DOOM: Eternally Demon Slaying
Eternal, the sequel to Doom’s 2016 rebirth, is one of the best sequels in recent memory, taking everything that made Doom great and cranking it up to 15.
DOOM 2016 and DOOM: Eternal are prime examples of what can be accomplished by talented and experienced teams when lessons learned from a previous cycle are applied and expanded on. Both games are phenomenal and deserving of all the praise that comes their way, but Eternal stands out as something of a technological end of console generation miracle. An artistic tour de force, Doom: Eternal sets out to be bigger, badder, more difficult, and more fluid than its predecessor in every possible way and it succeeds in it’s mission. I marveled continuously at it’s ornate art work, graphic violence, thunderous soundtrack, and break neck pace of play as I butchered demon after demon all in the name of rip-roarin’ demon slayin’.
SPOILER WARNING: This article may show screenshots or talk about plot points of Doom: 2016 and Doom: Eternal.
Bright Lights, Big City, Hell on my Screen
The biggest change that I noticed throughout my time playing Doom: Eternal from 2016 Doom was the complexity and scale of the environments. Eternal starts the game off inside a wonderfully detailed ‘Fortress of Doom’, where the Slayer more or less operates from. The complexity of the geometry and texture work in the Fortress is impressive, but it’s a smaller space that features limited gameplay elements.
The game really starts to open up once you start the first mission on Earth and eventually see this:
Doom Eternal wastes no time in showcasing it’s sheer scale with massive demons, large buildings, darkly gorgeous vistas, and a Doom Guy inspired mech that sits idle while another titanic demon moves a large chunk of some sort of demonic structure. This game is here to rock you.
This is a sharp contrast to Doom 2016. In 2016, the game takes place mostly on a Mars base that’s built for the purpose of research and energy extraction. As such, the combat arenas and vistas afforded by the game are smaller and less visually enticing. They are beautiful and still look great to this day, but everything feels a bit…stock when compared to Eternal.
What makes Doom 2016’s setting work isn’t the quality of the modeling, texturing, or the design of the environment. While the team’s hard surface work is phenomenal and the textures and materials are clearly readable and well presented, Doom 2016’s focus on building a space base that was slowly taken over by demon worshiping zealots puts the player at a constant state of unease. When paired with lighting that takes cues from horror films and even seems like a nod to Doom III, as well as off putting periods of constant demon growling and pitch perfect silence, Doom 2016 makes the most of a traditional sci-fi trope and turns it into something new and fun for players.
Doom: Eternal also makes a departure from it’s predecessor by introducing players to a varying set of environments that build significantly on what I can only imagine is lore that either didn’t exist prior to Doom: Eternal or was missed by everyone everywhere while we did what the Doom Guy wanted; Ripping and Tearing.
Eternal’s second level is a setting called Exultia. It’s a beautiful world that is a sharp contrast to the devastated Earth, and showcased that the team has far more up it’s sleeve than a destroyed Earth and an incredibly grand vision of Hell. Exultia features lush greenery sprinkled around these large metallic and concrete structures that bring the player to think of Ancient Greece or Rome. The world is dotted with vibrant blue hues and the level as a whole maintains a consistent, early morning fog feel as you play. The demons aren’t home here, and their color contrast form the level pops them off the screen, making it easier for Doom Guy to shove a shotgun down their throats.
One aspect that can be directly compared between the Dooms is hell itself. In both 2016 and Eternal, players make trips to what is more or less hell for a few different reasons, mostly related to argent energy or something…if I’m honest, I really just played these games to murder demons.
Hell in 2016 is a simple precursor to what you see in Eternal. The art direction is strikingly consistent between both versions; large bone and stone like structures are used to build up grand shapes of horror and terror that mere mortals would shudder and run from. In the above images form Doom 2016, you have a more muted overall color scheme, but the orange in the sky from the sulfur fires of dying souls is palpable and the structural detail is top notch. The geometry is detailed as well, but if you pay close attention to the bones forming arches around for Doom Guy to follow, you can see just how low poly the silhouette of the bones is.
Moving to another image, you can continue to see the level of detail and care that is put into each design element. The door, featuring monstrous abominations of human skulls (along with the skull of the beast) is unsettling and the world which this door inhabits is suitably dead and drab.
This death and dreariness is a minor frustration when looking back at Doom 2016. It’s unfair, but as I went back to grab screenshots for this article, I noticed that much of Doom 2016 relies on color tones that seem to own the screen. There isn’t much of a pop of color or contrast to be found. Doom 2016 is a dark game a decent part of the time, relying on blood to accent the environment and guide the player somewhat often. Many scenes in numerous parts of the game are red, brown, or a muted dark grey with the only pop and contrast coming from lights that serve to illuminate critical paths, or demon eyes.
Doom Eternal on the other hand provides color, organic contrast, and inordinate amounts of detail as you trek though hell. It takes the alluded to scale of hell in 2016 and cranks it up to 15.
Hell 2.0 is filled with bright reds and oranges that pop off the screen at you as you slay your way though its depths. It’s scale is massive and you truly feel that this Hell is not just a place where souls go to die, it’s where they go to be tormented. It’s gory, unsettling, and wickedly metal. The shots I have up top alone showcase just the difference in density that Doom: Eternal has over the older game, and what the developers at id Software were able to do with a fully modernized, state of the art set of tools. When masters of their craft are given freedom and beers with the Doom Guy, a game like this is what we are left with.
Old Rockers getting a Face Lift
Doom: Eternal’s environments aren’t the only aspect of the game to receive a major overhaul. Almost every enemy in the game that appeared in 2016 received a significant redesign.
The Mancubus in Eternal takes on a far more human like appearance, with two eyes and an uncovered torso that has a somewhat more flesh like tone. This is consistent with the game taking place largely on Earth and in keeping with the development team’s desire to try and follow enemy designs from 1994’s DOOM II more closely.
One of the best updates to enemies in Doom: Eternal is the Cacodemon. The Cacodemon in Doom 2016 is richly detailed and filled with terrifying teeth. If you’re able to look closely at the screen on the left, you can make out that the arrangement of teeth is generally the same across both models. But the Cacodemon from Eternal features an impressive uplift in additional detail, from the richness of additional scratches and chips in his teeth and gum lines to the increase in bony spikes on his body to the visible iris in his eyes. He just feels more tangible and fleshy in Doom: Eternal and I love it.
There is one other significant change to how enemies are handled in Eternal, and that is their ‘destructibility’. In Doom: Eternal enemies are hacked away bit by bit as Doom Guy slaughters them. It’s wonderfully visceral and down right hilarious most of the time, and it works so well precisely because we’re talking about demons. It’s an additional layer of visual information to the player too. As you eradicate the viscera of these hellish ghouls, their evaporating bodies really convey how much work you have left to do before they fall. It’s extremely satisfying in motion.
Rippin’ and a Tearin’
One of the most fun bits about Doom 2016 was it’s glory kill system. If you weakened an enemy enough, Doom Guy had the ability to perform an execution which usually involved punching them into a blood cloud. It was an absolute joy and was encouraged though the use of this mechanic as a way to restore small amounts of health. The Chainsaw was used this way too, but instead of providing health it provided ammo.
For Eternal, in keeping with the established theme of “Doom but way bigger and badder”, the developers took to expanding the glory kill system. Now, it’s how you survive most encounters. Without effective use of farming for ammo and health and taking advantage of every glory kill possible, surviving the sheer number of enemies in Doom: Eternal becomes an exercise in futility. Thankfully, the glory kills in this game have been expanded and made far more unique. As a wonderful consequence, the new glory kills are absolutely hysterical.
There is just no end to the fun you can have with glory kills in Eternal. The Chainsaw has been made more devastating too!
Weapons in Eternal also get a great visual update too.
In the case of the Assault Machine Gun, it’s given a more sci-fi industrial feel. Multi-Missile Mod Placement is shifted from the bottom to the sides, and the increase in texture fidelity is astounding. In gameplay, the sounds, vfx, and feel of the weapon are leaps and bounds more impressive than in 2016. Doom: Eternal has nearly unmatched sound design, and that extends to every aspect of the game including the weapons.
The Mini-Gun has also gone under a redesign. In the previous game, it felt more like a turret that the player picked up and carried around with a thunderous clap as you start to fire the gun, with it gradually approaching it’s main firing speed. In Eternal, it’s one of the guns that seems to have been slightly scaled back in the sound department, but scaled up in usability. The gun takes far less time to ramp up, and while it’s visual design might seem like a step back, I argue that the ‘refined sci-fi’ appearance and larger overall screen presence makes for a more satisfying to use weapon. There’s nothing like using it to rip apart a Mancubus.
I loved Doom: Eternal. It felt like a nearly impossible game in some ways. It’s visual fidelity and artistic design cannot be properly conveyed in an article like this. A large part of it’s majesty lies in the performance that the game pulls off; 60 fps on console and on PC, a fairly high end machine can push out 144+ fps consistently, all at 1920x1080. The scope and detail level in the game is far beyond most shooters I’ve played this generation at a performance level that is only matched by Call of Duty.
As a game, there is some discussion as to whether Eternal is better than 2016. I am not going to entertain that, because the answer is yes. Doom: Eternal falters in it’s tutorial and systems presentation, and some of it’s encounters (especially towards the end) are wildly overwhelming if you aren’t the ‘perfect player’, but it’s overall combat, movement, speed, visual and sound design, and overall level of gory, hilarious fun are leaps and bounds above what Doom was able to pull off four years ago.
I don’t know what’s next for Doom, mostly because all I wanted to do was shoot demons and didn’t pay attention to the story at all…and I’m pretty sure that’s the joke of the game. Regardless, I cannot wait to see what id does next, Doom or otherwise.
