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I don't think I saw it until the Slayer Testaments from 2016 suggested the Doom Marine crosses through worlds and time. It was still left vague enough people could use their imagination and I guess that's just one of the ideas that floated around. We now know from Eternal that hell is the first world and thus is connected to all of existence, implying Doomguy could have rampaged around space and time for an unknown period after Doom 64. Are they going to bother explaining the "canon" events of what happened after? Of course not, they skip right to when he got warped to Sentinel Prime and was already crazy. We already know what he was doing, same thing he has always done. In my head if they are going with the route that Doomguy has fought demons for literal eons and is literally too angry to be killed, it's whatever canon you want really. It's all ultimately about one man fighting impossible odds over and over again and not thinking too much about why, because it's fun.

All the master levels are good and I generally prefer them to the base game counter parts. Cultist Base also has a master level but you have to buy the rip and tear pack now if you didn't pre-order which makes it meh. ARC Complex I feel like got rushed out at launch so they had at least one master level at launch that wasn't gated; it's buggy and not nearly as hard as the others, and the music not functioning correctly irks me still. I would absolutely recommend both DLC; all levels in The Ancient Gods 1 are sort of master levels in their own right. TAG2 isn't as ball busting but it also contains the best master level in the game that tests you against everything, but it still really makes me hope they make more. Post-launch support as been quiet lately though besides skins.

The platforming requires less time and braincells to preform than making a post about it.

That's brown, not black.

My headcanon is the sentinels can warp where ever the Slayer is, since he was a commander and king for them at one point who led them in battle. They couldn't get to Immora otherwise until the Slayer made it. Make that light on his suit's chest glow before the portals open for more dramatic effect.

The "No." he said in Doom Eternal was sufficient enough IMO given the context.

The pre-order bonus content has been sold as DLC content for quite a while now, right? 2 skins and a master level locked away? How is selling series skins people otherwise can't get again any worse? I mean at least it looks like they are going to run mini-series before putting each one on sale, if it will be like Series 1.

It seems much preferred compared to it being locked away forever.

"And now... they will fear you."

Eternal's deep and overly complex lore paints him out to be the chosen supreme badass of the Earth dimension even before he got divine steroids, so maybe he really has been running as fast as a rocket powered wheel chair. Of course, he decided to run slower in the reboot. Obviously this is so the Demons could af least have a chance see his bowling ball sized biceps before being turned into tomato paste. Or maybe the ability to jump or move his head up and down was too radical for him, and there had to be a trade off.

Hell calling the Maykrs false gods makes a lot more sense now with the context in TAG 2.

That big blue portal in the Ingmore's Sanctum is still left unexplained. I feel like it leads to wherever Davoth came from.

You can reboot a game or movie and not reboot the canon or story completely. It's just Doom 3's story sadly was not fit into what they decided. Timeline before 2016 goes something like: Doom 1 and 2 happen, kicking starting the man's eternal hatred for demons. Doom 64 happens, Marine saves earth again but chooses to stay in hell because he's had enough of earth being invaded. His only purpose is to kill demons now, probably stayed there for a long time. Is eventually almost killed and finds a portal... Doomed Space Marine with crippling PTSD about demons gets spat into Argent d' Nur presumably millions of years before humanity even existed Argent Energy is secretly invented as an accidental result of the marine bringing the demons with him to that world and Urdak becoming aware of Hell's existence. Oops Davoth secretly convinces Samur Maykr to convince himself that he is a prophet, and that he needs to juice the marine up with god power because Khan Maykr bad Samur and the Father run away to hide on Earth, out of the Father's fear of Davoth. Father strips his stolen divine power to become VEGA but can not remember himself after that. Samur dropped his Maykr form in favor of a cloned human body to hide. The rest of the Sentinel arc happens, Marine as a god king now commands the Sentinels to destroy Hell with him, but they find out about the Khan Maykr's deal with Davoth... A very very long time (presumably eons) passes after Valen's betrayal that ruined the Slayer's war against the Khan Maykr. Hell is now being tortured and brought to its knees by the Slayer who has been fighting since. Everyone has had enough of him. So the Hell Priests lure him into a temple, collapsed it, and then trap him in a cursed sarcophagus Dark Lord writes the Slayer testaments; warns all of Hell that his failed experiment inside the box is a terrifying monster that will kill everyone. Samuel dances into Hell with a robot body and retrieves the thing that will kill everyone like its his own weapon, brings it to an Earth he already has had influence over for a long time now. And so the cycle continues... Got convoluted very fast? Lots of things we still don't know? Yup. That's probably why it's not ever broken down like that in the game, it's too complicated to explain to most people and especially to those who don't particularly care or like the direction it is going. When the only official explanation for classic timeline being canon is "yeah he saved a different earth", they're not going for small strokes with the story that aren't worth explaining. They're going all in with the multi-dimensional stuff. Trying to fit Doom 3 in on top of this would be even worse even if it may not be hard to do with existing information. It's more important to move the story forward and address smaller issues with it as they go IMO, they have a lot set up and can go in quite a few directions.

Much like us, fleshy beings he made can't live forever, they age and die. Davoth's creator made him immortal, but he can not do that with his creations. Fatal flaw with his power, even if he was an "almighty" god. That's why the Maykrs' were made, machines don't age and die old, different approach to a being. Davoth hoped they could find a way to let his people do it too. They did, before the entity he trusted (vega) promptly stole his power and then sealed him away while re writing history to hide that fact from the rest of existance from that point on. Poor guy.

As shown above, the Marauder can be killed in so many different ways, even without waiting for his eyes, he's by far the least problematic of the bunch. I mean, the freaking chaingun shield can kill him. Armored Baron is fine since the skill shot is not hard to shoot and you have an easy way to kill him without the skill shot. Blood Maykr is just barely tolerable on nightmare after the slight nerf recently, though they can at least still be killed without headshots and can even be chainsawed, as long as their shield is down. Plus the Microwave beam trick is neat too. Cursed Prowler can can go drown in purple goo. Either give me a guaranteed blood punch when I get cursed, give the dashing back, or both. Having your screen blocked with green and having a DOT on you is bad enough as it is. The bosses that have it are bosses; so different context needs to be considered. Davoth is just tedious IMO.

How does eternal try hard to tell you the story? Literally all it has is cutscenes and lore pages most people won't even read until they finish the game if at all. An important point you left out is that Eternals cutscenes can actually be skipped and don't lock you into a room. No waiting for Hayden to ramble on while you're locked in a room before you go to the Foundry. Or rambling on before you go to the Advanced Research Compex. Eternal didn't have a single moment like that, you could skip every single one. Even if there were only 2 of those moments, Eternal has 0 of them and tells story the same way otherwise through codex. 2016's story was pretty straight forward and simple, albeit mostly flavor text that adds no development. However, it's like that because the story was literally created last minute during the final months of development and was rushed in, not because they actually wanted to do it that way. It was very convenient that most people liked the approach the came up with, but if the story was made earlier, it probably would have been presented more similarly to Eternal. The cracks show, and they felt obligated to at least try to explain things which is why we get locked in a room and can't move ahead, whereas in Eternal you can steamroll through the whole game without even comprehending any detail about the story whatsoever because it is designed that way. I don't think the story is bad, but it's also not the best. Like it or not, it is absolutely is not intrusive and is actually less intrusive than the previous game. The story is almost an entirely disposable part of Eternal and only serves as a creative seed for the locations we go to and enemies we fight. If you're a nerd though and want the world building in your head, that's what the codex is for, and just about every question you can ask has an answer. But it is disposable otherwise, not important other than giving the devs ideas to steer the map and enemy design.

I think in the reboot you have to think of Doomguy as a character that has pretty much one staple trait: He hates demons enough that he has the will to try and kill them all. It's become his responsibility. That's the character. It's not too unlike classic Doom. If you want to follow the official canon barely held together with duct tape, he stops two different demon invasions in Doom 1 and 2, and in Doom 64 stops another one and then decides willingly to stay in hell so there are no more invasions. Fighting hell became his purpose, it drove him crazy and obsessed with killing all the demons. Sometime after that is when he gets warped to a strange land, adapts to it, completes an arc of transforming into something monstrous enough the demons eventually feared him. Still hates the demons, still wants to kill them all, but now he's operating at a biblical scale thanks to divine intervention. Getting into the newfound divine aspects of things though is where things start to get rocky for people. Some people just don't like it outright, why make Doomguy a god? I don't hate it, it seems a natural progression of the character but I can see how it rubs people the wrong way. The codex in 2016 only barely mentions a lot of the things in eternal that we of course never see, because the game takes place in 2 locations. What are the Maykr's? Who is the Betrayer? Who is the Seraphim? Why do all these people know me? All of these questions have answers but it's jarring because it's new to see in the franchise, coming from a more grounded game.

If I want classic Doom, there are enough wads to probably span the rest of my life time. Other than cringe memes and a fanbase with a shockingly short fuse, I don't think the reboots are doing anything to tarnish the legacy so to speak. I appreciate Eternal for what it is: a game that grabs everything about the franchise and dials it to 11 in every aspect, and it is very successful at achieving that. The combat loop with the game throwing everything at you is probably one of the most engaging things in a video game, easy mode or harder. Doom doesn't need to be dialed to 11 at all times for everyone though, and even people not familiar with the classic's preferred 2016's more grounded and simple approach to gameplay and the story. The game only really demands that on higher difficulties, rightfully so. Things are much more relaxed on hurt me plenty and below. You don't have to do super fast DPS combos, and you definitely don't have to strictly abide by the mechanics the game wants you to fall into. Once you get good at it though, you only want to make the game harder and the fun comes from mastering it. That's why the 2nd part of the DLC was rather divisive when it came to difficulty. Difficulty seems to be the main thing dividing people on the game, other than requiring a galaxy brain to comprehend the story sometimes, which has enough written world building to write a chapter book that most people will never read. It's not the same gameplay as classic Doom of course. Doomguy in classic Doom is basically a really fast lawnmower. Doomguy in Eternal is an F-16 fighter jet. The difference in complexity is huge even if both games abide by very similar rules that fundamentally make up Doom.

Hell was meant to be an advanced civilization, even more advanced than Urdak. The place we're going to is the heart of hell but also the only place that hasn't been "corrupted", so there's a real civilization with advanced technology.

Because that's when the devs decided to teach the player about it.

Lore deep dive time. Davoth/The Dark Lord's true's appearance is what the Slayer looks like. Codex states gods when resurrected with their spheres take on their original form. There is also a codex entry with him showing the same likeness from the past. So, effectively The Slayer looks like the Dark Lord, not the other way around. Both are primevils of their home worlds, the only difference is the Slayer was born without his power because his home is meant to experience mortal hardship and value life, unlike Jekked. It's possible the Slayer is a clone or reincarnation of some kind, the dark lord but in the earth realm. So, when VEGA says "He is you, in their world" it's quite literally true. The Divinity Machine has the same mark that Davoth and the Slayer has. When he got to Sentinel Prime, Samur knew who the Doom Marine looked like and what would happen if his body was put into the machine: He would now have power equal to his counterpart in hell. That's why he said "I knew who you were the moment you set foot into our world, and who you could become to us". Samur is the only Maykr who could have known what the Dark Lord looks like and that the crazy PTSD marine raving on about demons has the same body, so not even the Khan Maykr caught on. Overall it seems the Doom Marine's existence was predetermined even before the OG games. Maybe Samur maykr or The Father are directly responsible for the chain of events that led to Eternal. From Reincarnating the Dark Lord somehow so he has an earth counter part that cares about his people like a mortal does, or sending the Slayer back in time to meet the Argenta - just theory crafting at this point, everything that happened seems planned. It's like those stories where the gods choose a champion to do their bidding for a higher goal - which by the end of the DLC the Slayer is just tired of.

Seems a bit late now but Slayer's face from the artbook perfectly matches what is left of the father's face in family photo. The ear and jawbone is literally the same. I get people still think he's a virgin because of a funny chain of tweets, but you can't really trust the "old lore" anymore, it may or may not be canon and could be changed however the current devs want. The ending of the Ancient Gods already makes the blazkowicz linage story not make any sense if the Doom Marine himself has origins from before humanity even existed, since his appearance doesn't exactly belong time just him.

With how complex Eternal’s engine is it is a disappointment there’s no official effort to let players take advantage of it as a series that’s achieved its longevity through modding anyway. Eternal doesn’t even have a snap map mode like 2016, which even if more limited than desired let people come up with pretty cool things that wasn’t just recreating e1m1 for the 10000th time. There’s so many creative mechanics in the levels and many potential “chess board” combinations with the monsters to create fights, but none of that potential is being given to the community even in a basic form. Community made master level mods do exist as mods with what can be accomplished as is, but without official support it’s going to take a long time for more meaningful and creative mods to be made. They’ve obviously said they’ve wanted to make steps to get there one day but right now it’s not happening for sure. Even asking for basic tools seems overreaching right now which is sad.

Hugo Martin (nudoom game director) has said a few times now that they see the tone of 2016 as a Saturday Morning Cartoon. While the presentation seems serious and Doomguy's direct goals are serious, there is ridiculous stuff going on in the background as Doomguy is fixing yet another mess, such as demonic rituals and sacrifices, and they are treated as normal things in the UAC because Hell has corrupted them so much. "Get ready for the next soul harvest!" etc. The game is very self aware, and the devs are very nerdy to use old-cheesy action movies as their direct inspiration. The Doom Slayer himself seems aware he is in video game and couldn't give less of a shit of what Hayden says, he's just there to kill the demons. It's not serious at all, and if you saw some of the stuff in Eternal, it only highlights this further (some people actually didn't like Eternal because they took the comic book tone and dialed it to 11). There is lore to the game at a deeper level, but it doesn't really stray far from the concept of "angry man commits genocide on demons" and that being pretty much what the story is based around. Even Daisy the rabbit is acknowledged as canon in the new games as part of his motive for the endless war against hell, this stuff isn't Skyrim level even if it's portrayed on a biblical scale in the story. I think this noclip documentry highlights what id was thinking during this pretty well, how they struggled to find the tone of the game last-minute until they came up with its self-awareness. I'd reccemend watch them all, the previous one delved into the canceled Doom 4 and how that got scrapped to revive the serious "They got pointy teeth, they might be vampires!" "Oh maybe they're demons" "Oh maybe it's a cult" How about as soon as you walk in, it's playing on a fucking mega phone? And with Eternal, you have to keep in mind they were less about hiding the goofy tone. The colors, the UI, the intentionally cheesy writing, etc are all self aware to the fact it's a video game and everything is bent-over to serve the gameplay.

10/10 solid level, probably my favorite. It's just a shame there are so many show-stopper bugs.