Id Software found a new lease of life in the industry once DOOM, it’s oft-delayed first person shooter, finally released. However, if DOOM was meant to be more of a return to the series’ classic gameplay, what defined its previous iteration, namely Doom 4?
Designer Kevin Cloud spoke to GameSpot about the same and noted that Doom 4 didn’t feel like a Doom game due to its overall story. “We explored a direction and got to a certain point and felt like this really wasn’t capturing what we felt like was going to be a strong Doom and what the fans would want from it.”
Producer Marty Stratton further noted that Doom 4 felt more like “Call of Doom“, essentially a Doom version of the Call of Duty series. “It was much closer to something like that type of game. A lot more cinematic; a lot more story to it. A lot more characters around you that you were with throughout the course of the game. Definitely a different setting – it took place on Earth.”
And though it was to have “unbelievable” production values, it just didn’t feel like a Doom game at the end of the day, what with some sections involving taking cover and fighting zombies..
“It was definitely a twist on Doom that took it into a much more cinematic, much more scripted type of experience. It was a re-imagining of Doom in a way that was new. It didn’t feel as much like Doom as I think a lot of us expected it would feel or hoped it would feel.”
Creative director Hugo Martin did that Doom 4 had a “Robert Zemeckis-y Contact” that was “awesome, but it was more realistic. It was more about the global impact of a hellish invasion. As a concept I could see why they went there because I would probably want to explore that, too – if it wasn’t a Doom game. To tell a bigger story, it scarified the doom slayer. Doom is about one guy involved in big things. Doom 4 was about the big things.”
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