Doom Reboot Unlikely to Be Seen Again This Year

At QuakeCon last week, the new game in the Doom series--simply entitled Doom, rather than Doom 4--was revealed, including the very first look at gameplay. Video from the show has not yet been shared with the public, though we have a complete rundown of everything that shown here. What was on display was only seen by QuakeCon attendees, and that's not likely to change anytime soon.

Pete Hines, PR and marketing boss for Doom publisher Bethesda, told PC Gamer that Doom is not yet ready for a proper reveal. "Next year is normally when I think we would've started," Hines said, but amidst reports of problems at id Software and troubled development of the game, it was decided that something should be shown. Bethesda and id didn't want to expose the still-in-progress game to an extreme amount of scrutiny at this stage, though, hence the reason for the QuakeCon-only reveal.

"We're working with them to say, 'How does this work? What do we want to show?'" Hines explained. "And they're like, 'Look, we don't want a stream to go up for a game that isn't at the point where we would formally show it to the world, and now that thing is getting picked apart, and digested, and gone through frame-by-frame and getting nitpicked to death, when normally we wouldn't be showing this to anybody at all.'"

We learned last year that what was at the time called Doom 4 had been rebooted because an early version "did not exhibit the quality and excitement that id and Bethesda intend to deliver and that Doom fans worldwide expect."

In the wake of the QuakeCon reveal, Hines explained the rationale for showing video when the game is too early to be formally revealed: "I really wanted to put something out there that, in a strong way, said, 'id is working on something that we think is really cool.' And we wanted ... to show something to [id Software fans] that gives them the confidence that it is still a viable studio that's doing really cool stuff, that is making a game you want to play, and is treating Doom with the care and respect that you want.

"And now we're going to go away and go back to making the game, but to be able to counter other people talking about us and we're sort of just sitting here staying silent, or operating from this negative space of like, 'Oh, it got rebooted, oh it's in trouble.' All of that stuff just bothered the hell out of me."

Doom is, as you might expect, exceptionally violent, but also features an emphasis on melee combat and includes jetpacks and double jumping. This is all according to those at QuakeCon who saw the video of Doom; a QuakeCon stream Bethesda offered online cut out just prior to the Doom footage being shown, much to the chagrin of fans who were watching and expecting to see Doom for themselves.

What this all means is that, short of video recorded at QuakeCon being published online, the video above--a CG Doom teaser trailer released in June--is all we'll be seeing from the game for some time.

Are you happy we got to learn some details about Doom, or would you have preferred that Bethesda and id waited to talk about it until it's ready to be seen by everyone? Let us know in the comments.