Although I’m not a gamer, I’ve long felt a certain affection for the Doom franchise, so even I was interested when the reimagined game, known by fans as Doom 2016 to avoid confusion with the original game, appeared four years ago.
Doom had already seen a reboot with Doom III, which reinvented the game as a survival horror with more-or-less the same concept as the original but considerably more plot. Although generally praised, it was sometimes accused of building too slowly.
Doom 2016 triumphantly returned the franchise to its roots as an all-out blood-and-guts actioner and also created a new story line while keeping the basics of the premise.
Doom Eternal, which will appear in March of 2020 (having been delayed after a planned October release) is a direct sequel to Doom 2016 and is loosely based on Doom II: Hell on Earth, which appeared in 1995 as the sequel to the original game. The developers have promised that this sequel will contain even more lore and backstory as well as some huge areas to explore. Available footage indicates that it will also have a heavier focus on platforming than earlier entries in the franchise, and that the combat will require a lot of quick thinking.
The game is already being praised by those who have had the chance to play it. The only criticism, fairly mild, is that it is more cartoonish than its immediate predecessor: Its levels are no longer logical in layout, featuring instead a lot of floating floors and flaming chains like something out of Super Mario, and the obtainable items such as weapons and armor are brightly colored. The designers have defended this latter choice by arguing that they don’t want players to struggle to find items in the game’s environments.
Easily the most anticipated game of the last couple of years, Doom Eternal has stirred up some controversy (in a franchise familiar with controversy) because the early teasers hinted that the game’s final boss enemy might be God.