Doom: The Dark Ages story trailer shows off a full-scale hell invasion

The only thing I fear is expositional cutscenes

At some point in their development of the most recent trilogy, someone at Id Software apparently decided that the most interesting thing about their FPS was the character of the Doom Slayer himself - an odd though not entirely disastrous decision that I'd argue is mostly responsible for the design shape of Doom Eternal. I'm a big fan, even despite this misplaced fascination with its unnecessarily fleshed out gun-numpad-with-legs. I'm hoping to be a fan of Doom: The Dark Ages too, but based on the latest trailer, I'm still trying to tell whether they've scaled the Slayer lore back or are still banking on me being enraptured to learn the millenia-long backstory to why I'm yanking a Cacodemon's eyeball out like clogged hair from shower drain.

While I can absolutely do without top brass pacing around by control panels and chewing walkie talkies anywhere near my Doom, I'm actually quite on board with the vaguely modern military vibes for one reason: the true scale and threat of a hell invasion is much better felt with a front seat to the carnage these murderlopers can inflict on people who aren't the Slayer. When all you've got is the perspective of an invincible hammer, even the most fearsome demon looks like a squishy pissnail. It's just plain fun to feel like you're taking part in a war that's going disastrously for every idiot but you.

We're also shown a bit of what I'm assuming is the game's central antagonist. He uses at least a couple of differently pitched audio tracks to speak, so you know he's from one of the really bad circles of hell. I think he looks cool! The contrast between the sleek if medieval future tech and the more organic and biblical looking demons makes for great art direction. He sort of looks like a Diablo 4 boss, but art was one the few things about Diablo 4 that didn't make me want to weave my eyes shut forever with my own lashes.

It's not all story, though. There's a fair chunk of bulletous gut mulching in there too - although it's still a little hard to tell if the game's many combat options will flow together this smoothly, or if it's just being played by someone good. Perhaps you'd like to investigate further? Brendy went hands-on with its giant mechs here, and then got so cocky he decided to play with all the difficulty sliders whacked up to max.