I'm Quaking with anticipation.
The next Doom game will be titled Doom: The Dark Ages and revealed at the Xbox Games Showcase in June, according to a new report.
The report, which is from Insider Gaming and is unconfirmed, claims this new Doom game has been in development for four years, and will be set in a "medieval-inspired doom world".
Rumours of a follow-up to Doom Eternal have been swirling for some time. Earlier this month, it emerged that Bethesda had trademarked the name of the classic Doom cheat 'IDKFA', giving rise to speculation that this might be related to a new entry in the series. This followed last year's leak of an internal Microsoft release schedule, which included on the list a game titled 'Doom: Year Zero'. This, Insider Gaming's Tom Henderson claims, was the placeholder title for the alleged new Doom game.
While the evidence presented in the report is vague (Henderson says he "heard of early details" of this new Doom game) the idea of a medieval-themed follow-up to Doom Eternal has some credibility. Doom Eternal's Game Director Hugo Martin has previously suggested that future Doom games could visit a more medieval setting. In a 2021 interview with Polygon, Martin stated "Could we tell a story about when [the Doom Slayer] first came to that place with the Sentinels, almost like a more medieval setting, a fantasy setting?"
In the same interview, Martin also explained that the game's two expansions—The Ancient Gods Parts 1 and 2, implied the potential future direction of the series. "I think as you play the DLC, too, you'll see lots of hints of what we could do moving forward. Maybe even in the future. Again, our hero is somewhat timeless—I mean, literally he's immortal, so we could tell all kinds of stories."
Certainly, Doom Eternal and its expansions had their fair share of medieval gothic imagery, so a game that expanded upon that style of setting wouldn't be out of character. Moreover, given the four year gap between Doom 2016 and Doom Eternal, the timing for a new game announcement from id Software would make sense.
It's worth noting, however, that a new Doom isn't the only classically-minded FPS that id Software could be working on. When MachineGames revealed Indiana Jones and the Great Circle earlier this year, the gameplay trailer included footage of a whiteboard with a Quake logo drawn on it, and what appeared to be a reference to Quake 6. Reports from the time connected this with a second MachineGames project, but as both studios are under the Bethesda banner, it is possible that it references a game under id Software's direction.
Alternatively, if id Software is pursuing this medieval-themed Doom, the studio could be splitting the difference between its two shooters, incorporating the ideas and aesthetics of Quake into the better-known and therefore more bankable FPS license. Not that the Quake name doesn't carry any weight, Bethesda's Quake 1 and Quake 2 remasters were both very well received. But the free-to-play Quake Champions didn't exactly explode in popularity, and putting Doom Eternal-level resources into a new Quake game might be viewed as too big a gamble in today's risk-averse industry.
Either way, we won't have long to find out what, if anything, id Software has got cooking. Microsoft's Xbox Games Showcase airs on June 9, which is just under two weeks away.
