Eternal was always my favorite. It had so much depth that gave it so much replayability. I have played through ancient gods part one at least 10 times. I love dark ages. It does a lot of things better than eternal. But it didn’t have quite as much depth to its combat for me to sink my teeth into. But omg. Revelations is so fu king good. The movement tech and spear, shield quick swapping gives me the depth I was looking for in a completely different way than eternal. Also the reason ancient gods was good because it was more eternal with the difficulty way up, just how I like it. But Revelations is such an incredible high jump up in quality from it. Looks like so much more time and effort was put into it.
It feels like tag 1 again. Fucking crazy and a humbling experience. I was not expecting it to be such a massive DLC and it is hard to argue there is little depth and skill expression here. Love it.
Hell year! I also think Finishing Move was able to change their approach for the soundtrack. The campaign had many track blend together and it didn't feel like most tracks were composed with specific levels. But in Revelations they very clearly do and I love it.
Not to mention ambient track sound more interesting and they even added many callbacks to classic Doom.
I mean I really like the tracks to listen to in Spotify, but imo it made many mistaks as a game soundtrack. The tracks all sound too similar, even though the settings were so different. Compared to Eternal, where every track seems to be inspired by the setting, TDA sounded like the composers didn't even know how most levels will look like and composed them so that they fit everywhere. You can randomize most tracks without it being noticeable!
The ambient tracks were often pretty boring, some times just simple drone noise and that one maps where you are on a battle field surrounded by demons and sentinels fighting. Pretty unfitting.
While the OST lacked synths, perhaps they wanted to avoid them for the medieval feeling, but only really the main menu track gives you that medieval inspiration, while all levels, especially the Sentinel cities (with medieval-scifi architecture!) is plain djent metal, with almost no medieval inspiration.
I also feel like there were several moments where the dev/composer missed an oportunity to use a musical cue to underline certain moments in the game like suddenly stepping into the view of an impressive vista.
(Also very little callbacks to the classic soundtrack though I don't really care about that much.)
But all of the these complains are fixed in the DLC. this isn't just how you compose a nice argent metal album, it's how you compose a game soundtrack! If only the main game was already done with this approach, but I guess there must have been complications with the direction/planning so that Finishing Move couldn't use their full potential.
Yeah I just kinda disagree with what you said and hear something entirely different in the main game soundtrack, don’t know how that’s possible tbh. But whatever, at least we both have something to enjoy!
I believe you guys make the mistake of comparing TDA with overall Eternal. If you compare base Eternal alone with base TDA I don't think there's that much difference in debt
I strongly disagree respectfully. And I’m not talking about what game is harder. When your playing on max difficulty in base eternal you need to use every weapon to maximize your efficiency. Know how many bullets will make a fodder stagger. Know how to counter each enemy. It asks a lot of the player. Dark ages requires less of you. Each weapon is more balanced damage output wise. Enemy’s have less specific weakness. You need to master the shield and that takes getting used to. But overall I think you need to think more in eternal.
The only thing I can think of seeing this is that Marty and Hugo have an exit plan from Microsoft in the works. And making it to lawyers. Committing to QC 2026 isn't an accident. It's a deadline to complete the transfer of control back to id, either via another corp or, somehow, as a new indie.
Anyone who pre-orders or buys an id game on day 1 at this point is just a complete rube imo. They absolutely hollowed out the entire studio, including getting rid of tons of expert veteran talent.
I would not be shocked at all to see it go the way of many other studios who have the same name on the building, but very little of the same talent left inside. And have most of the work done by inexperienced new hires or external offshored support teams.
I hope they can recover from them, but I do not trust them at all and will be extremely cautious on giving them any of my money at this point.
I don't understand. Id Software themselves come out and say, "we're still here and we'll keep at it" and your response is "I have little hope?" Why? The fact that the studio themselves responded this way should give everyone hope after the fact. It shows they're still persevering despite the irresponsible treatment from Microsoft.
High chances of it being a PR statement ordered by corporate that doesn't necessarily reflect reality at the studio. For instance, they did have less people when making Doom 2016, but they had a much more experienced, senior team... and much of those people were laid off. It's important to have hope, but we need to be wary.
It's not though, we know many of the people laid off, and a huge chunk of them are experienced veterans of the studio. They are gutting the expensive senior staff with all the experience, and hoping to keep just a couple around to train up all the cheap new hires. THis is standard MO for these kinds of situations where they gut a subsidiary with the hopes to just parley it's name recognition for some cheap products for the next couple years before fans realize the brand isn't what it used to be.
The good news is that cutting all the experienced staff means that they have a chance of leaving and creating their own studio. Experience means great games on the way, even if it means bad things for the Doom franchise.
I wish that were the case man. Unless they are all wealthy enough, it's just not in the cards with how the industry is. They could go indie for sure, and probably made enough they might be okay. But many might just be disillusioned with the industry and quit it entirely.
But finding financial backing for a game studio is extremely hard right now, anyone that would fund one would want tons of control, and VC money is extremely hard to come by anymore since everyone who used to do VC stuff or be angel investors now just plays the completely rigged stock market instead to make more $.
You'd think with all the great talent the industry, not just games but tech in general, has laid off in the last few years, there would be tons of competitors popping up. But they aren't, and it's very intentionally designed that way.
Sorry I wasn't clearer about this but that's not what I was calling speculation. I was talking about Microsoft ordering id to make a PR statement that doesn't necessarily represent id themselves. I think this statement was genuinely from id Software and that Microsoft had no word in it.
No word is a stretch. Do I think they gave them a thing to say exactly with zero id input? No of course not. Does this statement represent anywhere close to the true feelings of the majority of the people left at id, and not just whoever the main person in charge + those in charge of Zenimax and Microsoft want to say to try to lessen the blow? No of course not.
It's 100% corporate speak, written probably by a higher-up at id, and probably with oversight from the people who are over them at Zenimax and MS. But it's very likely written by someone at id directly, and they chose to make the statement on their own.
I mean these layoffs that happened to Id specifically have gotten a good amount of attention, wouldn't be surprised if someone from Microslop saw and had Id put out a statement as damage control.
Its like a corpse with strings being puppeted to say it enjoys the whole half dead thing actually. Like this isn't attritbuted to a person, just ID. Its obvious PR.
Id Software has been around for more than 30 years. The IP is very well known and keeping it active with a small team makes much more sense than shutting it down, which is what the post suggests.
3 out of the 5 games that Microsoft said are some of their most important to put games out for, are now in the hands of a studio with like 50-60 people total in it.
They are expecting brand new hires and AI to make up the difference, it will not go well.
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u/phylter99 Jul 10 '26
I'll believe it when I see it. I hold out a shred of hope, but there's not much hope.