboot as well?

MS: Yeah, the title was game director/executive producer on that. But Hugo Martin, who’s our game director on Doom Eternal, he and I kind of had a partnership since we did Doom 2016. So he’s more creative, I’m more production. But we work very closely together.

GC: The whole idea of rebooting Doom is fraught with problems, as one of the main appeals of the original was that it was a technical milestone, of the sort that isn’t really possible given where we are with graphics today. Was that a concern when you first started?


MS: We honestly didn’t even… I wouldn’t say we approached it with a mind towards technically innovating as the most important thing. I think what we were really focused on was the gameplay and how the game was going to make you feel when you played it.

We did go back to the original games and there’s an interesting parallel because I think, back then, you were doing a lot of things for the first time. But when we then applied that to the 2016 style of play – no reloading, you’re moving really fast, you’re never going for cover – games had kind of moved away from that a little bit. And you call them classic or whatever but it’s just fun. You know what I mean? [laughs] It’s a fun style of gameplay.

So I think, as we explored that and felt like there was these really good ingredients there to make a modern game it also felt unique, even for today. Because I don’t think a lot of games feel like Doom. So we really embraced that. And I think when Doom came out it felt new, whether you’d played the originals or not. And I think that’s why it works.

GC: One thing I was looking forward to with this is that Doom has never really had a sequel, which is bizarre given how long it’s been around.

MS: [laughs]

GC: Everything’s just been remakes and Doom 2 was really just an expansion pack. But here… Hell on Earth finally looks like how I imagined it would!

MS: I it’s tremendously exciting. It’s why I say I think this is our best game ever; it’s our most complete game. We took everything we learned, making Doom 2016… you as a developer, you hope to get to this point where you have a team that you have made one, at least, maybe two or three games with, because your ability to expand on that knowledge, on that confidence, on that safety net of knowing the people you’re working with and knowing people’s strengths and weaknesses, it really gives you an opportunity to expand from what you did the first time.

When we went through Doom 2016 there was a lot of questions to answer when it comes to things like what is Doom? What is Doom supposed to feel like? Does this mechanic work? Does this feel right? And once you get that basis, that new foundation from a gameplay perspective and from a team perspective, it gives you this opportunity to elevate everything and work more efficiently. You don’t have to answer so many mundane, rudimentary questions about the brand aim.

So I think that’s what’s allowed us to tighten up the gameplay loop, the expansion of the world, how we’re telling the story, how big the levels are, the scope of the game, the technology… like literally in every aspect of the game we pushed because we had a new foundation that we can build on as a team. And that’s the benefit of actually making a sequel.

And really, it’s not only the first sequel for Doom but when you look at our history it’s really the first time we’ve released a true sequel in a reasonable amount of time after a game. Quake 2 was not a true sequel of Quake, Doom 2 was probably the closest thing to a sequel we’ve done. Then we did Doom 3, then we did Rage, then we did Doom 2016. So we have not really done a sequel before.

GC: Wow, that’s true. I mean Rage 2 was ages afterwards and quite different anyway.

MS: Yeah. It’s a pretty interesting situation and it makes this game so much better. This game is, again, it’s our best and most complete because we’re not completely reinventing everything.

Doom Eternal – now you can have a sword (pic: Bethesda)

GC: I was glad you brought up issues like the repetition yourself as I was re-reading my review of the reboot and the gameplay loop was great but, well… I don’t know if it’s fair to say it ran out of steam before the end…

MS: No, it did!

GC: I always thought it never felt quite metal enough either. The art design was all very obvious and it never seemed to have all the wild imagination of an album cover or something – but that seems to be addressed in the sequel too.

MS: Yeah, yeah, with the mechs and the tentacles and the overgrown Hell flesh that’s taking over. There’s a level on Earth, a bit later, where it’s just this massive gore nest that’s built its way up around a building and you have to blow it up. You’re always doing just outlandish things. We like to say it’s a ridiculous premise with sincere execution. We really do take the execution seriously. But it is always just this Saturday morning cartoon over-the-top experience that is always fun first.

GC: One issue with being a sequel is that there seems to be a lot more lore in this game. Is there not a danger that after so many years with no real story, that suddenly introducing one can interfere with people’s head canon? I always imagined it as a straight-up Christian version of Hell. Like that was the joke, that you were taking on these purely supernatural forces with a shotgun. But when you start saying some of them are these sort of sci-f monsters…

MS: Oh, it’s absolutely Hell. These are not sci-fi monsters. They’re demons from Hell. Like it’s… that’s pretty straightforward. I think we play a little bit more with some of the things like the Sentinel lore, what Heaven is, how that fits into the belief systems. It’s all very tongue in cheek. It’s all very fun. And honestly it’s only there if you want to dive in and do more with it and explore it, engage with it. None of it at all takes itself too seriously.

GC: The one thing I did disagree with during your intro was when you said some people accused the game of being mindless. I would never say the reboot was that exactly, and certainly not this sequel.

MS: I think there’s a group of players that play it the way that we intended it to be played. And then… it’s absolutely not mindless. You can play it in a non-mindless way. You can also though, take something like the rocket launcher or the shotgun and pretty much beat the entire game with it because ammo is so plentiful that you don’t ever need to worry about it.

The demons allow you to – like if you’re using the super shotgun as an example – they allow you to run right up to them and shoot them. If you’re moving enough, you can run right up in front of one and shoot it, run up right in front of the next one. So you can have these experiences but it’s kind of an unintended exploit. So what we’ve really tried to do is patch those.

When we watch videos of gameplay – and this happens with a lot of good games – when they’re designed well and they’re very consistent with their principles and the game holds you accountable to playing it the right way, a lot of the videos look very much the same. It’s impossible to watch a good player of, say, Fortnite who wins and doesn’t both build and shoot. So all the videos are about doing that at a really high level if you’re gonna win.

We saw too many videos of Doom where people were playing the game in unintended ways and a lot of times those were the same people who were saying it kinda got boring, it got a little mindless. So a big impetus behind the mechanics of this were making those mechanics much tighter. Like, if we’re going to push aggressive ammo management, we can’t have ammo just everywhere in the world to where you don’t even think about it.

You really care about the ammo cause you’re gonna run out. Your gun doesn’t have a massive capacity at the beginning, so we push you right at the beginning to understand ammo counts and how you use your guns counts. Don’t use the shotgun, you know, from so far away cause you’re gonna waste all your ammo. And if you want ammo, there is a way to get it. You chainsaw an enemy. And that’s just one example

GC: The more I think about it the more it reminds me of arcade style games like Devil May Cry and Bayonetta, which I love. Not only in the sense that they give you all these different ways to approach a situation but also the complaints that people level at them, that they’re just button mashers. Whenever I hear that I just wonder what they’re doing. Are you playing it on very easy or something? How are you getting anywhere if you’re just button-mashing?

MS: I know, right? [laughs]

GC: With them and with Doom you’re constantly making up plans on the fly, you’re always thinking a few steps ahead. I love that feeling, it’s like if chess was an arcade game.

MS: Yes! [laughs] That’s it, that’s what we’re going for! That’s exactly what we want people to do. And again, it’s not like Doom 2016 was a bad game…

GC: Oh no, no.

MS: I mean it’s rated very highly, but that’s the thing we’re going for, is we’re looking to close a very small gap of some experiences that felt repetitive and monotonous – particularly as the game wore on. And I’ve framed it mostly around the mechanics, but it’s across the entire game. Basically Doom, when you think about it and the visuals that it presented, it was Hell and Mars and that’s it. That was pretty much the visual diversity.

This game takes you to other dimensions. It takes you to Heaven. It takes you to multiple places on Earth. It takes you to a cultist space. It takes you to the Sentinel world. Like literally every new map, the next map is different from the map you were just in and the map you were in two maps ago.

So it’s not just about the diversity of combat and thinking through the combat, but it’s also about the visual spectacle of what you’re playing. You’re always going someplace cool. You’re always doing something new. And we even play it out in the levels, I call it combat puzzles. It’s worth your time to solve.

GC: Combat puzzles, I like that.

MS: We also think of the levels as something that needs to be worth your time to solve. We’ve added mechanics like the wall climb and the monkey bars to give us a pacing breaker between the arena/hallway, arena/hallway… we now have this kind of traversal puzzle mechanic where you can climb walls and launch yourself across…

GC: Some of that platforming is surprisingly difficult. I kept thinking I’d found an obscure shortcut but then it turned out to be the main way through and I was thinking, ‘Some people are going to find this super hard’.

MS: You’re going to get better at it though. Just like you get better at combat, you’re going to get better at that and you’re going to experience it all. The challenge is not bad and once you start to master it, and once you start to get good at it, as we push into the later levels, you’re going to use it in totally new ways and you’re going to feel so confident.

We watch people play… after a little while you never miss a wall climb. You never have an issue with the monkey bar. You really feel a mastery over the world.

Doom Eternal – suitably metal (pic: Bethesda)

GC: The only thing I worry about is on paper it actually sounds quite complicated. I’d hate for people to be put off because they think it’s become bloated or subject to feature creep, because that really doesn’t seem to be an issue. It’s a really fun, fast-paced game.

MS: [laughs] That’s what you gotta tell ’em!

GC: [laughs] It strikes me that this is one game where a demo would be very useful.

MS: I think the thing is that we introduce the things slowly, so we give you an opportunity to practice and it becomes second nature. The other thing is, it’s not complicated. Take, for example, Spider-Man, I loved Spider-Man. But I’m having to learn button combos and memorise what combination of buttons goes to which move and all that kind of stuff.

The thing I would tell somebody is there’s no combination of things. Every single thing is simple and it’s just how you hook them together when you’re playing is what’s fun. And that’s that power fantasy that you earn. You don’t get to push, you know A, B, B, A and have this awesome attack. No, your combination is, ‘I’m going to use a sticky bomb to take out a weak point and then turn around and chainsaw this guy, ‘cause I need more ammo, and then shoot a zombie over here…’

Each one of those things is individual and it allows you to put them together. I always refer to the game, when I’m playing, as I’m like my own fight choreographer. Because I’ve mastered the tools and I can just put things together. You can create your own combos. Once you get it, it’s simple things and you just need to get good at hooking them together.

GC: Will the game be coming to Xbox Series X and PS5?

MS: We haven’t talked about it yet but one of the exciting things is we’re at the end of this console cycle, where our team knows this tech really, really well. So it really allowed us to push and get the most out of this hardware. And I’m super excited about what it means for the next hardware.

So we haven’t announced anything, but it’s really exciting. They’re doing some really awesome stuff with that hardware so I think it’s logical that we would push onto that and honestly try to be one of the best games on that platform as well.

GC: What about the rumours of Doom Slayer being in Smash Bros.? [This was a couple of days before the Byleth announcement – GC] Do you think it could ever happen?

MS: I don’t know. We’ve asked them.

GC: You asked them?

MS: Yeah.

GC: Well, that’s how Solid Snake got in it. Would they discount it just because of the gore and violence though?

MS: I dunno. You would honestly have to ask them. We’ve never been approached and said, ‘Hey can Doomguy be in Smash Bros.?’ But we’re open-minded if they wanna ask. But we hear it all the time [from fans]. Who would say no? [laughs]

GC: But you did ask them?

MS: We’ve had… I don’t even know who talked to who, but we’ve bantered with them. We have a great relationship with them through bringing Doom 2016 to Switch and that kind of stuff. So we have great people over there but it’s one of those things where it’s like, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool?’ But it’s never gone anywhere serious, so we’ll see.

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