The cat is out of the bag. Doom: The Dark Ages will launch on May 15, 2025, and it’ll be the third ‘nu-Doom’ game from esteemed developer id Software. But this game, which is confusingly a prequel to the instant classic Doom (2016), will eschew a trend established both by the first game in the rebooted series, and 2020’s Doom Eternal: it won’t have multiplayer.
In a roundtable interview chaired by id Software’s Marty Stratton (studio director) and Hugo Martin (creative director), the two Doom veterans confirmed that there will be no multiplayer mode, at all, for Doom: The Dark Ages.
“We wanted to go all in on the campaign,” explained Martin, when asked why this game would ship without a multiplayer element, when both Doom (2016) and Doom Eternal got one. “We’ve been able to level up the single-player element [of Dark Ages] because it’s been our entire focus.”
The game won’t just have you standing and holding your ground as the nigh-immortal Doom Slayer this time, either. As a direct result of committing more resources to the single-player development, we’re going to have set-pieces involving “a 30-story Atlan mech” and “a fire-breathing, gatling-gun toting cyber dragon”. Yes, really.
“That’s something we’ve wanted to do for ages, for the last two games, really,” explains Stratton, specifically referring to the inclusion of the Atlan. In case you’re not completely up to date on your Doom lore (who can blame you), Atlans were enormous bipedal war machines used by the Night Sentinels in their war against the forces of Hell – you’ve probably seem inanimate husks of them in your playthroughs of past Doom games.
Both Stratton and Martin seemed very excited at the reveal – and inclusion – of the mech in Doom: The Dark Ages, and suggest that finally getting the Slayer to pilot one of these Evangelion-sized beasts is a direct result of allowing more dev time on the single-player elements of the game.
Relatedly, the duo also boast that this is the “largest play space ever in a Doom game”, and showed off a variety of bonus dungeons, caves, and fights that you can engage in if you deviate from the beaten path. “You control the pace of the game,” grinned Martin. “You control Where you go, who you fight, and the objectives your pursue.” Once again, the developers cite being able to focus wholly on the single-player facet of the game as the reason id could pump this much content into the story and world.
I’m not complaining; in a world where we’re seeing multiplayer games flop at a rate of knots, and live-service slop take up more and more space on the virtual storefront, it’s something of a breath of fresh air to see single-player game modes in games take so much focus from a prolific developer. Perhaps it’s something that both Sony and Blizzard can learn from in the coming months and years.
Doom: The Dark Ages launches on May 15, and it’ll launch on Xbox Game Pass for PC and Xbox Series – but it’ll also come to PlayStation 5.