Doom: The Dark Ages was inspired by Batman comics, 300, and letting players be ‘a big, heavy Slayer’

Creatives behind the upcoming Doom: The Dark Ages recently sat down to discuss their inspirations for winding the clock back instead of forward, and how it will influence gameplay.

Following today’s Xbox Developer Direct, id Software’s Hugo Martin and Marty Stratton offer further insight on the origins of 2025’s most metal FPS.

Doom: The Dark Ages is easily one of 2025’s most exciting releases, talking a spot on our most anticipated games of the year for all the ways it looks to once again reinvent the franchise. As outlined in this evening’s Xbox Developer Direct, the new medieval fantasy setting and Shield Saw weapon is being used to make strafing to aim viable again – just like in the original series – alongside making ‘stand and fight’ the new mantra following 2016's Doom and Doom Eternal’s brand of ‘push forward’ combat that encouraged players to play more aggressively. May 15, 2025 now can’t come soon enough – and we recently heard from two of the game’s key creatives to learn more about Doom: The Dark Ages’ genesis.

As part of a Q&A roundtable held prior to the Xbox Developer Direct, creative director Hugo Martin went into detail about the prequel’s core inspirations; one of the biggest relates to how the stagger system has been altered in Dark Ages, letting players chain kill through several enemies at once while in a staggered state, as opposed to glory killing them one at a time. “You can stagger multiple enemies at once with these weapons of mass destruction and then move through them like Leonidas in the Hot Gates,” he explained, referring to the iconic sequence in Zack Snyder’s film adaptation of 300.

“There’s that side shot of where they’re dilating time and he’s taking out multiple dudes, first with his spear, then with his spartan sword and shield,” Martin continued. “That was a big source of inspiration. I showed that to the team. I wanted the game to feel like that. There’s actually subtle dilations in the speed of the game when you perform these, so it feels just like that”. Dark Ages accomplishes this in a way Doom and Doom Eternal couldn’t since id Software has elected to not take away player control during these moments. “Because the Glory Kills are unsynced, you can just move through them using a variety of melee strikes”.

Harbinger of doom

The Xbox Developer Direct also explained just how much story will more of a pivotal role this time around, with key narrative details no longer reserved merely to codex entries. Third-person cutscenes are now included, for instance, and it seems like Doom: The Dark Ages will see the Slayer face off against more of a physical villain – though Martin was hesitant to delve into too many of these details for fear of spoilers. This being a prequel story, however, Martin and executive producer Marty Stratton did mention that players can expect to learn more about the Slayer’s origins regardless of whether Dark Ages is their first Doom game or not.

“I think it’s the best entry point to the series,” Stratton said in the roundtable Q&A. “It’s a prequel to 2016, so you get to feel and see a lot of the things that you hear about later in the series. It’s a very approachable game from all facets: [from] the way the story is told, [to] the way the game feels…”.

Doom: The Dark Ages hopes to be newcomer-friendly with a new approach to difficulty too. “We showed some of the gameplay sliders and the way we’re handling difficulty,” he continued. “You can dial things down, slow things down if you want, or speed them up and make things an intense challenge. It really is a phenomenal entry point for anyone who wants to have their first Slayer experience”.

That’s not to say that players who have been playing close attention to the story up until this point won’t be rewarded for doing so. In fact, one of the Xbox Developer Direct’s big focusses was not only what the Slayer himself can do with his new weapons, but how much devastation he can wreak when riding a cybernetic dragon, or the powered-up Atlan mech shown in the new footage. Fallen Atlans were previously glimpsed in Doom Eternal; id Software now lets you pilot and control one yourself, and that’s something only a prequel could allow for.

“With [Doom] 2016 we built out the history of the world and gave our hero a past, like you’re supposed to, and then you just hope fans like it enough that you get to explore it,” Martin revealed, and this decision to wind back the clock. “Medieval Doom, a big heavy Slayer… ‘Slayer: Year One’. Frank Miller’s vision of a Doom Slayer, that just sounds awesome”, he says referring to the classic 1987 Batman comic, Year One, which reinvented readers’ perception of the caped crusader by offering a darker, more ambitious tale about his early career. “I’ve been thinking about it for so long. We all have”.

With Doom: The Dark Ages now given a May release date, it’ll certainly make the wait to rip and tear through a medieval version of hell all the more bearable. It’s clear that id Software has gone right back to basics when approaching the franchise from its earliest point on the timeline yet, bringing all the learnings from 2016’s Doom and its sequel into a new instalment that should let all types of player fulfil the fantasy of being the ultimate demon slayer.

Doom: The Dark Ages is set to release on Xbox Series X|S, PS5, and PC on May 15, 2025.