Doom Eternal's long-awaited follow-up is a medieval prequel called Doom: The Dark Ages

DOOM: The Dark Ages | Official Trailer 1 (4K) | Coming 2025 - YouTube DOOM: The Dark Ages | Official Trailer 1 (4K) | Coming 2025 - YouTube
Watch On

First revealed at today's Xbox Games Showcase, id Software's follow-up to 2020's Doom Eternal will be a medieval flavored prequel called Doom: The Dark Ages. The brief trailer showed off Doom Guy's new look (complete with furry Game of Thrones cape!), some gameplay snippets, and a planned 2025 release window.

The big takeaway? The Doom Guy (Slayer if you prefer) has a goddamn combo Captain America shield/chainsaw that he can bounce around between enemies. That's already enough to get me through the door, but id is also seriously upping its game when it comes to shooter levels that look like they should be Metalcore album art, with all the colossal fantasy spires and terrain made of giant demon skeletons I've come to expect from the series. We also get a look at an extremely on-brand gun that chews skulls into live ammunition that PC Gamer Global Editor-in-Chief Evan Lahti has labeled "a cerebral slapchop."

We're also getting Doom's first sampling of vehicle combat, strangely enough, with dragon riding shown off in the trailer and a mech suit mentioned in Microsoft's first press release about the game: "Take flight atop the new fierce Mecha Dragon and stand tall in a massive Atlan mech as you beat titanic demons to a pulp."

The reveal was a bit less of a surprise than it might otherwise have been, with its name and general concept having leaked almost two weeks before Microsoft's showcase. Still, id's Doom reboot series has been such a winner, it's hard to undercut the excitement of this announcement.

Doom 2016 was kind of a revelation: it's easy to take the boomer shooter's new lease on life for granted now, but the indie explosion of old school FPSes owes a lot to id's lightning-fast, acrobatic reboot of the series that defined the genre. Doom Eternal was one of those "bigger and better" sequels in almost every way, introducing new mechanics, weapons, and challenging enemies like the infamous Marauder.

The Dark Ages has also been ably set up by the neo Doom series' extensive lore: it's all very lofty and heavy metal, with more of a focus on fun than continuity, but basically: after the events of the '90s Dooms, the Doomguy went down into Hell to keep doing his Doomguy thing, killing demons and whatnot and joining a society of mythic heroes called the Night Sentinels. Things went south with the Sentinels eventually, and the Slayer got locked up in a coffin before getting unleashed in another timeline's Mars just in time to go through a retelling of his first adventure: Doom 2016.

Make sense? Doesn't matter. The important thing is that it's all rad as hell.

The idea of a more medieval Doom also brings to mind one of id's other foundational FPS franchises: Quake. Before it was all Stroggification and Space Marines, Quake's look was defined by the sort of heavy metal, battle axe, Ragnarök chic that's now been co-opted by Dooms Eternal and The Dark Ages. With Doom now taking over that lane, I gotta wonder where Quake fits into any future plans for the studio.

Regardless, more Doom is, well, more Doom, and I can't wait to see where id takes this series next year.

Associate Editor

Ted has been thinking about PC games and bothering anyone who would listen with his thoughts on them ever since he booted up his sister's copy of Neverwinter Nights on the family computer. He is obsessed with all things CRPG and CRPG-adjacent, but has also covered esports, modding, and rare game collecting. When he's not playing or writing about games, you can find Ted lifting weights on his back porch.

Read more
Doom: The Dark Ages art
Doom: The Dark Ages is overhauling Glory Kills so you can 'transition from melee strikes to guns to shield play to an execution' without interrupting your demonslaying momentum
Doom: The Dark Ages trailer
Doom: The Dark Ages is out in just 4 months, with 'a grounded combat system with an emphasis on power over the acrobatics of Doom Eternal'
Doom: The Dark Ages art
After Doom Eternal's intense acrobatics, Doom: The Dark Ages will focus on simplified, ergonomic controls: 'You shouldn't be fighting the controls, you should be fighting the bad guys'
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'
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
The Doomslayer in armor
Doom: The Dark Ages won't end with the Slayer in a coffin waiting for the start of Doom 2016: 'That would mean that we couldn't tell any more medieval stories'
Latest in FPS
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)
rainbow six siege x dual front mode
Rainbow Six Siege is getting its first permanent mode in 10 years, and it throws every Siege rule out the window
Latest in News
Man facing camera
The Day Before studio reportedly sues Russian website for calling infamous disaster-game a 'scam'
Will Poulter holding a CD ROM
'What are most games about? Killing': Black Mirror Season 7 includes a follow-up to 2018 interactive film Bandersnatch
Casper Van Dien in Starship Troopers
Sony, which is making a Helldivers 2 movie, is also making a new Starship Troopers movie, but it's not based on the Starship Troopers movie we already have
Assassin's Creed meets PUBG
Ubisoft is reportedly talking to Tencent about creating a new business entity to manage Assassin's Creed and other big games
Resident Evil Village - Lady Dimitrescu
'It really truly changed my life in every possible way': Lady Dimitrescu actor says her Resident Evil Village role was just as transformative for her as it was for roughly half the internet in 2021
Storm trooper hero
Another live service shooter is getting shut down, this time before it even launched on Steam