One Path

Doom's protagonist is known by many names. Space Marine. Doomguy. One Doomed Space Marine. Flynn Taggart. John Grimm, aka the Reaper. Stan Blazkowicz. Doom.

Call him whatever you like. His name doesn't matter. Never has. "Doom was never really about story first," Marty Stratton said, an admission that should surprise no one. "The story really kind of came together as we went."

Doom 2016 once again casts players in the pseudonym and green armor of Doomguy, only the id Software developers don't think of him as a marine, or even Doomguy. To them, he's a sports car. "We use a lot of analogies," Martin said. "I think analogies are important because they get everybody on the same page. We try to describe things in ways that people can quickly grasp. That's not a revolutionary concept; most managers and director types do that. We describe the player as a Ferrari. They don't want to slow down for anything."

If playing Doom is analogous to devouring roadway in a Ferrari, story-driven franchises like Mass Effect and The Witcher put them behind the wheel of a sedan. There's nothing wrong with a sedan; it's simply built for a different function than a Ferrari.

"When you're in a sedan and doing about 40 miles per hour, the road signs don't need to be that big," Martin continued. "The story beats don't need to be pronounced. You can pick up on subtle things a lot easier because you're able to take in everything that's happening at a comfortable speed. When you're in a Ferrari doing 200 miles per hour, man, everything has to be super loud and obnoxious."

"We had a mission statement early on: that you're hell's worst nightmare," Stratton explained. "That guides a lot of decisions. When you're basically saying that there's this entire world of demons, the most ferocious, persistent beings ever, and you are their nightmare. You become their nightmare. We ratchet that stuff up and turn you into a god."

"There's one path," Martin added, "and it's a stairway to being a badass. It's not like, 'Well, I'll go this way or choose this branch and be a different character.' No. You're going to be a badass."

Fountains of Hawaiian Punch

Doom 2016's emphasis on speed and abstract levels arose from the original game's template. To establish their tone, and by extension a narrative, Stratton and Martin removed their rose-tinted glasses and studied Doom '93 to determine how and why its visuals and atmosphere had stood the test of time.

"We felt like there was a cartoonish, comic-book quality to them," Martin said of Doom and Doom 2. "I don't think people thought that then, but in hindsight it's obviously got a very juvenile quality to it: the violence, the gore, the horror aspect to it is all what we call popcorn horror. It's all very fun. We really wanted to tap into that, but do it for ultra-high-end graphics and fidelity and all that stuff."

Few enemies meet with tame, comparatively ordinary deaths in Doom and Doom 2. Riddle a zombie or an Imp with bullets or shells, and they moan and fall to the ground. Every other death is outrageous to the point of absurdity, and intentionally so. Cacodemons pop like zits, their bloated bodies deflating as blue fluids leak out and their singular eyeball droops from a slimy string of muscle. Cyberdemons growl just before they explode in a red mist, leaving behind two bloody stumps: one organic, one cybernetic. Fire a rocket into a mob of zombies and they explode into mushy red lumps.

"You can't have a game where I rip a dude's arm off and beat him to death with it, and have a serious story that goes along with it," Martin said. "We wanted the tone of the game, the story, the lore, to complement the action, which was the star of the show. The best way to complement that was to be more satirical."

Although Doom 2016 benefits from cutting-edge graphics, its death animations gleefully cross the fine line separating disturbing and absurd. Kill an Imp with the chainsaw, and it drops to its knees and raises its arms in a feeble attempt to slow the inevitable downward arc of your steel teeth. One Glory Kill involves grabbing a monster's arm, ripping it free in one quick yank, and then backhanding the monster with it.

Doom's elaborate deaths pay tribute to films such as Kill Bill: Volume 1, which builds to a climax that pits Uma Thurman's "Bride" character against the Crazy 88—over seven dozen Yazuza-gangsters-turned-expendable-grunts. Wielding a samurai sword, she hacks off limbs and slashes throats. Cronies collapse or spin through the air, shaking and thrashing and ululating.

"The violence didn't take itself too seriously," said Martin. "We landed on a spot with the action where it had to be over the top, very much inspired by Kill Bill levels of violence, Evil Dead 2 violence: fountains of Hawaiian Punch-type blood everywhere."

Likewise, Evil Dead 2 and Robocop made appropriate yardsticks for Doom's tone. Both films break up tension and violence using one-liners. A wisecrack inserted at just the right beat can changes a scene's context from appalling to darkly comedic.

Doom 2016 is self-aware, and isn't afraid to prove it. Earth's military and scientific forces are not only aware of demons, they harvest them as an energy source. That knowledge—coupled with gallons of "Hawaiian-Punch type blood"—frames scenes, such as when all hell literally breaks loose in a laboratory, in a humorous light.

"I think the UAC spokesperson, Echo, that pops up and says things like, '221 accident-free days,' or 'If you have problems with the weaponization of demons, please see HR, and don't forget to save your work before you leave'—there's all kinds of funny messaging going on in the game," said Martin. "It's not unlike how the commercials in Robocop functioned: they really set the tone for the world, and are these little breaks that remind you that we're supposed to be having fun with all this."

Slayer

After starting a new game, players rouse strapped down to a stone slab. Zombies mill about a dark, cave-like chamber. Players sit up, dispense with the white belts, and make their way to a futuristic green suit enshrined by candles. Nearby, they observe an echo, a hologram depicting a past event—in this case, a group of scientists and military personnel speaking in hushed and fearful tones of some unstoppable force that has fallen into their hands and must be contained.

Players digest the words, and realization strikes like a bolt of lightning. "At the beginning of the game," said Martin, "even the little things people say such as, 'We have to contain this. He could ruin everything'—that's someone saying that about you, the player. It's like, wow, I'm a big deal."

Early on, Stratton and Martin threw together an outline that listed ways they wanted to see their story develop. To assist with storytelling efforts, they brought on Adam Gascoine, a writer whose experience spans live theater and video games.

Speaking to Gascoine's collaborations, Stratton said, "He wrote a lot of the Slayer testaments. He's got this great writing style that makes things sound biblical in a way that is just fantastic. The Slayer testaments are some of my favorite pieces of narrative."

Gascoine got on the same page with Martin and Stratton right away. As part of their tentative outline, Martin had written a treatment for a character dubbed the Doom Slayer, a hero so powerful and brutal that he had single-handedly brought hell to its knees untold centuries ago. That hero is, of course, Doomguy circa the original games—and Doom 3, since id positioned the 2004 game as a retelling of earlier titles as opposed to a direct sequel.

"The story was even born out of the idea of the player is coming in with the expectation that 'I'm here to kill demons.' That's my motivation,'" said Stratton. "It says Doom on your screen; you're buying that because you want to kill demons. That really was the genesis of the Doom Slayer. He wakes up on the [slab], and has one thought, like our consumer: to kill demons."

"It would be an insult to their intelligence to dole out some very sophisticated story about the discovery of a demonic invasion on Mars, and what it means to mankind, and the mystery of the occult," said Martin. "Doom's been around for a while, so the best way to not insult their intelligence was to go super silly and direct with it. I think if you know you're dumb and you play with it, then you're actually smart dumb. So the best way to not insult your intelligence was to be really stupid."

Part of the brilliance of Doom 2016's storytelling is that players are allowed to digest as much as they want. Players interested in lore can ease off the gas—slowing to, say, the average speed of a sedan—and soak up Codec files and Slayer testaments that recite the history of hell's war and subsequent loss to the Doom Slayer. Meanwhile, players who prefer to keep their Ferrari going at top speeds can ignore them without missing a beat.

"We'd get them in the game as quickly as we could, and then we'd just iterate on it," Stratton explained. "Whether it was stuff around the UAC, or the Slayer testaments and codecs, that kind of stuff, it was a lot of iteration."

Gascoine popped in and out of id's office for rap sessions. Other team members contributed as well. Chad Mossholder, promoted to audio lead for Doom, had experience writing comic books and asked if he could try his hand at some of the flavor text that satirizes corporate speak, such as counting accident-free days on the job. Stratton and Martin told him to feel free.

"He wrote a good number of the UAC echoes and really brought a cool personality to those," Stratton recalled.

Graphic novels such as Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns were another pillar. "Comic books have very similar limitations in that they only have so many pages to tell a story," Martin explained. "It can't sit there for 10 pages on one scene between characters. It has to do that inside of one or two pages."

Doom's directors encouraged cross-pollination between departments. Giving developers opportunities to contribute in numerous ways helped ensure that all of Doom's storytelling devices, not just text, coalesced.

"It's not like the story team is working on the story," said Martin, "and the combat guys are working on that, and systems are over there. We're all very close. Everything complements each other. It would be one thing if [Doom Slayer] was tearing apart demons but the story I was telling you felt like some Robert Zemeckis 'Contact' [story] where he's really concerned about his relationship with his wife. That would be inconsistent."

Over the decades since Doom's release, Doomguy had become the butt of jokes by those who dismissed him as a stereotypical meathead. He never spoke, only grunted and hissed in pain. That was purposeful. Doom co-designer and id Software co-founder John Romero explained that id Software neglected to name the player-character because they wanted him to be a blank slate. No dialogue. No name. Nothing that could break the illusion that Doomguy was anything more complex than a vessel through which players could revel in the game's sense of speed and blast demons into bloody bits

Doom Slayer should be the same, the id team concurred, right down to their predecessors' decision to keep their character's mouth shut. Nonverbal cues flesh out the character better than words could achieve. The way he cracks his knuckles when characters talk to him, or the casual and uninterested manner in which he destroys priceless artifacts and technology even after being cautioned regarding their delicacy and importance.

It's not that the Doom Slayer is incapable of wrapping his head around how objects work or why they the survival of mankind may depend on their continued functioning. He just doesn't care.

"We built up the fiction of the Doom Slayer, that he's like this biblical force," Martin said. "It's his only reason for existence. We took a character whose only function was to kill demons and actually gave him a reason for it, albeit an absolutely ridiculous, over-the-top, stupid reason."

On the Nose

Not even Field Drones, box-shaped bots that dispense weapon upgrades, are safe from the Doom Slayer's unquenchable aggression.

"The truth is that as the team went on, every idea was immediately put through that filter," Martin described. "We would think in terms of: how would the Doom Slayer do it? Well, he'd punch the robot in the face and take them."

Filtering actions through the Slayer gave rise to snappy gameplay systems. In RPGs, for instance, players pore over pages and pages of text describing upgrades to their character's skills, weapons, armor, and companions. Such ponderous advancement was anathema in Doom. If players were an extension of the Doom Slayer, they too would be more interested in diving back into the fray than in reading about weapon parts or wasting time deliberating over how best to use the Argent Cell upgrade artifact they discovered in a secret compartment.

Moreover, upgrades had to be impactful, rather than doled out in spurts. "Everything you do," explained Stratton, "from crushing an Argent cell or going up to a mod bot to get a mod, or upgrading your suit, getting a rune—everything you do makes a significant difference. All of our upgrades [increase] what you have by 25 percent."

"A mod on a weapon is basically a new weapon," Martin added.

Upgrades, punching Field Drones, shattering priceless artifacts—each is a step on Doom's stairway to badass. "All of those things come together for consistency. You're not going up a little ramp. You're taking big steps," Stratton continued. "When you're watching somebody play on Twitch, and they start laughing when that happens, it's like, 'Oh, awesome. They got it.' There's an obviousness to it, even the subtleties like the way the Doom marine looks at [breakable objects]."

Argent Cells and Field Drones, along with classic maps and collectible Doomguy dolls, are just a few of the many secrets that Doom squirrels away within its intricate levels. Giving players numerous opportunities to search for collectibles might seem antithetical to Doom's push-forward design, but Stratton and Martin disagree. Exploration and secret areas are part and parcel of the Doom experience, as important as super shotguns and Imps and a final showdown with a Spider Mastermind.

Poking around levels provides occasion for the player-character, the racecar, to navigate racetracks at their leisure. "What I like about the secrets," Martin explained, "and moments like the Slayer Testaments and when you hear the story of the Doom Slayer, collectibles and things—those are pace breakers. That's the racecar slowing down, but the racecar is making that choice. We're not saying, 'You have to do this.' It's up to the player. If they want to find secrets, they can. In that case, I think it will be more satisfying for a Doom player to [explore] because they made a choice."

Players have total control over when and where their Doom Slayer pauses to hunt for secrets. Every other moment, his baser instincts run unchecked, killing and bludgeoning and maiming—except for one instance near the end of the game, where the character chooses to preserve rather than demolish an artificial intelligence.

That moment stood out to players like a spot of ink on a white tablecloth precisely because it was flagrantly out of character. Stratton and Martin hoped players might notice. After 10-plus hours of ruining everything in sight, the Doom Slayer curbed his impulse to destroy, lending importance to the moment and the object he chose to conserve.

"I think one of the things we're most proud of is we created a pretty interesting character," Stratton added. "People talk about the Doom marine and the Doom Slayer. He has a personality, and he has depth. They're getting into his head, and he didn't say a word the entire time."

"Some of the best pieces of entertainment," Martin explained, "the story [of how they're made] usually starts with, 'We had no money.' You have to be resourceful and clever and come up with some really interesting stuff. We had full support and had plenty of resources to work with; id is a tremendous team. But in terms of the brand, what is it? It's a dude who just wants to kill demons. It was a fun challenge."

Next Race

In a perfect world, every facet of Doom 2016 would have been under id's control. A combination of their small team and management shakeups necessitated that they hand off Doom's multiplayer to Certain Affinity, another Texas-based studio known for developing multiplayer modes and content for games such as Halo 2 and Call of Duty: Black Ops, so that they could channel all their resources toward crafting a memorable campaign.

Unfortunately, Doom's multiplayer component ended up being the weak link in its bloody chain. Held up against the blistering pace and laugh-out-loud wit of its campaign, the online modes fell flat—not terrible by any stretch; just dull and insipid. Free-for-all deathmatch, the type of play that had put the original Doom on the map, was absent at launch, baffling and frustrating fans.

Equally concerning was the clean break between the campaign and multiplayer. Doom loaded a single-player menu by default; selecting multiplayer or SnapMap, its map-editing tool, caused the game to relaunch.

"Having to restart the game, that's just a product of some technical things that were happening behind the scenes, that I actually wish we would have addressed before we launched," Stratton admitted.

Rigging the game's modes into separate modules was a side effect of working with an external team. Doom's most memorable features and moments sprung from the flexibility of a single internal team made up of developers that were a stone's throw away from one another. When they had an idea, or if something wasn't working quite right, they could make decisions on the spot.

"When you work with an external team like that, a lot of times you have a lot less flexibility in pivoting and making changes along the way," Stratton said of Certain Affinity. "When you look at how the [modes] feel disparate, personally I think the biggest reason is, even though we constantly played the multiplayer and were in charge of it, it didn't benefit from the same kind of massive shifts in direction that we made as we steered the campaign."

Less than a month after Doom's launch in May 2016, with critics praising its single-player but taking online modes to task, id Software brought multiplayer in-house and set about retooling and expanding it. A stream of free maps and modes followed, including a proper free-for-all option. Still, none of the free releases satisfied players' demand for more story content.

"We haven't talked about much beyond the DLC, so I can't really go into a lot of detail, unfortunately," Stratton said. "I would love to talk about things that we're working on and banging around and all that kind of stuff. There are a couple of things with multiplayer that we're still working on; we'll probably talk about that at a later time. There are no current plans for any campaign DLC. I don't want to get people's hopes up."

Martin and Stratton are aware of what players want. For now, they're content to leave them hanging. "We really feel like we're in one of the best times ever for Doom and for id," Stratton said. "Whether it's VR, multiplayer, or single-player—we left people wanting more on the campaign. There's worse things than having people want more of your combat."

"We worked hard to leave it that way," Martin added. "It was an objective: to start to build a Doom universe. It's a giant canvas."

"So without saying anything," Stratton rejoined, "we wanted to leave ourselves in a great spot, and we feel like we have."