At QuakeCon this past weekend id Software showed off Doom Eternal’s first gameplay trailer. While 2016’s Doom was already a radically fast-paced shooter thanks to its push forward combat design, this sequel is looking to speed things up even further with the Doom Slayer getting a few extra movement abilities added to his repertoire.
Stevivor spoke to Game Director Marty Stratton and Creative Director Hugo Martin on how these new movement capabilities translate across when designing maps.
“It’s like if you build a faster race car, you’ve got to build a longer race track. The levels are bigger, definitely,” Martin said.
“Overall with the combination of abilities; you’ve got wall climb, monkey bar swing, double jump, two dashes, and the meat hook – you’ve got the makings there of some pretty epic traversal combo’s. Honestly I think it helps add some variety to the game and makes some of the traversal interesting – whether they are mid combat or in-between the combat areas of the game, hopefully making those intermediate areas compelling as well. It’s really exciting.”
“There’s a lot more vertical in the arenas. You saw that in the second clip [the QuakeCon gameplay trailer] where he uses the meat hook off of the Pain Elemental,” Stratton added.
“What normally in Doom 2016 would have been probably two or three double jump ledge grabs – he basically meat hooks the Pain Elemental and slings himself up to the top level. It has definitely impacted that side.”
Stratton and Martin went into a bit more detail about how some of these new movement capabilities are implemented into the game.
“It’s worth noting to that; and most people I think picked this up – but the meat hook only works on demons. It’s not like a grapple anywhere in the world,” Stratton said.
“And the dash is limited, it has a cool down and it doesn’t recharge in mid-air,” Martin continued.
“We feel like showing that type of restraint is what makes for what we hope is intelligent game design,” Martin said. “That its not like the dash is always on. It will force the player to make some cleaver decisions so it will give them something to master.”
Doom Eternal will be available on Windows PC, Xbox One, PS4 and Nintendo Switch.
Luke Lawrie traveled to Dallas, U.S.A as a guest of Bethesda.
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