The very moment Bethesda and id Software scrapped plans for DOOM 4, with the general consensus being that it became too similar to Call of Duty, both parties laid out a very clear mission statement to return to the series’ blood-stained roots. And so, we arrive on the verge of id’s DOOM reboot, one which will seemingly place action first and story second.
That’s according to Executive Producer Martin Stratton, who spoke with Game Informer about the 2016 franchise revival, and why story has never been the focus of development.
The marine doesn’t have a name. Story hasn’t been the focus of development, the combat has, but I would say we’ve injected quite a bit more, for people who want to find it and get a little more on how the DOOM marine is and where we hope he heads, it’s there for people to find. I like it, I think it’s cool stuff and I think it’s more so than we’ve had in other DOOM games and I’m excited to see people’s reaction to it.
Those who participated in the recent alpha for DOOM will have an understanding of Stratton’s – and therefore id’s – design philosophy, though he cautioned that enemy difficulty will be raised quite considerably from the vertical slice to release.
If you come into DOOM to have amazing combat, then I really think people are going to enjoy themselves. We’ve spent so much time to try to get that right, to try to get the challenge of it right, the difficulty which has been ratcheted up since you’ve played. We’ve actually dialed up the difficulty and we’ve seen as people played it that they wanted this. It’s an action shooter, so your roller coaster ride in this game is about how challenging those fights are. It’s super fun when you’re diving into these arenas and that’s challenging, you may get your ass kicked but come later with a different strategy.
DOOM is primed to launch for PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC at some point in 2016. According to Amazon France, the mighty gates of Hell will swing open on June 30, providing said retail listing isn’t simply a placeholder.
