Doom: id Software on Taking the Shooter Back to Its Roots

The 2012 BFG Edition reissue aside, id Software's seminal Doom franchise has been worryingly quiet for the past decade. As anyone who's been following its progress will know, the production of the latest entry in the series, now simply called Doom, hasn't been a smooth one: years of development were cast aside in 2011, when id took the bold step of returning to the drawing board.

Four years on, and id Software has been showing off the rebooted Doom to a largely excited response; the footage of its single- and multiplayer modes offering up a pleasing mix of the original Doom games' frenetic movement and the kind of HD graphics we'd expect from a modern shooter.

At a panel during QuakeCon, talked about its decision to return Doom to its fast-paced roots - a far cry from the scrapped Doom 4, which was compared unfavorably to Call of Duty. 

"We wanted to focus on these traditional id roots," the game's multiplayer producer Brad Bramlett said. When the game is fast and fluid, "it's exactly what we wanted it to be, so there's no better feeling than that."

Part of that speed and fluidity comes from id's decision to remove regenerative health from the Doommix - thus forcing players to keep moving and fighting rather than finding quiet places to hide and recover from damage.

"Not having regenerative health isn't a random choice, it stems from movement," said Marty Stratton, Doom's executive producer. "Movement is king and you don't want players stopping to regenerate health, you want them moving forward to see the resources of the game. That also leads to needing a lot of skill for players to get through the game."

When describing the new Doom, the game's art director Hugo Martin came up with the quote of the day: it should, he said, make players "feel like Bruce Lee with a shotgun on a skateboard."

But while id's retreated to its own style of shooter design with Doom, Bethesda's boss Pete Hines has admitted that he hopes the sequel will be able to compete with the franchises that have long since overtaken it.

"id hasn’t made a game in the current pantheon of first-person shooters," Hines told Gamespot. "It’s not a part of that conversation. You can go to any 16-year-old at QuakeCon and ask them what their favorite shooter is and they’re going to say Call of Dutyand Battlefieldand Halo, but not Doom, because why would they? We haven’t put out Doom games. So id has to deal with the challenge because we can’t walk in and say, ‘Hey, we’re making a Doom game,’ and everyone’s instantly on board. id’s got to prove [itself] and prove how this is still true to Doom and still relevant to first-person shooters."

A lucky group of gamers who bought Wolfenstein: The New Order will be granted access to Doom's alpha testing phase over the next few months. For the rest of us, Doom is due out on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One in the first half of 2016.

PC Gamer,Gamespot