Offering the traditional hype of making a sequel that is bigger and more badarse than the game it follows, today the makers of the forthcoming Doom Eternal showed the game in action to the public for the first time. And they offered a surprise: Demon’s Souls-style player invasions.
The lengthy gameplay demo was part of a keynote delivered at Quakecon, the annual showcase for all things id (and Bethesda). Shortly after two of the game’s top developers made their pitches and the footage got rolling, the lead character of the upcoming first-person shooter was ripping the heart out of an enemy and feeding it down its throat.
The rebooted Doom released in 2016 was a critical triumph, an impeccably designed balance of shooting and melee, based on the idea that video game gunfights are more exciting when you need to keep moving and can’t just hang back and shoot from cover.
Today’s footage showed more of that kind of action, mixed with some more dynamic wall-climbing and a heavier emphasis on mixing gun attacks with swipes from a wrist-mounted blade. (There’s still a chainsaw, too.)
The first part of the demo was set in an Earth city area overrun with demons, and presented a more colourful, neon environment than was seen in the first game. Mostly, though, what was shown looked consistent with the 2016 game, just amped up.
A late phase was set on or near the Martian moon of Phobos and featured combat throughout the space station. It ended with the Doomslayer protagonist getting ready to swing a sword.
Marty Stratton, the game’s director, said that the lead character has been upgraded to be “the strongest, most powerful hero we’ve ever created”.
Hugo Martin, the game’s creative director, promised double the enemies in the game as there were in the 2016 predecessor.
In a game design twist that riffs on the likes of Demon’s Souls, the developers said you can take control of a demon and invade other player’s games. Players can team up when invading, and the developers say that those who don’t want to be invaded can turn that setting off.
According to the game’s official Twitter account, it’ll be released on PC, PS4, Xbox One and Switch. That last one is a mild surprise. The previous Doom was ported to Switch, but the console’s weaker horsepower compared to the other devices might have gotten it left behind for the sequel. Happily for Nintendo owners, that isn’t the case.
Comments
19 responses to “Doom Eternal Will Let You Invade Other Players’ Campaigns”
Nope. That can fuck right off, and if there’s no option to disable it, so can the game.
EDIT: I guess I missed the footnote where there’s an option to turn it off. Thank god for that.
Read the article!
“Players can team up when invading, and the developers say that those who don’t want to be invaded can turn that setting off.”
Wow, what a great feature!I look forward to turning it off as soon as I open the game!
Outside of the invasion mechanic, which I’ll turn off right away, this looks exactly like what a sequel should do – iterate on the good parts of the original. Looks like a proper Doom 2. Can’t wait!
I really enjoyed the first game. Out of the 3 games I have on my PC, Doom is one of them. I get nice 1995 flashbacks from seeing it there, but it’s also great for a quick 10minute play now and then.
So far everyone here is saying they’ll turn off the invasion setting when playing, each to their own but personally that’s a pretty poor attitude. Give it a go! you might enjoy the extra challenge. I’ll definitely be keeping it on, and to the people saying no, I give you the old dark souls say, GIT GUD!!!
No thanks I like my single player experience.
It’s not a poor attitude if they know they don’t like it. My son is always asking me to play fortnite. I’ve explained to him that i’m not ignoring his favourite game for no reason, it’s because I’ve never liked those kind of games. I’ve tried many over the years, it’s just not my thing.
Most of these people commenting don’t have a poor attitude, they just know what they like. If anything, you have the bad attitude. You seem to have zero empathy to people who don’t share your exact attitude. A lot of people don’t want to or care about “gitting gud”, they just want to play a game for fun and not have some douche trying to intentionally grief them the entire time.
I personally will be leaving it on myself though. I’ll just turn it off if it stops being fun.
Play the game how you want to, all i’m saying is give it a try before writing it off like the majority of comments on here. If you try one invasion and it’s not to your liking then by all means turn it off.
The lack of giving it a go is definitely a poor attitude to have, almost a defeatist attitude really, and this isn’t an empathy issue at all, it’s just a game.
I know what you’re saying. I can read. But it’s just a game. Let people play it how they like without labels hey?
Looking forward to being one of the few people both playing against and as a demonic invader.
I can’t wait to have to deal with unpredictable demons controlled by players it’s gonna be a blast. More games having this option imo is great
Now i want to know, will it still be using vulkan? I loved getting 400 trillion FPS while on maxed settings and hope this will be the same.
Yah the performance is insane. It looks almost exactly the same so i’m feeling that we have a good chance!
Any journalist who calls this the Dark souls of shooters just because of this feature deserves to be punched.
Hmmm an option for griefers and trolls to get their rocks off? Really?
Nah, thanks…
While I’ll turn off invasions for my initial play through, I might give it a go the second time around to see what it’s like