Doomguy isn’t known just for his escapades in Hell; he also spent quite a long time in purgatory. The skilled killer went silent following DOOM 3’s release in 2004, leaving the series on its most divisive note. It seemed as though DOOM was going to stay in that era, forever enshrined as a franchise that burned ever-so hot for a decade before bowing out. However, 2016’s DOOM reboot changed everything. Not only was it the best first-person shooter of that era, it also proved how a series can stay relevant years later.
DOOM was able to become more relevant because of its unmatched ability to straddle the line between new and old. The old DOOM games — DOOM, DOOM 2, and DOOM 64 — were predicated on moving quickly and efficiently making decisions, an intricacy the modern iteration of id Software was aware of. These choices came down to enemy prioritization, weapon choice, and how to dodge and weave between enemy projectiles. Mixing and matching these elements well gave the games their staying power because of how much they engaged players at every step.
New DOOM translated this feeling beautifully. Fights were often won on skilled movement and knowing who to shoot, when to shoot, and what to shoot them with. Sliding around an Imp’s fireball may have looked better, yet, to the lizard brain, the core feeling was the same as it ever was.
But the 2016 DOOM didn’t stop there. It offered players a handful of traversal abilities that made closing the distance even more varied. A litany of new alternate fire options opened the offensive options even more. The Glory Kill system — one of the best mechanics of the last decade in any genre — took this ethos one step further by directly integrating aggression into its core gameplay loop. Filling demons with health that players could only get by strategically beating it out of them was an absolutely brilliant way to highlight what DOOM had done so well before that. The 2016 DOOM clearly understood what the older DOOM games did well on such a fundamental level and built itself around those ideals. It successfully reversed engineered the secret sauce and added its own spices.
The shooting was the most important part to get right, but id applied this initiative to the other elements, as well. The newer demon designs were recognizable but still had their own flair. Secrets got players to inspect every part of each level, but they also were more fruitful and yielded more than temporary buffs. Heavy metal was pivotal to DOOM’s atmosphere decades ago, and composer Mick Gordon not only provided the 2016 entry with plenty of abrasive beats full of guitar shredding, he also spliced in a fair bit of EDM elements, leading to a fresh mix that perfectly balanced DOOM’s demonic and futuristic sides.
Even the story adapted to the newer age well by being relatively light and out of the way without skimping on the details. Despite the Doom Slayer’s disdain for the core mission — reflecting how many just want to get straight to the killing in DOOM — the story still was deeper than it needed to be. It had plenty of backstory and efficient dialogue, all wrapped in a clever satirization of evil oil companies. It reflected the newer genre trends of needing to have a coherent narrative, while also nodding to the strict gameplay focus of the originals (which was on purpose).
The success of the 2016 reboot is even more impressive when examining the ashes of the canceled DOOM 4. This ill-fated project hit roadblock after roadblock and, according to those developing it, got further and further away from what made DOOM DOOM. id artist Kevin Cloud stated in the Noclip documentary about the 2016 game that the canned DOOM 4 “got to a certain point and it felt like [DOOM 4] wasn’t really capturing what [id] felt like was DOOM.”
The bits of footage of the game that came out reflect this sentiment. While these clips are from an unfinished project, combat looks more akin to something from Rage or Call of Duty. It seems clearly influenced by the shooters of that era and less like the classic it was a distant sequel to. Game director Marty Stratton even said as much. He noted in that same documentary how it was referred to as “Call of DOOM,” a moniker that stemmed from its focus on story, abundance of scripted moments, handful of non-demonic enemies, and the importance of cover. So even though the early iterations of Glory Kills stemmed from this doomed project, it wasn’t enough like DOOM.
The patience to stick with the series, find exactly what makes it tick, and hone directly in on that while also innovating on it is a formula other publishers need to take note of. Many franchises of yesteryear are either locked away in some IP vault or seen exclusively through ports, remakes, or cameos in games like Fortnite or Astro Bot. This fear has captured series like Dead Rising, Splinter Cell, Metal Gear, Ape Escape, and many others that have yet to have completely new entries for quite some time. It’s an understandable fear to have, as many series — from Dead Rising to Ninja Gaiden to Thief — all had unfaithful sequels that lost sight of what mattered and paid the price. Franchises deserve breaks and should be able to experiment, but hiatuses and spin-offs should be carefully considered and not the result of greed or poor planning, as is often the case.
DOOM (2016) was and still is an absolute blast to play — slicing and shooting through hordes of demons is tuned phenomenally well — but its true legacy should lie in how it approached adapting such an important blueprint and laid the foundation for the series to flourish. Martin spoke about this process in relation to Star Wars, noting how a lot of the newer Star Wars media doesn’t seem to have a clear-eyed vision of what Star Wars is and has suffered because of this mismanagement. This sort of aimless execution is prevalent in the games industry, too, and is worse for it. If publishers are going to be endlessly scared of trying new things and almost exclusively mine their back catalogues, then it would behoove them to intimately study this fantastic reboot and think of it as more than a prettier version of a classic shooter.
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