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ID Software has been making modern Doom games for almost ten years now, starting with 2016’s Doom and 2020’s Doom Eternal, and that learned expertise shows. From what we saw at Xbox’s Developer Showcase, it’s fair to say that the next game in the series, Doom: The Dark Ages, looks awesome.
We knew the Doom Slayer, Doom Marine, or Doomguy, depending on how far back you go, would be returning sometime in 2025, but now we know he’ll grace our screens on 15 May, 2025.
We got to see a the footage shown off at Xbox’s event a few days early, as well as chat with game director Hugo Martin and executive producer Marty Stratton about how the new game will expand upon, as well as reinvent, the well-loved Doom formula.
Stand and Fight
The first thing to note is that while the gameplay of The Dark Ages will differ from the previous two games, it will still be distinctly Doom. Rather than the ‘run and gun’ and ‘jump and shoot’ styles of Doom and Eternal, The Dark Ages was instead conceived around the play style of ‘stand and fight’.
This Doom Slayer is the one the demonic horde you’re probably well familiar with at this point learned to fear.

There’s a line in the trailer where a demonic leader states with wonder how the forces of hell cower before one human, and it’s good stuff. It makes you feel like a force of nature, more than a man, with a trusty shotgun, and a magnetically-attached saw-shield, single handedly mowing them down.
That saw-shield is an integral part of The Dark Ages‘ combat loop, according to Martin. It gives you the capacity to block bullets from hell, as well as do some Captain America-style shield tosses to both crack skulls and solve puzzles, and a shield dash, getting you safely closer to your target and ready to beat the shit out of them.
Plus, what seems to be the most important new ability of the bunch, you can parry enemy attacks, which will put them into a stagger state, ready for the game’s rethought glory kill.
In Doom and Eternal, when you do enough damage to a demon they become susceptible to a ‘finishing move’ that rewards you with extra health, shields and ammo. That system, while flashy, would also take the Slayer out of commission for a brief moment while an animation played out. Here, ID wanted to keep the faster pace of combat flowing, and so switched up how glory kills work.
Now, after enough damage, enemies will once again glow to show that a glory kill is possible, and a melee strike will finish them off and give you the spout the necessary consumables. It’s much faster, and doesn’t slow down your assault at all – though I will say it lacks some of the oomph of the previous system.
That melee system has also been expanded on, with the Slayer now having access to three separate close-quarters weapons throughout the course of the campaign: a shock glove, a demonic-looking mace, and a heavy flail. You’ll choose these items from with your inventory, and they’ll differ in attack speed, range, and damage, though will all get the job done.
There’s also a bevy of new weapons to play with, from what looked like some kind of pulse cannon to the aptly-named ‘skull crusher’, which crushes humanoid skulls and fires fragments out in a fan to damage enemies in a wide cone in front of you. It’s the kind of cool shit you want from ID, and it seems like they’re delivering once again.

Bigger is better
According to Martin, the Slayer controls a bit more like a ‘tank’ in this game: not necessarily that he’s slower, but more so that he’s a force to be reckoned with on the battlefield: less nimble, and more brutal.
But, the Slayer is going to get his own tank, of a kind, in the Atlan mech: a giant mech, first seen in Doom Eternal, that the Slayer jacks into and controls to fight the titanic behemoths we’ve seen previously through the series. Now, you’ll be fighting them in a like-for-like fashion, and crushing the tiny minions of hell beneath your feet.
The Atlan will be available in certain levels of the campaign, as will be your own personal Cyber Dragon, which you’ll be able to use to soar across the battlefield and take down bigger enemies with speed, more so than force.

I’m excited to see how both of these systems will work, as it appears they’ll be part of some of The Dark Ages‘ biggest action set pieces. There will be times when the action slows down, though, and you’re left to wander instead.
Here, The Dark Ages will open up a bit, and allow the Slayer some room to breathe and explore the hellish worlds he’s encountering. The game itself will be linear, Martin confirmed, but there will be moments where you’re encouraged to take some time to explore, find hidden crypts, and search for secrets before you continue down the critical path. The modern Doom games have certainly had a light sprinkling of exploration built in, largely in regards to finding collectables and secrets, but The Dark Ages seems to want to expand that system a bit more.
It’s not open world, by any stretch, but you’ll find yourself in open areas.
The Story is a Bigger Deal
“Out of the codex, into the cutscene”. That’s ID’s plan for how The Dark Ages will handle most of the game’s more important bits of lore. In the first few games in this revamped series, some of the critical bits of information in each game could be missed if one doesn’t pick up the right data pad, or simply doesn’t check the codex. Here, that mission critical information will be presented to you more naturally in cutscenes and conversation.
I have to say that I like the old system of potentially being left in the dark about the whys and hows of what is happening. It feels in keeping with the Doom Slayer’s persona: he really doesn’t care why the UAC are messing around with Argent Energy, he only cares to kill demons.

In saying that, we’re seeing the story from a different perspective this time. In The Dark Ages, the Slayer isn’t necessarily a single person facing down the forces of hell, but rather is one part of a larger conflict, involving more than just humans and demons. He’s part of a civilisation at war with hell, yes, but he’s part of a civilisation. I’m not saying we’re going to get some deep characterisation out of the Doom Slayer, but I do expect to see him show a bit more loyalty to others this time around.
See, The Dark Ages actually takes place before 2016’s Doom, before the Slayer is locked away in a casket to keep him in check. Here, you’ll be literally living out the legend recorded in the Slayer’s Testaments, which is a pretty dope idea for a game.
Also, there will still be a codex, so maybe we’ll get the best of both worlds.
It’s Coming Soon, and Probably Isn’t the End for Doom
Probably the most exciting bit of what was shown was the fact that the game is dropping in just a few months on 15 May, 2025, and is coming to PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S and X, as well as Steam. The previous games did eventually make their way to the Nintendo Switch, but we’ll see if this one ends up on the newly announced Switch 2.
From what we’ve seen, the game is shaping up to be an absolute blast, and according to Martin, isn’t likely to be the end of the series. In fact, he’d spend another ten years working on Doom if he had the choice – and we may just get that, considering how god-damn fun these games are.