Doom – no more monster closets

GameCentral speaks to the executive producer of the new Doom reboot, about why it’s the game fans have been waiting over 20 years for.

It’s over 10 years now since Doom 3 arrived, to a mixed response from fans around the world. It wasn’t necessarily a bad game but amongst its failings is that it never really played much like the first two games: the iconic first person shooters that defined the genre for an entire generation.

Since then id Software has struggled with what to do with the franchise, and although Doom 4 was announced back in 2008 it never came to be. Instead you have this: a series reboot that finally returns to the outrageous action that made the series’ name.



Like all of Bethesda games bar Battle Cry, Doom wasn’t playable at E3 but it was being demoed extensively on the show floor, and at Bethesda’s own pre-show conference. You can see that video below, with its return to the more open-ended style of Doom level design and the over-the-top gore and violence.


We still don’t know much about the story, and to be honest we doubt there is much of one, but the game is looking exactly how we’d want a modern day Doom game to play. At E3 itself we got to talk to executive producer Marty Stratton about the problems in updating the old school action of the originals for the modern era, and why it’s taken 21 years to get the Doom game you always dreamed of.

Formats: Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC

Publisher: Bethesda

Developer: id Software

Release Date: First half 2016

GC: So, I saw the game at the showcase and it looked great.

MS: Thank you! Thank you!

GC: It’s obvious from its storied development history that this has been a very difficult game to make. Games, particularly shooters, were so different back at the time of the originals, so where do you even start? What are the things you absolutely must have to make it a worthy Doom game?

MS: Honestly, the way we started was by sitting a bunch of people down in front of a whiteboard and tapping into our team, because everybody has that feeling of what Doom means to them. And we just throw them up on a whiteboard and start aggregating ideas, compiling them together, trying to find the essence. Trying to find what are the magical qualities of Doom. Some of them are really easy, and it’s the things that we focused on, but a lot of it does boil down to things like really, really fast movement.

GC: That would definitely be on my list.

MS: It’s interesting, because sometimes you end up off the rails a little bit. Like, is this really what this game’s all about? And it did take us to really say, ‘What do people except? What do fans want from Doom?’ And then you go into your own fan mode and you’re like, ‘What do I want from Doom? If I’m out there paying $60 for a game, what do I want to play?’



And that’s where you get those things, you get you amazing movement; awesome, awesome demons; and great guns. And then you start, as you implement that stuff, you figure out, ‘OK, so what are the modern takes on this? Is there anything that we can do with technology now, or the tools that we have, that we wanna improve on?’

And you get things like one of the big new features for us, which is the execution moves. These gory kills that you see on the videos. And really that’s a product of, ‘What are these quintessential elements of Doom?’ So you have really fast movement, and that often times put you in very close proximity to enemies…

Doom – just as you remember it, only better

GC: I think it was someone from MachineGames that explained to me about all that. How in a first person game you’re actually moving at ridiculous speeds with zero acceleration. And so how all the rooms and doors have to be much bigger than real life to accommodate you. But since Doom isn’t really very realistic, does that mean you can go further and use those sort of things to your advantage?

MS: We are! Absolutely, and it’s really fun when we get into areas like Hell. We showed part of a Hell mission at the showcase, but it’s funny you mention talking to the MachineGames guys about it – internally we say, ‘We’ve made the player so fast, we’ve made the player like a Ferrari. You don’t want to put that Ferrari in a parking garage’. So you do have to get into these expansive tracts, these big spaces, to really let the player have that level of fun.


And even there we’ve kind of added a level of verticality to our game. We’ve added double jump mechanics and mantling that gets you up really, really fast. So, that Hell level in particular, the young woman that did that playthrough, she kind of stayed in the lower areas and dodged her way through that. But you can play that very differently, you can actually use some of the verticality to get height on the demons and fire down, and wait for them to traverse and try and catch you – and then jump back down.

We refer to these arenas almost like skate parks, where you’re just going in and you’re improvising your way through this combat dance with the enemies. And it’s just… it’s super fun, and you can go back and play it over and over.

Doom – the Cyberdemon is back too

GC: One of the many problems of making a game with one eye on the past must be deciding how much to take from more modern games. Quake was obviously a spiritual descendent of Doom, but have you purposefully tried to stop yourself borrowing from that? Things like rocket jumps. Because it must be tempting, especially because those games aren’t around at the moment.

MS: Yeah, I think we always go into things with the experiences of the past, so there’s a lot of us that have worked on Quake III and other Quake games – Quake II – but I think we try not to muddle the experiences too much. I would say the closest we’ve come to blending things a bit between our brands is in the multiplayer side of this. The speed and arena nature, I’ve heard people refer to it as kind of Doom meets Quake III.


But we’re still trying to do it in a very different way. In fact, we showed it, there’s a demonic room in a lot of the levels, that players will compete for, and then in a sort of glorified quad damage way they become a demon and then really can have a very different gameplay experience. And it kind of changes the dynamic of play, because whatever team doesn’t have the demon is obviously trying to take him out and steal that room back.

GC: One of my favourite elements of the old Doom games is the sheer number of enemies on-screen at once, which you don’t really get nowadays. I know the complexity of character models today makes that difficult, but is that a priority for you? Because it wasn’t particularly evident at the showcase.

MS: Sure, sure. We showed a very limited part of the game. But I think you’re right, I think there are people, particularly Doom fans, who like that experience of whipping out the chaingun and [does impression of using a chaingun].

Doom – it comes from Hell

GC: Because that was a big difference compared to Quake, which definitely couldn’t have that many monsters on screen.

PR Guy: You asked me to warn you when it was half past!

GC: I know, I know, thanks. Just a couple more question!

PR Guy: [laughs]

MS: But, yeah. We’re always struggling against the number of AI we have on-screen, and that kind of thing, but I think fans will definitely get those moments of, ‘Wow! I just ploughed my way through a lot of enemies!’

And then you get into the SnapMap capabilities and being able to set-up your own set pieces. We had people who love blowing up barrels. They just love blowing up barrels! So they create SnapMaps that are just filled with barrel traps, and they try to lure demons past their traps and shoot the barrels, and watch the demons blow up. Or try and fit in as many enemies as they can before the system crashes or whatever. [laughs] But they just try to make these maps where it’s just [makes chaingun noise again] down a hall with a chaingun!

GC: The other difficulty with Doom is how much you concentrate on the horror elements. The start of the showcase demo was surprisingly reminiscent of Doom 3, and even seemed to have some story elements, so you’re obviously not completely abandoning its appraoch.

MS: Yeah, I think visually, because that was a pretty heavily industrial area, it kind of felt that way. There’s a visual similarity to Doom 3 there. At that point in the game you are in a UAC facility, which basically all of Doom 3 took place on. But the game is very varied in its locations, and very much unlike Doom 3 that very first area – you put on your helmet, you go through that door, we chose a path where you jump over and get on that landing and go across…

Like you said, you see some of the horror elements because the whole area has been just decimated by demons. So you’re definitely going to get those moments of gore and blood. But you can go anywhere in that area, you could jump down onto those catwalks, you could go up… so it is very Doom I/Doom II-esque in terms of that non-linearity within areas. Trying to figure out, ‘How do I get to that next area?’ Well, there’s a bunch of different places I can go.

Doom – the Mancubus is as disgusting as ever

GC: One of my biggest problems with Doom 3 is it took itself very seriously. But the original games really didn’t, they had the tone of something like Evil Dead II; where you just embraced the ludicrousness of the situation and just had fun with it.

MS: You’ve absolutely hit on… we use this phrase all the time: ‘ Don’t take ourselves too seriously!’ I worked on Doom 3, I love Doom 3, but it took itself pretty seriously. Doom I and Doom II are a bit more outlandish, they’re very comic book, they’re very juvenile almost in their approach. That’s definitely our inspiration for how we’ve gone with this one.

GC: You showed a bit of Mars and Hell, but is the game also set on Earth?

MS: We haven’t announced that, but it is not.

GC: That’s interesting, because that seemed to be the idea behind it when it was Doom 4. Do you even consider this to be the same project anymore, or is there a clear divide from your point of view?

MS: It’s pretty much completely new, we more or less rebooted at the end of 2012/beginning of 2013. We just didn’t feel like the project we were making there was on the right track… it was actually good in its own right, but it just wasn’t right for what we wanted Doom to be.

Bethesda was really, really supportive in our mood there. It was incredible that they were like, ‘OK, well you guys have gotta make the game that you think the fans want, and what you want’. So we kind of pivoted and really went through that, ‘OK, if we’re going to do this what is the game that we want to make?’ And that’s where we landed on this.

Doom – this is your boomstick

GC: So what didn’t you like about how Doom 4 was turning out? I guess 2010 and 2011 would’ve still been at the peak of the military sim fad, so was it more in that style?

MS: I don’t wanna go too much into it, but the things that we’ve focused on are… you wanna make sure you’re doing it for the right reasons, and I think that the reasons we did it is because we wanted to just get to this notion of super, super fast gameplay, this comic book style to it…

GC: Because it’s not just Doom 3, the whole of the last gen took itself very seriously. But it seems now that games are not so embarrassed to be video games any more. Could maybe this new Doom only be made now in terms of not just technology but the trends of the industry?

MS: I don’t know if it could only be made now, I feel that Doom has a timeless quality to it. People still like to play Doom. But what we’re doing, I think, is a good fit right now, because of some of the things you’re saying. I think people are looking for just those purely fun game experiences, and that is absolutely what we’re trying to deliver.

GC: It is bizarre to think that for so many years having fun was almost a dirty word.

MS: [laughs] Yeah! I don’t know. And it’s funny, that’s one of our sayings at the office actually: ‘Best idea wins’. If somebody has a good idea at the office, doesn’t matter where it comes from, what department it comes from… we’re not checking against the reality filter first.

It’s like, ‘What’s the fun filter? Is it fun? Does it fit within what we’re doing for Doom? Does it fit the style and the tone we want for the game?’ And if it does, and it works, great! If it’s going to to make the game better we go with it.

GC: That’s great to hear, thanks very much for your time.

MS: Thank you, nice to meet you.

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