Cast your mind back to 2008 and you may recall a time when Bethesda was gearing up to bring its dormant first-person behemoth back with a bang with Doom 4. Sporting slick graphics and a different creative approach, the sequel was criticized for its abrupt departure from the franchise’s stylistic M.O., and it wasn’t long before the studio took the concept back to the drawing board.
Fast forward to the present day, and in the aftermath of the show-stopping, ultra-violent Doom re-reveal, Bethesda’s Pete Hines has reflected on the scrapped idea, and claimed that the reason the IP was rebooted in the first place is because it began to resemble other shooters in the genre.
“We weren’t happy with the game that was being made. We decided that it wasn’t Doom enough and needed to be thrown out and started over. Some folks left and some faces changed at the studio. Out of that change — which was not easy for those guys to go through — some amazing things happened. You can probably close your eyes and imagine a ‘Call of Doom’ or a ‘BattleDoom’ game, where it starts to feel way too much like: ‘Wait, this doesn’t feel like Doom, it feels like we’re playing some other franchise with a Doom skin on it.'”
Hines went on to clarify that the laboured movement and disconnected combat only exacerbated the problem, and it wasn’t long before the creative team at Bethesda opted to kill off the project lest it undermine the franchise’s beloved, hellish tendencies. Now, sharp-suited and rebooted, Doom is shaping up to be a true blast of nostalgia for fans of iD’s seminal series.
In the wake of its E3 appearance, Hines assured fans that the final product will be much more difficult than what was shown, and that the demo was merely scaled down in order to showcase the break-neck speed of the combat – not to mention the money shot of a demon ripping your own arms off and beating you to death with them.
Doom has been slated for a release on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC in early 2016.
