Doom E1M1 remade in Doom Eternal is honestly kind of quaint

Doom Eternal E1M1
(Image credit: Bethesda, Bloodshot1)

The first level of Doom 1993—E1M1—is of course legendary for a lot of reasons. One of those reasons is because a whole, whole lot of people have played it over the years. Even more now that that new little collection of Doom and Doom 2 have released.

Now, a modder going by Bloodshot1 has released a cute little remake of E1M1 using Doom Eternal and its Pistol Restoration mod. Here's a full playthrough by a YouTube channel:

Doom's First Level was remade in Doom Eternal - YouTube Doom's First Level was remade in Doom Eternal - YouTube
Watch On

Frankly... E1M1 holds up when you're playing Doom—but ported into Doom Eternal's modern graphics and engine and models it just looks kind of barebones and quaint. A very promising game design student's first project with a boatload of assets from a free store—or something like it. Don't get me wrong, it's still a solid level design... but these days so much more bombast goes into the opening of a big, expensive, generation-defining game, whereas just 30 years ago the design preference was to ease you in with something simple.

The concept might be best-illustrated by how earlier this month Bethesda surprise-dropped that bundle of Doom and Doom 2 as a free update for enhanced edition owners. It had some really great stuff in it, like a beefed up engine, new music, and some really pleasing graphical updates and features.

More than anything was the new expansion, which served to highlight just how far game design has come in the last 30 years purely within the context of Doom.

"This is peak 2024 Doom, and one of this year’s best FPS campaigns to date," said writer Dominic Tarason. "Where classic Doom could feel downright abstract even in its city or military environments, the maps here feel like they’re coherent places."

Game design changes over time, but solid fundamentals like those in Doom or Tetris or what have you are going to stay fun no matter how advanced the rest of the field gets. PC Gamer explored the ideas earlier this year in a feature I'd encourage you to check out: Doom is eternal: The immeasurable impact of gaming's greatest FPS.

PRODUCTS
Contributor

Jon Bolding is a games writer and critic with an extensive background in strategy games. When he's not on his PC, he can be found playing every tabletop game under the sun.

Read more
The cover of the video game Doom
Nightdive's remaster of Doom + Doom 2 gets multiplayer mod support, spectator mode for co-op play, and stops you from losing your mind searching for red doors
Doom: The Dark Ages with original Doomguy's head Photoshopped on top
Doom: The Dark Ages' 'iron tank' gameplay takes things back to the very beginning: 'It feels more like classic Doom than any game we've made up to this point'
Amid Evil art
10 essential boomer shooters that every FPS fan should play
Grab the brilliant Doom 2016 for its lowest price ever
Official Doom Guy art superimposed over Vault 666 Fallout-themed background.
Fallout-themed Doom mod Vault 666 has multiple endings, an OP Dogmeat companion, and a Ron Perlman-impersonating narrator so good, I was worried it was AI-generated at first
Doomslayer pointing a large gun at a larger demon
'I like making Doom games': Doom: The Dark Ages won't be the end, says director Hugo Martin
Latest in FPS
Official artwork of Valorant showing the game's characters in a row
Valorant dev accepts there's too much random crap cluttering up the screen: 'The balance team generally agrees with this take'
Fragpunk FPS
Fragpunk review
Battlefield 1
The best Battlefield game of the last decade is 95% off until Thursday
Grab the brilliant Doom 2016 for its lowest price ever
Rainbow Six Siege year 9 season 2 key art - two Rainbow Six Siege operators facing each other
'Siege 2 was never on the table': Rainbow Six Siege X director explains why the 10-year-old FPS doesn't need a sequel
rainbow six siege sledge
After holding out for 10 years, Rainbow Six Siege is finally going free-to-play (kind of)
Latest in News
Official artwork of Valorant showing the game's characters in a row
Valorant dev accepts there's too much random crap cluttering up the screen: 'The balance team generally agrees with this take'
Microsoft Copilot
A rather pleasing Windows 11 update bug automatically uninstalls Copilot and unpins it from the taskbar, which is jolly nice of it
Cognixion’s AI powered headset
New headset reads minds and uses AR, AI and machine learning to help people with locked-in-syndrome communicate with loved ones again
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang holding an RTX 50-series card.
92% of Nvidia users turn on DLSS... if they've been lucky enough to bag an RTX 50-series card at launch AND have the Nvidia App installed
A woman with an arcane slingshot uses it to light a distant fire
Deconstructeam's next game is about training to shoot a single fireball at an impossible target
assassin's creed shadow naoe
We asked two parkour athletes to rate the realism of Assassin's Creed's acrobatics, and a surprising 'crime against parkour' might actually be one of the most realistic things they saw