“It’s like a classic piece of art” Doom: The Dark Ages’ director on revisiting the original boomer shooter for inspiration

The team behind Doom: The Dark Ages went all the way back to the original game to find inspiration for the latest entry in the series.

I think if one day, humanity completely died out for one reason or another, there’s one thing that would persist long after we’re gone: Doom. Hopefully I don’t need to remind you that the original Doom is playable on everything – yes, everything – meaning that if aliens came and found the remains of our civilization, they’d honestly have a pretty high chance of being able to play it. It’s a classic for a reason! So much so that id Software even went back to it for the newest entry in the series, Doom: The Dark Ages, and in a recent interview with Edge Magazine (via GamesRadar), director Hugo Martin shares what it was like revisiting the classic shooter.

“It’s like a classic piece of art. It’s like a painter going to a museum and studying the Norman Rockwell painting he’s already studied 50 times,” Martin explained. “Every time you look at it, you learn something new.” On this particular occasion, the new thing that the team at id Software noticed was how slow enemy projectiles are – modern Doom often has you quickly dodging fast approaching attacks, but Martin notes that in the original game, “the projectiles start to collect in the world, and they create this maze that the player has to weave through.”

Martin went on to talk about how that maze feeling is something they tried to capture in The Dark Ages as opposed to Eternal’s fast moving bullets, saying that in that game, “there’s a lot of activity along the [vertical] Y-axis, but [in The Dark Ages] it felt better to focus the threats and the targets along the horizon line. It’s a movement shooter still, but the movement is more about what’s happening along the X-axis.”

The original Doom obviously isn’t a surprising source of inspiration, but interestingly, it actually took an unexpected influence from a classic Batman comic. Doom: The Dark Ages is currently set to be released this coming May 15 on PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC.