DOOM: The Dark Ages director Hugo Martin has revealed the equivalent of the Marauder enemy for the upcoming title. Speaking to PCGamer, Martin said that the new Agadon Hunter will work as DOOM: The Dark Ages‘ equivalent of the infamous miniboss from DOOM Eternal.
“The Agadon Hunter is the new Marauder,” said Martin. He does, however, go on to clarify that the new enemy will not be based on the Marauder. Rather, the Agadon Hunter will serve as the equivalent enemy in the upcoming shooter. He describes the new enemy as being a sort of test for players to see how well they’ve mastered the game’s various mechanics.
“He’s not based on the Marauder. He’s not like, ‘Big Marauder,’ it’s Dark Ages, so it’s very different,” Martin explained. “But he’s similar in that a lot of the bosses they’ll challenge you in different ways. It’s all about pushing: parry, dodging and weaving between projectiles.”
“We take everything that you’ve been doing in the game up to that point. It’s like it’s exam time, everything else is a quiz. When you get to the boss, it’s the final exam.”
Martin also spoke a bit about the game design that went into the Marauder, as well as the perception of some players of it being an unfair difficulty spike in DOOM Eternal. Martin believes that some players’ frustration comes from the fact that they don’t understand how they are supposed to tackle the fight.
“I watch a lot of people play,” said Martin, “And I think pretty consistently it’s people who didn’t understand what to do that got frustrated. People who got it, they didn’t mind as much. They appreciated the challenge.”
“When I think about the Marauder, much of what he was asking you to do, the core of what he was asking you to do, in terms of shooting him and faltering him during those windows, you hadn’t really done much of that in the game up to that point.”
According to Martin, the Agadon Hunter will have players rely on their past experience with fighting various enemies in DOOM: The Dark Ages in order to take it out.
“So when the Agadon Hunter shows up, or many bosses, everything he asks you to do,” he said. “You’ve been doing the whole game.”
Producer Marty Stratton has also spoken about some of the new tools that DOOM: The Dark Ages will let players use to take on its hordes of demons. In an interview, he said that just about every weapon has seen sweeping changes aside from the shotguns. The new take on the classic Plasma Gun, for instance, is the Accelerator, which acts as more of an SMG-styled weapon with a high rate of fire.
“You got to have your classics, it’s a DOOM game,” said Stratton. “You got to have a plasma rifle. You got to have the shotguns. But then what else can we make? So we started every gun from scratch.”
DOOM: The Dark Ages is coming to PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S on May 15. While you wait for its release, check out our interview with Stratton and Martin.
