The cat is out of the bag. Doom: The Darkish Ages will launch on Could 15, 2025, and it’ll be the third ‘nu-Doom’ recreation from esteemed developer id Software program. However this recreation, which is confusingly a prequel to the moment basic Doom (2016), will eschew a pattern established each by the primary recreation within the rebooted sequence, and 2020’s Doom Everlasting: it received’t have multiplayer.
In a roundtable interview chaired by id Software program’s Marty Stratton (studio director) and Hugo Martin (inventive director), the 2 Doom veterans confirmed that there can be no multiplayer mode, in any respect, for Doom: The Darkish Ages.
“We needed to go all in on the marketing campaign,” defined Martin, when requested why this recreation would ship with no multiplayer aspect, when each Doom (2016) and Doom Everlasting received one. “We’ve been in a position to stage up the single-player aspect [of Dark Ages] as a result of it’s been our complete focus.”
The sport received’t simply have you ever standing and holding your floor because the nigh-immortal Doom Slayer this time, both. As a direct results of committing extra sources to the single-player improvement, we’re going to have set-pieces involving “a 30-story Atlan mech” and “a fire-breathing, gatling-gun toting cyber dragon”. Sure, actually.
“That’s one thing we’ve needed to do for ages, for the final two video games, actually,” explains Stratton, particularly referring to the inclusion of the Atlan. In case you’re not utterly updated in your Doom lore (who can blame you), Atlans have been huge bipedal warfare machines utilized by the Night time Sentinels of their warfare in opposition to the forces of Hell – you’ve most likely appear inanimate husks of them in your playthroughs of previous Doom video games.
Each Stratton and Martin appeared very excited on the reveal – and inclusion – of the mech in Doom: The Darkish Ages, and recommend that lastly getting the Slayer to pilot certainly one of these Evangelion-sized beasts is a direct results of permitting extra dev time on the single-player components of the sport.
Relatedly, the duo additionally boast that that is the “largest play area ever in a Doom recreation”, and confirmed off quite a lot of bonus dungeons, caves, and fights that you may have interaction in if you happen to deviate from the crushed path. “You management the tempo of the sport,” grinned Martin. “You management The place you go, who you combat, and the goals your pursue.” As soon as once more, the builders cite having the ability to focus wholly on the single-player aspect of the sport as the rationale id might pump this a lot content material into the story and world.
I’m not complaining; in a world the place we’re seeing multiplayer video games flop at a fee of knots, and live-service slop take up increasingly more area on the digital storefront, it’s one thing of a breath of contemporary air to see single-player recreation modes in video games take a lot focus from a prolific developer. Maybe it’s one thing that each Sony and Blizzard can study from within the coming months and years.
Doom: The Darkish Ages launches on Could 15, and it’ll launch on Xbox Recreation Move for PC and Xbox Sequence – however it’ll additionally come to PlayStation 5.
