It was once the stuff of dreams that never quite found the space to fly, but the unreleased Doom 4 has been reborn… temporarily. Doom 4 had hopes of being a more horror-infused game, but for one reason or another it was cancelled. What we do have to settle us slightly is some footage of the unreleased game.
The documentary YouTube channel Noclip are known for releasing never-before-seen footage of cancelled games, they recently did the same thing with the cancelled Half-Life spin-off game Ravenholm. The channels latest video focuses on the canned Doom game and offers fans a great insight into what could have happened.
The unreleased Doom 4 was a project developed by id Software that was originally announced in 2008 before the plans were scrapped, eventually being reworked and released as 2016s Doom.
As you can see from the video, the game is a lot more akin to a survival-horror type game than the run-and-gun, high octane action seen in the released games. The game features a more methodical gameplay style, with the environment and the atmosphere being designed to induce the perfect amount of dread. The video also highlights some unfinished combat animation tests that show a slower, more specific style of combat that attempts to focus more on the melee aspect.
In an interview from 2016 with the Doom 4 executive producer Marty Stratton, he explains that the game was cancelled because it lacked personality but going off these clips, it had the potential to be quite charismatic. Stratton explained, “We explored a direction and got to a certain point and felt like this really wasn’t capturing what we felt like was going to be a strong Doom and what the fans would want from it.”
The game could have been wonderful, it could have been enigmatic and terrifying, but that’s something we will never know. Anyway, the series of games that was eventually released in its stead have turned into quite the attraction, so it’s not all doom and gloom.
