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I’m a Little Concerned About DOOM: the Dark Ages

I’m a Little Concerned About DOOM: the Dark Ages

DOOM: The Dark Ages got an extended showcase at the recent Xbox Developer Direct, and as a huge fan of the reboot series, I was excited to see more, but sadly I've come out of the showcase far more sceptical than excited…

To preface this, I need to talk about DOOM: Eternal’s core gameplay loop. DOOM: Eternal leaned into two primary elements: movement and resource management, and these need to be near perfected on the harder difficulties to have any chance of survival. Combat encounters felt somewhat like puzzles, and your weapons and abilities felt like tools to handle specific enemies and situations, enemy damage is high, so managing your health, armour and ammo, while dealing with the threats in the correct manner was necessary for survival. This leads to moments of flowing between different weapons and abilities while moving precisely to play as efficiently as possible. I adored this system, as even minor engagements required a decent amount of thought and mechanical knowledge, along with the potential for immense showcases of skill.

dtda reveal 03

The Dark Ages moves away from this level of speed and intensity, seemingly opting for more of a power fantasy. This isn’t a problem at its core, the Doom Slayer now has access to a vast amount of new tools and weapons, many of which may lead to the similar levels of skill expression that I mentioned previously, but none of them seem to serve the same express purposes as Eternal’s toolkit. The new weapons are incredibly unique, and the Saw Shield seems to be a fun new tool in your arsenal but looks to take the defensive measures of DOOM: Eternal, movement and well-timed glory kills to top up your health and dull them down into a basic defensive measure allowing you to block attacks directly, which seems to require much less from the player. The shield also has a parry system, but this seems restricted to certain enemies and attacks. Glory kills remain, so will be a core part of your kit as would be expected, but are a shadow of their former self visually, seemingly having no bespoke animations for each demon, and are just a simple melee now, which, while not affecting gameplay much, does feel disappointing from a stylistic angle.

Id Software is also taking more of a cinematic approach to The Dark Ages, with the story being told much more upfront through cutscenes and characters, rather than primarily through the codex as seen in DOOM(2016) and DOOM: Eternal. I don’t mind this change outright, I think the more direct storytelling will make that aspect far more engaging, but it seems to have some potentially negative side-effects. I feel as though this cinematic approach will affect two of the bigger additions to this game: the Mech and the Dragon portions. You’ll be able to pilot a huge mech, and a cyber-dragon throughout certain sections of the game, which on paper, sounds incredible, but I’m concerned that these sections will lack any form of real gameplay depth, functioning as cool set-pieces rather than uniquely crafted alternate gameplay sections, and by extension, these sections may have taken away from potential improvements to the core gameplay itself.

Cyberdragon

Now, I don’t think this game will be bad, not at all. Id Software has shown time and time again that they know how to make a fantastic FPS, and this doesn’t seem to have changed. There’s a lot of innovation and creativity on show here and I'm almost certain I’ll still have a good time with this game, but I’m worried that love won’t last, and that I’ll bounce right back to DOOM: Eternal once it’s all over. To id Software’s credit, however, they did showcase a deep customisation of the difficulty, and general flow of the game, including sliders which directly increase (or decrease) the speed of the game. This could easily be what solves many of the issues I've stated here, and we won’t know until it launches anyway.

Jacob Sanderson

Jacob Sanderson

Staff Writer

It's not an obsession if it counts as work...

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