Doom: The Dark Age release date, new gameplay details revealed

There’s a lot of Frank Miller in the new Doom from id Software. According to game director Hugo Martin, Doom: The Dark Ages was heavily inspired by three of Miller’s works: seminal Batman comics Year one and The Dark Knight returnsand the film adaptation of 300.

The influence of Year one may be obvious: The Dark Ages serves as an origin story for the Doom Slayer. Miller’s The Dark Knight returns and 300 added inspiration for the heavier, more powerful style of Slayer; Martin said this during a press event this week Returns‘ fat, monster truck-like Batman and the unstoppable onslaught of Leonidas fights his way out of the Hot Gates 300 similarly affected id this time.

Doom: The Dark Ages is also heavily influenced by previous Dooms. It’s quite a throwback to the very first one Doom from 1993, and partially reacting to the players’ reaction to the 2020s Eternal doom. Whereas Eternal made players feel like a fighter jet or a Ferrari, thanks to the game’s focus on fast movement and acrobatics, The Dark Ages aims to make players feel like an iron tank – heavy, strong, but still fast. This time it’s not just gunfire and gunfire; it’s also about standing up and fighting.

In a new look at the match on Thursday, Martin and Doom: The Dark Ages executive producer Marty Stratton walked fans of the shooter series through the medieval world and design goals of the latest Doom game. As previously revealed, The Dark Ages takes the franchise back in time, where players will learn the story of Slayer before he became a world-saving sci-fi hero, filling in the period when he was “the superweapon of gods and kings.”

The Dark Ages is “not just about nostalgia,” Martin said, as players will have new tools and mechanics to master, starting with the shield saw, which is basically like if you added a ring of demon-slicing chainsaw teeth to Captain America’s physics-defying shield.

With the Shield Saw, the Slayer can block, throw, parry and deflect, “all from one input,” Martin said. It’s a one-button contextual device that can knock enemies and deflect their projectiles back at them, stunning them into a vulnerable state. You can too brrrr the heads of demons with it.

Then there are the weapons. The developers describe The Dark Ages‘ arsenal which contains “the most powerful weapons we have ever created”, comparing them to ancient torture machines. “Only in Doom” was the mission statement, the game’s executives said. One of my favorites—a gun that certainly fits the “Only in Doom” philosophy—is the Skull Crusher, a weapon that chops up skulls and fires bone fragments at enemies.

The Slayer will also have a variety of melee weapons at his disposal, including a cloak, a thick iron plume, and a whip. These weapons’ attacks are also contextual, as id Software aims to simplify the game’s input, a course correction from the more complicated control scheme of Eternal.

Martin and Stratton noted several times that they aim to streamline the Doom gameplay experience The Dark Ages. Martin described Eternal as “too complex”, explaining that “you want to fight your enemies, not your controls.” Stratton said so The Dark Ages is focused on accessibility, saying the game is a good entry point for new players not only because of its setting in the Doom timeline, but because it will be easy to learn.

In the same breath, the leaders of the match also emphasized that Doom: The Dark Ages will be hard to master and that hardcore difficulty levels like Nightmare and Ultra Nightmare will be back. So will challenging enemies on equal footing Eternal doom‘s Marauder that will test players’ skills and knowledge with the shield parry system. Both casual and hardcore players will be able to adjust Doom: The Dark Ages‘ challenge to their liking, thanks to a range of difficulty levels that offer granular adjustments. Options include game speed, enemy projectile speed, damage given and taken, length of parry windows, and an enemy’s aggression setting.

In addition to tailored challenge and variety, id also goes for spectacle The Dark Ages. The developers promised larger-than-ever battlefields and sandbox playgrounds that are expansive (but not fully open-world, Stratton said), and players will take control of the 30-story mech known as Atlan and ride the back of a dragon in certain levels . Each giant vehicle has its own bosses, so expect oversized battles.

Here’s one thing you can’t expect from Doom: The Dark Ageshowever: multiplayer. Stratton said the team’s goal from the start was to focus on The Dark Ages‘ single player campaign. But after the game is finished, expect some DLC, he said.

Doom: The Dark Ages will be released on May 15 for PlayStation 5, Windows PC and Xbox Series X. It will be available day one through Game Pass.