Bethesda showed some extensive gameplay clips from the new Doom at their pre-E3 press conference, giving us our first taste of what kind of shooter “New Doom” is going to be. They also showed-off their newbie-friendly editor, Doom Snapmap, which will let people create and share their own content for the game.
Then there’s the bad news: Doom, and every game from here on, is going to be hooked into a new service called Bethesda.net.
It can’t be worse than uPlay, right?
There appear to be three distinct elements to the new Doom. What they showed the most is the classic love story between a lone space marine and his shotgun. It didn’t look nearly as fast-paced as classic Doom, though few games are these days, but it certainly delivered on the gore and graphic demon-murder.
The second part is multiplayer, which will include domination, freeze tag, and clan arena modes. That looked kind of interesting, particularly with the addition of power-ups that turn you into some of the game’s signature hellbeasts. One player, for instance, grabbed a floating pentagram (always a good idea) and promptly morphed into a Revenant and ripped other players apart with rockets and demonic claws.
The third part is user-generated content. “With this doom we asked, ‘what if every player, regardless of platform or past experience, had the ability to instantly build and share their own creations?'” explained Id executive producer Marty Stratton.
It all happens via Snapmap, which appears to have a very easy-to-use game editor that will let you churn out new levels and even alter game logic to create new game modes.
But it’s all coming our way via Bethesda.net, which just screams “useless online wrapper around games I want to play”. I can see where it might make things like Snapmap, or the Pip-Boy interactions in Fallout 4, easier to implement. But man, am I ever tired of dealing with a second-layer of online services in order to play games.
As for Doom, it looked… okay? It’s tough to tell from guided gameplay demos, but it seemed kind of slow-paced for a Doom game, and I didn’t see a ton of interesting enemy behavior to compensate for it. There were funny / gross beats, like having to get a palmprint from a dead scientist to open a door, which means you rip his arm off of his corpse. But I’m not sure I saw a great shooter during those Doom videos, despite tons of ultra-bloody melee executions and explosions.
Bethesda have time, though. Doom doesn’t come out until sometime in the spring of 2016.