As one of the most influential and genre-defining titles the industry has yet produced, the importance and clout of iD Software’s DOOM can’t be overstated. But aside from a handful of middling spinoffs, the FPS juggernaut has seen its reputation wane in the last decade as the likes of Battlefield and Activision’s Call of Duty tussle for genre supremacy. Come spring 2016, though, Bethesda will be looking to turn the tables.
In an interview with GameSpot during last weekend’s QuakeCon event, the studio’s VP of Marketing Pete Hines outlined the potential pitfalls of rebooting a dormant series and how, after a full 22 years in the industry, DOOM still retains a tremendous amount of cache with old-school players.
“Id hasn’t made a game in the current pantheon of first-person shooters. It’s not a part of that conversation. You can go to any sixteen-year-old at Quakecon and ask them what their favorite shooter is and they’re going to say Call of Duty and Battlefield and Halo, but not Doom, because why would they? We haven’t put out Doom games.
“So id has to deal with the challenge because we can’t walk in and say, ‘Hey, we’re making a Doom game,’ and everyone’s instantly on board. Id’s got to prove [itself] and prove how this is still true to Doom and still relevant to first-person shooters.”
For years, DOOM had set an industry standard with its hyper-kinetic gameplay and intoxicating sense of fun – not to mention the signature violence – though the first-person shooter genre has evidently evolved since the release of DOOM 3 in 2004. Fans may be chomping at the bit following the debut of the blood-red trailer, alongside the recent screenshots, but only when players are able to go hands-on with the rebooted shooter will we know whether Bethesda’s prestigious series still has mileage in the tank to warrant a second coming.
All Hell looks set to break loose when DOOM is dragged kicking and screaming onto PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC in the first half of 2016.