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Talking to Doom: The Dark Ages game director Hugo Martin and producer Marty Stratton for the cover story of PC Gamer’s upcoming print issue 408 (396 in the US), I had to ask what they thought about “the prequel problem.”
Doom 2016 begins with the Slayer locked in a coffin with all his friends long-dead, and Doom Eternal goes into greater detail sketching out how heroically tragic the Slayer’s Night Sentinel buddies were. Won’t this story wind up being a big ‘ole Halo Reach-style bummer?
But Stratton and Martin were willing to reveal a surprising detail about The Dark Ages’ ending: It won’t conclude with the Slayer locked in that coffin, and may leave the door open for future prequel stories.
“Not yet,” Martin said of the Slayer getting locked away. “I mean, that would end the Dark Ages, the medieval chapter of the Doom saga. This is kind of like the Chronicles of the Slayer.
So if we took it all the way to that point, then that would mean that we couldn’t tell any more medieval stories. And I’m not announcing projects or anything other than to just say it’s better to leave it open.”
Martin may not have committed to announcing Doom: The Darker Ages, but he made it clear that id at the very least has follow-up story DLC planned along the lines of Doom Eternal’s The Ancient Gods: “We do have a DLC and things like that, so it won’t—I’m not giving away spoilers—but it doesn’t end with him [in the coffin].”
“The story is that they collapsed a building on top of him and then put him inside of that sarcophagus that we find him in at the beginning of 2016,” said Martin. “And this game doesn’t end that way.”
Whether or not id wants to do another full-fat Doom sequel in this era of the timeline, we wouldn’t be playing that game until the 2030s given modern development lead times.
But the studio sounds committed to this vision of medieval, dark fantasy-infused Doom as more than just a one-off. Now that I know how The Dark Ages doesn’t end, it actually really opens up the possibilities and stakes of its story.
Doom: The Dark Ages will release on May 15, but before that, you can check out my full interview with Martin and Stratton in issue 408/396 of PC Gamer’s print magazine, coming soon. We also discussed the game’s arsenal and how it follows up Eternal’s infamous Marauder.
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Kurt Indovina
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