We have some interesting new details from a recent preview for Doom: The Dark Ages.
This preview comes courtesy of Knoebel, who shared details that they linked to on Twitter. We should note that Bethesda had a video presentation they showed attendees of QuakeCon 2024, but they did not share this preview with the public. They also told the attendees not to record and share this preview, but telling us the details secondhand like this is fine.
So what’s there to find out? For starters, it will have Doom Eternal’s HUD, so that will be nicely familiar and comfortable. The game areas are more open than since the reboot started, and there’s an emphasis on the environmental narrative. What isn’t coming back from Doom Eternal is the verticality system. Apparently Doomguy doesn’t have Samus’ agility, but that’s fine. His medieval Doom Slayer fit gives him the same jump mechanics you find in Fallout 4 or Fallout 76.
Glory Kills have also been revamped. The previous system had you choose an angle to attack, and that angle would determine what elimination animation comes out. Now, you wait for a small purple halo to appear on an enemy to do the Glory Kill, and they differ based on what limb you use, or if you go with a melee weapon.
Speaking of melee weapons, id showed three weapons brutal in their medievality. The flail helps you collect ammo, the fist weapon creates electricity chains between enemies, and there’s a mace. The mace might have a unique effect, but Middle Age maces were particularly effective at hurting soldiers even when they’re armored, so maybe id will just have them work like that.
There’s a new very ahistorical weapon, that’s basically a double-barrel plasma gun. It’s like the 1990s Doom plasma gun, only both barrels are connected by a piece of metal. Two shots fire at the same time, but there’s also a single-barrel shotgun. If you’re more of a saw than shotgun guy, there’s a saw shield that you can ride to travel, but you can also throw it on your enemies. And, you can tear it apart while it’s ripping out an enemy in two, Army of Darkness style.
There is apparently a way to reflect green projectiles back at enemies. We doubt that Rose from Street Fighter Alpha taught Doomguy how to Soul Reflect, so we’ll wait and see how that’s actually done.
The preview demonstrated how the nail gun and other weapons have been tweaked to work with the other game mechanics perfectly, so if this all sounds crazy, you can rest assured it’s all been balanced out.
It seems that you can get on board the dragon and the mech, called the Altan, a few times in the game. It’s a shame that they’re not allowed to just run ramshod on the levels, but Doom isn’t an open world game to facilitate that kind of endgame anyway. Altan has its fists and a double cannon. It can do glory kills, and even has its HUD. However, Altan loses armor as it takes damage
Lastly, there are both completely new and original enemies, and modified versions of existing enemies. One enemy is described as “a strange octobrain that fired blue projectiles”, and another one is “a big quadlegged cyberdemon”. Arachnotrons are now more fleshy, so there’s more to barbeque.
And that’s it for now! We imagine some of these details won’t reappear until the game finally comes out, so take this as something to whet your appetite as you visualize it. Doom: The Dark Ages will be releasing on 2025 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and Steam.
