The 2016 Doom reboot wowed players with an action-packed story campaign full of thrills, gore, and plenty of demons. However, the reboot’s deathmatch-based competitive multiplayer experience failed to resonate as strongly with fans. For the upcoming Doom Eternal, developer id Software is mixing things up with a new asymmetrical Battlemode competitive experience. The studio also acknowledged that Battlemode was born directly from the 2016 Doom’s multiplayer failures.
Doom Eternal Takes Competitive Multiplayer Back To The Drawing Board
During a recent E3 interview with PC Gamer, Doom Eternal executive producer Marty Stratton spoke candidly about Doom’s multiplayer. According to Stratton, Doom’s multiplayer felt too disjointed, and it didn’t capture the same demon-slaying essence as the story campaign:
“Thematically and just from its fundamental design story, it was a little bit of Halo, a little bit Doom, a little bit of Quake, but it was none of what people loved from the campaign. Internally, you know, we had put so much into that campaign and that slayer versus demons experience, that’s what people came away loving. And then they turned to multiplayer and it wasn’t there.”
While players could technically play as demons in Doom’s multiplayer, it wasn’t an integral part of the experience. For the most part, players just fragged each other while playing as stock slayers. Doom’s multiplayer did have elements which set it apart, but they weren’t enough to keep it from feeling overtly bland. Doom Eternal’s Battlemode experience sounds like it won’t suffer from that same blandness.
In Doom Eternal’s Battlemode, one decked out slayer player will go up against a team of two demon players. This creates a more strategic sort of experience where having the most firepower doesn’t necessarily guarantee victory. The demon players need to utilize proper teamwork and coordination to overwhelm the slayer player. As for the slayer player, they just need to focus on dividing and conquering.
In the same PC Gamer interview, Doom Eternal creative director Hugo Martin explained how Battlemode just feels better overall. It feels like a proper Doom multiplayer experience, and not just because it moves away from the typical deathmatch format:
“[Doom multiplayer] had no real pacing. It was just very one-note from beginning to end. So we just wanted a game that had really good pacing, which it does. And there was no drama; like there was no escalation of the stakes.”
We’ll see how well Doom Eternal’s Battlemode experience works when the game launches on November 22. For more Bethesda E3 coverage, be sure to read about Arkane Studios’ upcoming time-bending shooter Deathloop.