It’s no secret that the first person shooter genre wouldn’t exist without DOOM; it was the first game ever to have a gun. DOOM is also the Big Cheese, the Mac Daddy, the Santa Claus of multiplayer. How many of you remember the days where you used to pack your entire desktop computers and several bottles of Lubriderm before spending the night at a friend’s house fragging and fucking each other and his other friends until the sun came up? LAN Orgies were the original Xbox Live Party, and we have id Software’s iconic franchise to thank for that.
Let’s be real, though: shooters are a dime a dozen now. Times have changed, and so have the standards for what makes a game good. It’s harder and harder not only to stand out when you’re up and coming but also to stay relevant once you make it. These rules apply to the DOOM series too, as much as we try to deny it.
One of the major trends in shooters now is having different ways to tackle challenges. The recent Deus Ex and Far Cry games are good examples of this. There’s the typical run and gun strategy, the stealth approach, and there are even some fights you can win simply by talking your way out of them, if you’re gay. Executive Producer Marty Stratton goes into detail about how the DOOM reboot is going to adopt similar themes.
“The violence and horror of past DOOM games were enough to satisfy the average Western gamer’s bloodlust for a long time. Those two elements are things we’d never change, but we are trying to make some money here, and fans know that the fourth DOOM entry was very close to becoming DOOM Nukem Forever when it comes to how long it took to develop it. That being said, we’re hoping this new DOOM doesn’t become DOOM Nukem Forever upon actual release by being a really shitty game. Sorry, Duke. Gearbox fucked ya.”
Stratton then pulled out a napkin and began to draw some sort of graph. It was a box that said “PLAYER” in the center, with a couple arrows extending down to two other boxes. One of the boxes said “KILL DEMON,” while the other said “KISS DEMON.”
I really don’t know if I’ll be able to choose between KISS or KILL.
“We here at id Software are huge gamers ourselves, obviously, so we know what gamers want. A DOOM game with nothing but killing would get old pretty quick, wouldn’t it? So now, we give players the choice to not kill. Instead of kill, you can kiss. We call it the KISS or KILL mechanic. Slip the lips. Smooch. Snog. Make out. Get freaky with the freaks. If you have a demon fetish, you’re gonna get sooooo horny playing this game. You ain’t gotta kill nothin’ bro, you can just kiss that bloody skeleton with bull horns and be on your way!
Oh, well, the only demons you’re required to kill are the ones with the Confederate flag tattooed on their chest. But you’d want to kill them anyway, right? You also have the option to sneak by the demons, but that’s super boring. We just threw that in there so we could say there’s stealth in the game. KISS or KILL is much cooler.”
VEAG asked Marty if we’d be able to bring a demon from Hell back to Earth so we could marry it, but he was too busy making kissy faces and running his palms over the crotch area of his jeans to answer. We asked what John Carmack would think of they’ve done with his trailblazing brainchild. Same (lack of) response. He did say we could follow him on Snapchat if we wanted to.
DOOM 4 is scheduled to release in the spring/summer of 2016.
Intellectual Always,
VEAG.
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