Doom isnotgoing to the big meat grinder in the sky. There was some speculation that the series might wrap up afterDoom: The Dark Ages, given that the upcoming entry is traveling back in time for a medieval prequel andDoom Eternal’s The Ancient Gods DLCseemed like a conclusive end point for the Doom Slayer’s story. Some fans wondered if Eternal was as far as the story would go.
Apparently not. “[The Dark Ages] isn’t designed to be the end of something,” creative director Hugo Martin toldPC Gamer, adding that id is “really just focused on this right now”, but that the new game isn’t “a period on the end of a sentence”.
Could Doom Even End?
I get why id was asked the question. FromDoom (2016)on, the series has increasingly focused more on story. The original PC games doled their story out exclusively in text exposition dumps at the end of a chapter — followingJohn Carmack’s edict that story in a game was about as important as story in an adult film. But the modern Doom games have leaned much more into worldbuilding and lore.
But the story matteringmoredoesn’t mean that it matters much. When I think of Doom, I think of something, well, eternal. Some series should say farewell.Uncharted 4gave Nathan Drake a great ending.Resident Evil Villagesaid goodbye to Ethan. AndHalf-Life 3may end up being a long-awaited send-off for Gordon Freeman. But Doom? Doom doesn’t need to say goodbye. It never should.
That’s because Doom is elemental. I may disagree with Carmack’s take on story in general, but I don’t disagree with it in relation to Doom. This is a series that is built on movement and violence. It’s a game in the football sense of the word, more than it is a game inThe Last of Ussense of the word. It doesn’t need to end if the Doom Slayer’s story wraps up anymore than the NFL needs to disband because Tom Brady retired.
Doom Is Basically A Sport
No, Doom is less like Uncharted, and more likeTetris. Since Alexey Pajitnov first created the game in 1985, it has been endlessly re-released, reworked, and reinvented. Pajitnov developed his own official sequels: Welltris, which reimagined the Tetris board as the bottom of a well, with blocks descending upon it from all four sides of the grid; Hatris, where players stacked various kinds of chapeaus on dudes' heads; and (the weirdly named) Faces…tris 3, which required players to stack falling face parts to form complete heads. Pajitnov’s variations are especially interesting to me — because how do you, the creator of Tetris, make a follow-up to Tetris? — but there are near-endless reworkings of the original classic game.
Including 2018’s excellentTetris Effect, which transformed the classic game of falling blocks into a highly sensory audiovisual experience, as much a music game as a puzzle game.
Doom is like Tetris, except the blocks are distinct types of ghouls and the way you eliminate them isn’t forming a line, it’s lining up the right weapon to blast their fleshy head to smithereens. The series has always been about “combat chess,” using strategy to find the right tool for the right job, all while moving at 100 miles per hour. Like chess, Doom can and should repackage those fundamentals over and over.
And it has. The original Doom has been ported endlessly. During my seven years as a games journalist I’ve read countless stories about the iconic shooter being made to run on aLego brick, aPDF file, acalculator powered by potatoes. Sure, Doom is an IP that Microsoft owns and a franchise that id Software develops games for. But that’s like saying soccer belongs to FIFA. In a way, yeah, but you can also play in your backyard. Doom is the same. If you can dream it, you can Doom it.
