Doom: The Dark Ages developers want you to feel like Leonidas in 300 (2025)

There’s a scene in Zack Snyder’s 300 where Leonidas breaks from the ranks of his army and begins cutting through the Persians. The camera pans to the side to drink it in, showing him battling through waves of enemies with his spear and shield as time dilates to savor every killshot.

He impales one, and one more, slams a different guy with his shield, then throws his spear at a distant enemy and pulls out a Kopis blade. Another Persian runs at him and he braces, slamming into him and throwing him overhead with his shield, from which he pushes forward and cuts down many more with the sword — blocking, spinning, and dancing through the crowd as blood and limbs cascade through the air.

The biggest change in Doom: The Dark Ages was inspired by these 60 seconds of cinematic violence.

Bethesda/id Software

One of the most controversial mechanics of Doom 2016 was its Glory Kills – canned kill animations that you could trigger once an enemy was staggered – because they took control away from the player. Albeit brief, Glory Kills were a pause in the otherwise non-stop action and skill-focused gameplay of the gory first-person shooter. Doom: The Dark Ages changes how they work.

Rather than feeling like you’re magnetized into an animation, Glory Kills in The Dark Ages are unsynced, which means they’re fast, you’re not locked in, and they can be pulled off from any angle. Game director Hugo Martin says it’s a solution to the problem of having multiple enemies staggered at once because now you can wade through them like Leonidas, flowing between kills with your iron mace, spiked shield, gauntlets, and more. As soon as they’re hit, physics takes over, sending them careening with an impulse, making sure no two Glory Kills ever feel quite the same. It looks dynamic and fluid, and most importantly, ensures you’re always in control.

With his fur cape and chunky silhouette inspired by Batman in Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight, Doom Slayer looks more imposing than ever in The Dark Ages. Where Doom Eternal was about staying agile, now it’s time to stand and fight. The developers call this “iron tank gameplay” because you’re encouraged to push forward and get up into faces, using your shield to close the distance, revving it up so the spikes along its edge spin like a chainsaw before throwing it out and closing that distance like a pinball made of tungsten. Doom Slayer is like a natural disaster and hits the ground with the thud of an asteroid.

“You’re a silverback gorilla on a hoverboard,” Hugo Martin says.

Bethesda/id Software

The shield is key to your new arsenal and can also be used to block, parry, and deflect as you close in to stand and bang, each ability contextual and controlled by the same input.

Some enemies have been reworked to encourage this playstyle, like the cyberdemon, which uses a hitscan weapon when you’re at range to encourage you to close in and trade blows — an attempt to rewire the brains of players who have been conditioned to backpedal and shoot. Parry a cyberdemon and it sends out a shockwave, disrupting enemies around the blast radius. Then there are the new threats, which will have their own dirty tricks.

As well as facing off against fresh enemies – the biggest the team at id Software has ever created – there’s also more fodder on-screen than there’s ever been. In one clip, Doom Slayer strafes a room and spits shrapnel out of a gun at a room filled to the brim with meat sacks.

“We weren’t given a limit by the tech team [for the number of enemies on screen]”, Martin explains. “At times you’re going to be slaughtering demons en masse and sometimes you’re, going to be fighting mono a mono.”

Bethesda/id Software

The team designed the guns as torture devices to fit the medieval sci-fi theme of this prequel story. Each weapon looks more evil and less refined than in previous games, coughing out metal in every direction and tearing through flesh. One weapon sees you fire a massive spike, which carries enemies with it before impaling them on a wall.

It seems like the most hardcore version of Doom’s combat we’ve ever seen, but The Dark Ages also comes with a range of accessibility sliders for people who struggle with its speed. You can lengthen parry windows, slow down projectiles, tweak enemy aggression, and more.

Perhaps the most controversial change is the introduction of sandbox areas. While there are still plenty of traditional Doom mazes to fight through, you’ll occasionally find yourself in a much larger area as you explore the game’s dungeons, battlefields, dark forests, and ancient hellscapes. Put it this way: there’s now a dedicated sprint button. Oh, and remember that gatling gun-toting, fire-breathing cybernetic dragon from the trailer? You can get on and off it. That suggests scale. Some of these sandboxes will be vast, and you’ll have to search every corner of them for secrets and power-ups.

Bethesda/id Software

According to Martin, dragonflight and the ability to pilot a 30-story mech are things the team always wanted to do in Doom, but “couldn’t because of the multiplayer component” taking resources away from the campaign. This time there’s no fluff – it’s just single-player – and kaiju fights are back on the menu. I’m excited to stand and bang when Doom: The Dark Ages releases in May this year.