After 30 years of guns and gore this franchise is turning to story

Anyone who hasn’t thought about the video game series Doom since the mid-1990s might be surprised to see the latest trailers for Doom: The Dark Ages, which is launching next week.

id Software’s seminal shooter series has maintained its guns, its gore and its blend of sci-fi and satanic vibes that helped propel it to massive success decades ago. But it also has knights, shields, a massive pilotable mech and what appears to be an epic and cinematic tech-horror-fantasy storyline.

It’s not the only legacy franchise to have ballooned from an all-action gameplay experience to something that – at least in part – is presented like a Hollywood blockbuster. Look at recent Tomb Raiders, Final Fantasies, Sonics, Zeldas and even Street Fighters. And especially look at the recently delayed Grand Theft Auto 6, which is shaping up to be one of the biggest and most expensive games of all time, despite the series’ humble beginnings.

The “Doom Guy”, more recently known as the Slayer, is ready to go medieval.Credit:

It’s not that there’s no longer a market for more focused and exclusively playable experiences; those are furnished in essentially all genres by smaller-scale games generally by smaller teams, and sold at a lower price. Or players simply return to the originals; all the old Doom games are available, packaged with new maps and running in high resolution, on current platforms.

But new games in these massive tent-pole franchises operate on a different level, as marquee releases for major corporations, costing many years and millions of dollars to make, and being sold for more than $100 a copy. Each one needs to be different from the last. And, importantly, bigger.

The world of Doom was reset in 2016, with a new game that emphasised brutality and heavy metal music but also brought back a lot of “video gaminess” that had been shed in the dour 2000s. Yet through that game and its sequel, 2020’s Doom Eternal, director Hugo Martin has built an entire narrative framework linking the superhuman demon-fighting protagonist (referred to as The Slayer) to earlier games, and charting his path through hell and back via several dimensions and centuries of warfare.

Just as in Marvel movies, progressing the plot has become almost as integral as the action and spectacle, and in The Dark Ages, Martin is embracing on-screen storytelling in a way Doom never has before.

Demons are still gross, and stapled with all kinds of metal gear, but now exist in a more narratively rich environment.Credit:

“As much as we like [Doom Eternal], there’s never an intention to just create the same experience but with new weapons. As a trilogy, we think that it’s going to be much more satisfying for players to be able to play each game and know that each one kind of stands on its own, as its own unique experience,” Martin said.

“We’re not really focused on the genre, and the expectations around the genre. I think if you get caught up in that, you’re going to start limiting yourself, cooking with the same ingredients and ending up with something that feels too similar to everything else. We’re just trying to make a really great, fun shooter campaign experience.”

So, how do you build a story with a character that almost everybody knows as silent and extraordinarily single-minded when it comes to killing demons? You build it around him, of course.

The Dark Ages opens on a fight for control of the Slayer and his incredible powers, set after the military installations of the original games but before Earth scientists tried to use him for their own purposes in the 2016 game. He fights for the Maykr, an extradimensional god race ostensibly on the side of the human-like Sentinels in a war against hell. But it will be clear even to newcomers of the series that the Slayer isn’t necessarily a willing soldier, and the Maykrs are uneasy allies.

“He’s this superhuman. He has godlike powers, but he’s a stranger from another world that doesn’t talk. I don’t think the demons are the only ones who are kind of afraid of him,” Martin said.

“And his power is coveted by everyone, that’s kind of how our story begins. As people try to control the Slayer, obviously the balance of power between good and evil will shift. You’re not supposed to control the Slayer, he’s like a force of nature.”

Players of the original ’90s games probably didn’t have “Doom Guy riding a battle dragon” in their future predictions.Credit:

With the new medieval-inspired setting comes a few new gameplay additions too, including a shield that can be used to parry demons’ attacks or thrown Captain America-style (except the Slayer’s shield has chainsaw teeth around the edge, of course). There are heaps of new guns, but several melee weapons too, and entire sections where you pilot a huge Slayer-shaped mech or fly on the back of an armoured dragon.

The game’s executive producer, Marty Stratton, said these elements weren’t simply added to mix up the gameplay. They’re fully-fledged systems inspired by the coolest parts of the lore from previous games that fans have enjoyed speculating about and can now see realised.

“Those things do take massive commitments from us to do well and do right, and to make sure they are that epic experience that people expect,” he said.

“For us, that meant basically not doing multiplayer for this game so that we could just focus on the campaign experience. We could take these really massive, epic experiences of driving a mech and flying a dragon, and do them to the extent that the players will be satisfied.”

While id was an upstart studio in the early ’90s that became one of the first rock star video game brands, these days it’s a subsidiary of Zenimax Media, which in turn is owned by Microsoft. That means The Dark Ages will join all the previous Doom games on the Xbox Game Pass subscription service on the day it launches. It has to continue the story while also being accessible for subscribers who’ve never played a Doom game, and big enough to keep players occupied until the next big release.

But how will original Doom fans react to the expanded story and mechanics in The Dark Ages?

Martin said the team’s goal was to make a modern, single-player first-person shooter with an ergonomic, streamlined control scheme, that anyone could enjoy thanks to hugely customisable difficulty and accessibility settings. But it was also inspired directly by the feel of the original Doom.

And if the dragon wasn’t enough for you, the Slayer also pilots a building-sized mech.Credit:

“We wanted to slow down the projectiles, make them hit harder … shorten the range of the weapons to encourage [the player] to fight up close because it’s a medieval game and because classic Doom really encourages you to get in there and fight,” he said.

“So I think that they would be proud, I hope, because it feels a lot like the game they love from the ’90s.”

For Stratton, the story elements end up strengthening the core revenge-taking action of the series. For practically the first time in the series there is a real adversary in the form of the demonic Prince Ahzrak, who appears jealous of the fear the Slayer can evoke.

“It reinforces how powerful and badass you are. And having that play out through the course of the game – and you know, you’re kind of controlled by the maker gods – it really does add an element of humanity,” he said.

“Fighting against a real adversary, fighting against the subjugation that you find yourself in at the beginning, you really get to take it out on the demons. And it makes it all that much sweeter.”

The Slayer is, after all, ultimately a human. The developers wouldn’t be drawn on whether The Dark Ages touches on that more relatable or cerebral side of the character, as previously grunting and eyebrow-raising has been the extent of his emotional range. But Martin did say that despite all the ancient mystical power and mind control he’s endured, his humanity remains intact.

“No matter where he goes or what kind of evil he fights, it’s always about the will of the Slayer, the triumph of the human spirit. That’s kind of corny, but it is a theme that’s at the core of all the Doom stories,” he said.

“His greatest strength is not his guns, it’s his will to persevere.”

Doom: The Dark Ages launches on May 15 for Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5 and PC.

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