Along with the single-player campaign, a multiplayer mode titled “Battlemode” was introduced. In this mode, players can either play as the Doom Slayer or as a demon, and fight until either the Doom Slayer defeats the demons, or vice versa. Another mode, titled “Invasion”, is currently in development. Players will be able to join other player’s single-player campaigns and fight each other. On October 20, 2020, a standalone campaign DLC, titled The Ancient Gods – Part One, was released, taking place after the events of the main campaign.
Upon release, Doom Eternal received critical acclaim, with praise for its campaign, graphics, level design, soundtrack and combat mechanics, though some disliked the increased focus on storytelling and its platforming sections. Doom Eternal received five nominations at The Game Awards for 2020, including Game of the Year and Best Action Game.
Gameplay
Players once again take on the role of the Doom Slayer who battles the demonic forces of Hell, from a first-person perspective. The game continues its predecessor’s emphasis on “push-forward” combat, encouraging the player to aggressively engage enemies in order to acquire health, ammo, and armor. The player has access to various firearms, such as the Combat Shotgun, Super Shotgun, Heavy Cannon, Rocket Launcher, Plasma Rifle, Chaingun, BFG 9000, and Ballista. Melee weapons such as a chainsaw, the “Crucible Blade” energy sword and a retractable arm-blade called the “Doomblade” can also be used. The arm-blade provides the opportunity for a larger variety of quick and violent “glory kill” executions, which drop extra health. The Super Shotgun is now equipped with the “Meat Hook”, a ranged accessory which grabs on to enemies and slingshots the player towards them, functioning as a grappling hook, useful both in combat scenarios and environmental navigation. The Doom Slayer’s armor now includes a shoulder-mounted Equipment Launcher with the ability to lob grenades and ice bombs. Additional to it is the Flame Belch, a flame thrower which sets enemies on fire with it to drop armor pickups. Finally, killing enemies with the chainsaw will drop ammunition.[2] New movement mechanics such as wall-climbing, dash moves, and horizontal bars to swing from have also been introduced.[3][4]
Like its predecessor, Doom Eternal invites the player to develop simple tactics. As the game gets harder, the player needs to use the advantages of fight arenas, and their bonuses, in more strategic ways. They also need to decide which enemy has to be killed first and how to move on the battlefield.[5][6][7]
Creative director Hugo Martin has stated there would be twice as many demon types as in the 2016 reboot. There are new types of enemies, such as the Marauder and Doom Hunter, while others, such as the Pain Elemental, Arachnotron, and Archvile, have been reintroduced from previous Doom entries. A new system called “Destructible Demons” is featured, in which enemies’ bodies become progressively destroyed and deteriorated in combat as they suffer damage. Through this system, certain parts of a demon’s anatomy can be destroyed to eliminate their ability to use their stronger attacks. There is also a new lives system. During gameplay, players can collect 1-up items (which look like green helmets) scattered around the environment. When the Doom Slayer perishes in combat, he will respawn where he died if he has spare lives, instead of restarting at the nearest checkpoint.
The game features several asymmetric multiplayer modes, including “Battlemode”. This game type is a 2v1 PvP multi-round match where two player-controlled demons take on one fully loaded Slayer. There are five playable demons at launch, with more to be included in free updates post-launch. The five initially available demons are the Marauder, Mancubus, Pain Elemental, Revenant, and Arch Vile. In addition to regular attacks, each demon has a “summoning wheel”, which contains a selection of four additional abilities. An additional mode, called “Invasion”, is also in the works, and is expected to be released as a free post-launch update.[8] In this mode, players will be able to join others’ single-player campaigns, fighting against them as demons.[9] This mode can be turned off by players who wish to play the game solo.[10]
Also new to the game is the hub area, called “Fortress of Doom”, which players can visit between missions, containing a number of rooms with upgrades and gear locked behind doors. Players can also unlock a bonus weapon, the Unmaykr, after clearing six challenging Slayer Gates.[11]
Plot
Main campaign
Eight months after the events on Mars, Earth has been overrun by demonic forces, wiping out 60% of the planet’s population, under the now-corrupted Union Aerospace Corporation. What remains of humanity has either fled Earth or have joined the Armored Response Coalition, a resistance movement formed to stop the invasion, which has gone into hiding after suffering heavy losses. The Doom Slayer, having previously been betrayed and teleported away by Dr. Samuel Hayden, returns with a satellite fortress controlled by the AI VEGA to quell the demonic invasion by killing the Hell Priests: Deags Nilox, Ranak, and Grav. The priests serve an angelic being known as the Khan Maykr who seeks to sacrifice mankind. The Slayer teleports to a destroyed city and kills Deag Nilox, but the Khan Maykr transports the two remaining priests to unknown locations, forcing the Slayer to continue searching.
After retrieving a celestial locator from the Sentinel world of Exultia, the Slayer travels to Hell to retrieve a power source from an exiled Sentinel known as the Betrayer, who gives him the power source and a special dagger. VEGA directs the Slayer to Deag Ranak’s citadel in the Arctic, where the Slayer kills him. In response, the Khan Maykr moves Deag Grav to a hidden location and accelerates the invasion of Earth. With no leads on finding the last Hell Priest, VEGA suggests finding Dr. Hayden, who knows his location. The Slayer goes to an ARC compound where he retrieves Hayden’s damaged robot chassis and the demonic crucible.
Upon uploading Hayden’s mind into the fortress, he reveals Deag Grav is hiding on Sentinel Prime, the only way to get there being a portal located in the city of Hebeth in Mars’ core. The Slayer travels to a facility on Phobos where he uses the BFG 10000 to shoot a hole in Mars, which he uses to reach Hebeth. After reaching Sentinel Prime, flashbacks reveal the Slayer to be Doomguy. Found badly wounded by Sentinels some time after Doom 64, Doomguy was brought before the Deags and was forced to fight in a gladiatorial arena. Impressed by Doomguy’s ruthlessness in battle, the Deags inducted him into the Sentinels, while the Khan Maykr inquired into Doomguy’s knowledge of the Demons. In the present, the Slayer finds Deag Grav in the arena and kills him, but is excommunicated from the Sentinels for murdering Deag Grav on sacred ground and returns to the fortress.
Upon the Slayer’s return, the fortress is shut down remotely by the Khan Maykr to prevent any further interference in her plans. She reveals her intentions to resurrect the world-eating super-demon, the Icon of Sin, to consume mankind. The Slayer uses the demonic Crucible’s latent Argent energy to reactivate the fortress and travels to Argent d’Nur to retrieve his own Crucible from his time in the Sentinels. Further flashbacks reveal that during the ill-fated battle of Argent d’Nur, a rogue Maykr known as the Seraphim imbued Doomguy with superhuman abilities, transforming him into the Doom Slayer. After retrieving the hilt of the Slayer Crucible, it is revealed that the Khan Maykr formed an alliance with Hell to produce Argent energy, which is created through the mass sacrifice of human souls. In return for providing worlds for Hell to invade, the Maykrs receive a share of the Argent energy produced by Hell which allows their own dimension, Urdak, to survive.[12]
Hayden directs the Slayer through Hell’s massive citadel, Nekravol, until he finds a portal leading to Urdak. He finds the Khan Maykr and halts the awakening ceremony by using the Betrayer’s dagger to destroy the Icon’s heart. Free from Maykr control, the Icon of Sin awakens and teleports to Earth. With the dimensional barrier destroyed, the demons break their alliance with the Maykrs and proceed to invade Urdak. The Slayer kills the Khan Maykr before returning to Earth to confront the Icon of Sin, although VEGA is left behind to ensure the portal stays open. After an intense battle across the cityscape, the Slayer kills the Icon of Sin by stabbing it in the head with the Crucible, putting an end to Hell’s invasion of Earth. As the Slayer walks away, King Novik, leader of the Night Sentinels, states how his fight is “eternal”.
The Ancient Gods – Part One
Despite having defeated the Icon of Sin and halting Hell’s invasion of Earth, the Doom Slayer’s victory did not come without cost. The death of the Khan Makyr and Hell’s conquest of Urdak have given the demons a chance to dominate all dimensions and reinitiate their invasion of Earth. To prevent this, the Slayer, along with Samuel Hayden and ARC scientists, embark on a mission to find and liberate the Seraphim. The Slayer travels to the UAC Atlantica Facility, where the Seraphim’s containment pod resides. He uploads Hayden into the pod, and it is revealed that he and the Seraphim are one and the same.
The Seraphim tasks the Slayer with retrieving the Father’s Life Sphere from the Blood Swamps of Hell in order to return him to physical form. After fighting his way through the Blood Swamps, the Slayer finds the sphere. However, he chooses to destroy it rather than hand it to the Seraphim and instead retrieves the Dark Lord’s Life Sphere with the intent of resurrecting and destroying him, which in effect will destroy all demons.
The Slayer returns to Urdak, which has been corrupted by the demons’ occupation, and reaches the Luminarium where anyone who has a Life Sphere may activate it. However, the Slayer is confronted by the Seraphim, consumed by his own degenerative transfiguration, and defeats him before he is teleported away by the Father. Despite being warned that bringing the Dark Lord into physical form is irreversible, the Slayer proceeds to summon him and discovers that the Dark Lord is an alternate version of himself who originated from Hell.
The game is the first to be developed with the id Tech 7 engine. According to Stratton, the team aimed at making a “Doom universe”, featuring larger and more varied locales, including “Hell on Earth”, for players to explore.[16] Unlike its predecessor, id Software developed the game’s multiplayer component in-house, as opposed to being outsourced to the previous game’s multiplayer developer Certain Affinity,[17][18] with the goal of making the experience more “social” and “connected” with the single-player campaign. The team decided to remove the SnapMap mode and reassign its resource to develop post-launch campaign downloadable content.[19] While originally scheduled for a release on November 22, 2019, Doom Eternal‘s release was later pushed back to March 20, 2020 with a Nintendo Switch port coming at a later date, which on November 30 was revealed to be December 8, 2020.[20][21][22][23]
Aesthetically, the game aims at having a closer resemblance to the original Doom games, with the enemies’ designs having been modified from those in the 2016 game to match the designs of the original games.[24] Additionally, the developers included the option to have a centered weapon view, which was traditional in the first two Doom games and was added as a post-release update to Doom 2016.[25] Games cited as influences on the gameplay include arcade-style action games such as Devil May Cry and Bayonetta as well as chess.[26] According to Martin, one facet they improved on was based on the controversy that arose from a video posted by Polygon of gameplay from the 2016 game. In that video, the person behind the gameplay did not appear to grasp some of the basic mechanics of Doom or even FPS gameplay, which led to some in the player community ridiculing the site.[27] Martin said their team studied that video and believed that the person controlling the game was struggling against the design of the game, and for Doom Eternal wanted to make sure it was playable by everyone and not just skilled players and took some of those design factors into account.[28] On August 6, 2020, Bethesda Softworks announced that next-gen versions for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X were also in development, with owners of the existing PS4 and Xbox One versions of the game being able to upgrade to the next-gen versions of the game at no additional cost.[29]
The game is dedicated to id programmer Stephen Ash, who died during development in 2019.
