After years of development, Doom is making a comeback.
Game publisher Bethesda Softworks has teamed up with Id Software to develop Doom 4.
No release date has been given yet, although the game will most certainly be unveiled on July 17, 2014, at QuakeCon.
The critically-acclaimed, original Doom was released in 1993. The last Doom game, Doom 3, was released for Windows in 2004.
Doom 4 was announced to be in production in 2008, but then the game went into “development hell.” Bethesda acknowledged that “an earlier version of Doom 4 did not exhibit the quality and excitement that Id and Bethesda intend to deliver and that Doom fans worldwide expect.”
However, Bethesda vice-president Peter Hines took heart from the successful launch and reception of Wolfenstein: The New Order, a reboot of the Wolfenstein series.
“Let’s be honest, [Wolfenstein] was a bit of a tarnished brand,” Hines said to MCV (via TotalXbox).
“And we knew that. The last couple of games were either ‘ok’ or ‘not great’.
“It wasn’t a franchise where people were desperate for the next one. Wolfenstein isn’t Uncharted. We knew this would take some explaining.
“But developer Machine Games has now untarnished the IP,” Hines added.
And with Doom 4, Bethesda “view(ed) that similarly to Wolfenstein” because “it’s been so long since the last Doom game.”
“We are going in as if we need to prove ourselves all over again,” said Hines.
“We have no free passes. Nobody will assume this is going to be awesome.
“We are going to have to prove that this is something that’s going to be fun and different that you need to pay attention to. That has to be our default position, we can’t be: ‘It’s Doom, of course you’re going to play it’.
“But that just makes us work harder,” concluded Hines.
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