Bethesda wants Doom to rival COD and Battlefield in FPS ranks

Doom.” Bethesda wants that to be the answer to the question What is your favourite FPS”.

Over a decade after the launch of Doom 3 and over 20 years since the series’ debuted, Doom will next year re-enter the FPS race. And publisher Bethesda is desperate to make up for lost time.

"Id hasn’t made a game in the current pantheon of first-person shooters," marketing boss Pete Hines told GameSpot. "It’s not a part of that conversation.

You can go to any sixteen-year-old at Quakecon and ask them what their favourite shooter is and they’re going to say Call of Duty and Battlefield and Halo, but not Doom, because why would they? We haven’t put out Doom games. So Id has to deal with the challenge because we can’t walk in and say, ‘Hey, we’re making a Doom game,’ and everyone’s instantly on board. Id’s got to prove [itself] and prove how this is still true to Doom and still relevant to first-person shooters."

However, despite the need to modernise Id’s Executive Producer Marty Stratton has stressed the importance of staying true to the series’ roots.

"It’s challenging. We talked a lot to [Bethesda Game Director] Todd Howard and to the Bethesda team, because they went through the same thing when they were working on Fallout 3,” he mused. You always want to respect the game and that fondness for it and what it means to people, but at the same time we’ve looked ahead with every decision and every idea.

We know what [players are] here for, we know [they’re] here for a Doom game, we’re going to give [them] the best version of Doom.[However] we let fun determine how decisions are made and what choices we make, not holding onto things from the past."