The game excelled at tiny moments of characterization and mood that gave flavor to the action: the Doom Slayer, casually breaking the energy company's things and ignoring the man in charge. Here you were, a silent avatar of rage, but held under lock and key by an amoral energy company and forced to fight demons, not just for the joy of fighting demons, but to combat an invasion caused by someone else's incompetence and greed. But it was a story exceptionally well told. Its minimal characters weren't exceptionally interesting the conceit, of an energy company mining hell itself for power, is both too on-the-nose and, somehow, in the era of climate change, not on-the-nose enough. It was not, all told, an exceptionally clever or original story. But it's an underrated factor in why 2016's reboot worked so well. Not that story has ever been the most important factor in a Doom game. It bounces around dimensions rapidly and key narrative information is often conveyed through overwrought lore entries. Once ensconced, the plot doesn't get much better.

For those who were interested in the story of the last game and would like to connect the two, it plays as though several chapters have been skipped.

Which is an early indication of the problems at the core of Doom Eternal: hell priests? Who? What? It feels like immediate whiplash, as if you've been thrust into a story that's already half over with no clear indication of how you arrived. He's part of a triumvirate that, if not stopped, will usher in the complete destruction of the planet.

As the Doom Slayer-a mythic hunter of demons, shotgun always in hand-you're hunting down a hell priest in a fortress above a ruined, monster-infested Earth. It's immense, messy, and, unfortunately, not nearly as good as the original.ĭoom Eternal, which comes out Friday for PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Google Stadia, begins with a disorienting immediacy. And the story has gone full maximalist, a Heavy Metal short that spans 15 hours. There are more enemies, more weapons, more elements in the sandbox of combat. Instead of Mars, it's the entirety of human civilization that is under siege by demons from hell. Doom Eternal is that sequel, and it immediately sets to work upping the ante.

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