Once upon a time, DOOM was synonymous with first person shooters to the extent that every other shooter on the market was called a ‘DOOM clone.’ It made money for its developer, id Software, hand over fist, and id themselves ruled the genre, putting out one hit after another- Wolfenstein, DOOM, Quake.
But then, id disappeared off the face of the earth, and their new games- Rage, but most importantly, DOOM 3- failed to make any sort of mark on the market. Nonetheless, sheer brand value counts for a lot, which is why so many people were excited for a new DOOM game (now under development at Bethesda) in the first place.
Bethesda, though, don’t seem to believe that. They don’t believe in free passes.
“Let’s be honest, it was a bit of a tarnished brand,” Bethesda’s Peter Hines remarked to OXM speaking of Wolfenstein. “And we knew that. The last couple of games were either ‘ok’ or ‘not great’. It wasn’t a franchise where people were desperate for the next one. Wolfenstein isn’t Uncharted. We knew this would take some explaining. But developer Machine Games has now untarnished the IP.”
“We view that similarly to Wolfenstein,” Hines said of Doom. “Because it’s been so long since the last Doom game. We are going in as if we need to prove ourselves all over again. We have no free passes. Nobody will assume this is going to be awesome.
“We are going to have to prove that this is something that’s going to be fun and different that you need to pay attention to. That has to be our default position, we can’t be: ‘It’s Doom, of course you’re going to play it’. But that just makes us work harder.”
Well, if the new DOOM game is anywhere near as good as Wolfenstein: The New Order was, then count me firmly on board.