The Setup: Before 2016, Before Mars, Before Everything

DOOM: The Dark Ages is a prequel to DOOM 2016 and DOOM Eternal, set long before the events of either game. The Doom Slayer exists here not as a lone survivor but as the super weapon of gods and kings — a living instrument of divine violence deployed by the Maykrs to help the Night Sentinels of Argent D'Nur hold back Hell's armies in a medieval war of unimaginable scale.

The story is the most narratively ambitious in the franchise's history. The Doom Slayer fights under the control of a device called the Tether, which suppresses his mind and binds him to the will of Kreed Maykr. Meanwhile, the leader of Hell's forces — Prince Ahzrak — realizes that fighting the Slayer directly is futile, and focuses his strategy on locating the Heart of Argent, the source of power that both sides are fighting to control.

id Software said they wanted to build a story worthy of the Slayer's legend — the origin of how this being became the most feared thing in creation. By the end of The Dark Ages, that story has been told.

The Gameplay Shift: Stand and Fight

Every modern DOOM game has been defined by a core philosophy. DOOM 2016 brought the franchise back with relentless aggression and the glory kill system. DOOM Eternal doubled down on speed, verticality, and resource management — demanding acrobatic mastery and punishing those who stood still.

The Dark Ages breaks that pattern deliberately. Where Eternal rewarded movement, The Dark Ages rewards holding ground. The Doom Slayer is no longer a speedrunner. He is an iron tank.

The centerpiece of the new combat system is the Shield Saw — a single input that blocks, parries, and attacks. Mastering the Shield Saw's parry windows turns the game into something closer to a rhythm action game layered over an FPS, creating moments of deeply satisfying counter-attacks that feel completely different from Eternal's kinetic chaining.

New weapons lean into the medieval aesthetic: the Skull Crusher fires bone fragments. An iron mace, gauntlet, and flail round out the melee arsenal. The Super Shotgun returns, along with the full modern DOOM arsenal, but the emphasis on positioning and parrying changes how these weapons feel fundamentally.

The game's largest and most expansive levels yet allow for exploration, secrets, and discovery in ways the linear corridors of previous entries did not. And in the game's most memorable sequences — piloting a cybernetic dragon through aerial battles and controlling a 30-story Atlan mech to stomp through cities — The Dark Ages demonstrates that id Software is willing to experiment with the formula in ways no one expected.

Gorgeous, Brutal, and Built for the id Tech 8 Engine

The Dark Ages is id Software's showcase for id Tech 8 — and the visual leap is immediately apparent. Destructible environments, advanced physics, lighting that captures the horrific grandeur of medieval Hell — every frame is rendered with a visual confidence that makes demonic warfare feel genuinely epic in scope.

The aesthetic commitment to dark fantasy — ruined castles, epic battlefields, dark forests, ancient hellscapes — gives The Dark Ages a visual identity distinct from both 2016 and Eternal. This is not the industrial Mars or the abstract arena levels of its predecessors. This is a world that feels genuinely mythological.

The Controversy and The Defense

Not everyone was satisfied with the shift away from DOOM Eternal's hyper-mobile formula. The absence of the glory kill system as a primary mechanic disappointed some veterans. The slower, more deliberate pace felt like a betrayal to players who had mastered Eternal's acrobatic combat.

These criticisms are legitimate — The Dark Ages is definitively a different kind of DOOM. But the counterargument is equally valid: the series needed to evolve, and id Software made their artistic choice with full conviction and technical mastery. IGN gave it a 9/10, calling it "lightning in a bottle." GameSpot gave it 8/10, writing that "smart, measured changes can take the series in surprising new directions and yield some of its finest moments." The 89 Metacritic average speaks for itself.

The Game Pass Question

The Dark Ages launched on Xbox Game Pass day one and reached 3 million players in less than a week — seven times faster than Doom Eternal. The majority of those players came through Game Pass rather than direct purchase, which sparked one of 2025's most interesting gaming business conversations: what does "success" mean for a $70 game that most people played for $12 through a subscription?

That question has no clean answer. What is clear is that 3 million people experienced The Dark Ages in its first week, the critical reception was outstanding, and the game is still receiving regular updates and DLC months after launch.

Conclusion

DOOM: The Dark Ages is the origin story the franchise deserved — darker, weightier, and more narratively ambitious than anything id Software had attempted before. It is not the DOOM for players who want to run at 200 miles per hour. It is the DOOM for players who want to understand what made the Slayer a legend — and who want to fight like one.

The war against Hell happened long before Mars. And it was glorious.

Stand. Fight. The Slayer's legend begins here.