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Doom datamining reveals the return of the Spider Mastermind, a random boss system and more

Doom Spider Mastermind

The Doom multiplayer Alpha ran in early December, giving access to play a single map with a small selection of weapons. However, some keen info-finders have been digging into the files that were provided as is datamining tradition. What they’ve come up with has some key revelations about the nature of what we’ll see in the single-player component of id’s reboot.

Here’s everything we know for sure about the next game, including Doom’s release date, all the trailers so far and more.

I’ll warn you now, after having read through all this, spoiler-sensitive bits of me wish I hadn’t. It’s not about plot – there’s very little in that direction revealed here and even if there was, come on, it’s Doom – but mechanical turn ups. First encountering some of the systems and monsters hinted at by these data strings as they are introduced in the game, or at the very least by pre-planned marketing, might be preferable. Plus, it’s very possible that some of these references are incomplete or from older versions of the game that have been deprecated/re-written, not to mention the at-best-incomplete picture we’re seeing.

Forewarned and prepared, let’s jump in. The Spider Mastermind and Arch-Vile are back, along with the already revealed zombies, Lost Souls, Hell Knights, Barons of Hell, Pinky Demons/Spectres, Revenants, Cyberdemons, Cacodemons and Mancubi. However, they might not be recognisable as such, with the Spider Mastermind noted to have multiple laser attacks, crawling mines and some form of telekinesis. Arachnotrons and Pain Elements are absent, though there are also various mentions of new monsters.

How you encounter them may also have changed, with multiple references to a system for randomly generating bosses at different points. So far it had been assumed that everything in the campaign would be pre-generated and placed, but it seems like there may be a random element to it so things stay fresh and it can tailor itself to the player’s performance.

There was also a collection of level and difficulty names found. The latter referenced Doom 1 and 2’s Ultraviolent and Nightmare modes, while the former included The Foundry and Olympia, assumed to be those from the pair of E3 demos. It also included a BFG Division and something called Lazarus Labs – that’s some classic videogame right there – plus a few DLC references, though they look more like systems on which DLC can be built than actual content to be unlocked.

There’s much more over in the relevant Doomworld thread, which is still ongoing at time of writing. Most recently, dataminer MrDope has posted a series of webms showing off single-player content he’s managed to hack in to a playable version. They include one of simple movement that looks much faster than what we’ve seen so far in footage, and other members of the forum have commented that it looks faster than the multiplayer they’ve experienced. If it’s not just a happenstance of recording, it looks like a great move from id to fix what looked like a slightly too slow Doom.

We’ll update this post if any other large revelations are made. Hit up the comments if there’s anything that particularly jumps out at you.