For Doom: The Dark Ages, Id Software has abandoned the multiplayer entirely, and considering the game apparently has 22 chapters, I’m not shocked.
2016’s Doom reboot and its sequel, Doom Eternal are well-known for having some of the best FPS campaigns in recent memory, but each of them also came with a multiplayer mode that wasn’t quite as beloved. Doom’s multiplayer was a pretty standard deathmatch arena shooter, while Eternal took a unique approach with Battle Mode, where two players would take the role of demons and battle someone else as Doomguy.
Speaking to GamesRadar+, Doom boss Hugo Martin said that the decision to not include a multiplayer component was made “right from the beginning.” He explained that the team “made the decision early to just focus all of our energy on trying to make the best campaign we could.” Martin elaborated, saying, “with Eternal, we wanted to put mechs in the game. There were things we wanted to do with Eternal.” Martin added that with “the scope of the project, you start spreading out resources to make a multiplayer component.”
While some people may wonder why the team couldn’t just pop a multiplayer mode in and call it a day, Martin explains, “it’s live service… you can’t just do a little multiplayer. You’ve gotta go — fans’ expectation is [that] you go all the way.” He said, “It would definitely come at the expense of the single-player aspects.” While it may be disappointing to certain players that multiplayer isn’t in the new Doom, Martin admitted, “It felt good to just focus [on] Doom as a single-player experience and not try to turn it into a live service game.”
This interview was conducted following a hands-on preview of Doom: The Dark Ages. GamesRadar+’s Oscar Taylor-Kent said, “What does come as a surprise is just how different Doom: The Dark Ages feels from what I’d expect from Doom, while still feeling extremely Doom.”
