Revealed during today’s Xbox Developer Direct, Doom: The Dark Ages will release on May 15. Developer Id Software shared an extended new look at the upcoming shooter during the showcase and Digital Trends learned additional details on what the studio describes as a return to form that takes cues from the original Doom.
Doom: The Dark Ages was first revealed during the Xbox Games Summer Showcase in 2024. It’s a prequel to 2016’s Doom reboot that reimagines the shooter as a medieval fantasy. We haven’t seen much of it since then, but Id just unleashed a more comprehensive look at the project, detailing its design philosophy, new weapons, and more.
Rather than iterating on Doom Eternal‘s mobility-heavy gameplay, The Dark Ages is focused on raw power. Id says that it took inspiration from 1993’s Doom this time, with a more grounded approach to combat. The Developer Direct presentations notes, for instance, that players will find that strafe dodging enemy projectiles is more viable this time. In a Q&A session ahead of today’s reveal, Director Hugo Martin explained how The Dark Ages connects to the original Doom.
“I think I spent more time playing classic Doom on this project than I did in any other one,” Martin says in response to a question from Noclip. “There was a real deep dive. There is at the beginning of every project, but just realizing that the original Doom and why it’s stood the test of time is that it’s really one of the most accessible shooters, first-person single-player campaigns, ever made … When it comes to combat, it’s incredibly streamlined and that’s why it’s still fun to the day. The first thing I say is that it’s a more powerful and grounded over the acrobatics of Doom Eternal, and that’s what that means. When I say that when you’ll see when you play it that it’s really a return to form, that’s what I’m saying. It feels more like classic Doom than any game we’ve made up to this point.”
Though that aspect is familiar, The Dark Ages brings some major changes to the series. In addition to a slew of brand new guns, the Doom Slayer now carries a Shield Saw, which has multiple functions. It can bloc, parry, and deflect attacks, and can be thrown at enemies like Captain America’s shield. All of that happens with the press of contextual one button. He also has three equippable melee weapons — an iron flail, a mace, and an electrified gauntlet — which also work with a single button. Glory kills have seen an overhaul too with a more flexible system that lets players trigger them at any angle.
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The Dark Ages will includes more flexible accessibility options too, allowing players to dial the game’s speed up and down, among other features.
In addition to its core shooting and exploration, The Dark Ages features some much larger creative swings. The Doom Slayer will pilot both a 30-story Atlan mech, as well as a dragon equipped with a Gatling gun. Id says that these aren’t just quick minigames, but fully built out mechanics with their own boss fights.
As for its story, which begins with an imprisoned Doom Slayer, Id likens the project to a Hollywood blockbuster. It emphasizes big set pieces and a heavier focus on narrative. To achieve the latter, the story will happen more in cutscenes than in lore codexes this time (though those will still exist alongside other collectibles). Hugo Martin cites Batman comics, including Frank Miller’s work on the series, as a guiding inspiration.
“The inspiration was really the Batman comic Batman: Year One,” Martin says in response to a question from IGN. “When we wrote the fiction for 2016, I’m a pretty big comic nerd — there are bigger comic fans than me — but I’m a fan, and I just loved Batman: Year One. As we wrote the fiction for the Slayer and his history and the Slayer’s Testament stuff, that’s what we called it internally. The rumor was that we were calling it Slayer: Year One. That’s what it was actually called for a while.”
There’s one thing that The Dark Ages won’t have this time around: multiplayer. Id’s Marty Stratton confirmed that the series’ ususal suite of modes was cut this time around to focus on the single-player experience.
“It’s campaign only. We made that decision really from the jump,” Stratton says. “We wanted to basically free ourselves to create things like the Atlan. The mech experience and the dragon experience, those are both almost like minigames within the game. We know our campaigns are to a great extent what people have come to the modern Doom games to play, so we decided to put all of our efforts behind that and create the biggest and best Doom game we’ve ever made.”
Doom: The Dark Ages launches on May 15 for PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC.
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