Doom Eternal Director Says Doom 2016 Multiplayer "Played It Very Safe"

The 2016 reboot of Doom was well-received for its frenetic campaign action, but one common criticism was the dull multiplayer. Doom Eternal co-director Hugo Martin has copped to that mistake and explained how the studio is changing its approach for multiplayer in the new game.

“I think fans of id were disappointed by the last multiplayer because it did not innovate enough,” Martin told USgamer. “[W]hat we learned was being safe, taking a little bit of column A and B of a bunch of things that people know and mashing them together, is not good enough. We played it very safe last time. It was very kind of formulaic, and that’s a fair and objective view of that product.”

Doom Eternal is taking a very different approach, with both an Invasion mechanic that allows you to invade other players games, and an asynchronous Battlemode that pits one Doom Slayer against other players as a variety of demons. Martin said the new Battlemode is best suited to complement the campaign, so he expects players to jump in after playing the single-player and getting a familiarity for the demons. And he doesn’t think players will miss the classic deathmatch.

“There are a million good team deathmatch experiences and arena shooters out there,” says Martin, “and we have some of them out there—Doom 2016 is still available, Quake Champions. We really wanted to make sure that we offered up something new for people to master, new metas to learn, new strategies to perfect.”

The main draw for Doom Eternal is once again its campaign, which we recently had hands-on with the first few hours. Among other things we learned how it scales difficulty, how Martin feels about launching alongside Animal Crossing, and saw a guitar made of flesh.