Dark Halls, Dark Horse: Taking a new direction with DOOM 3

Franchises are tricky. With each entry in a well-known series comes expectations – both what stays the same and what changes. With DOOM 3, id Software ventured into uncharted waters not just with groundbreaking technology but a shift in genre.

Set apart from its predecessors with an all-new story and protagonist, DOOM 3 also introduced a slower, tense style of gameplay focused on action horror.

“DOOM 3 is a great game,” says Tim Willits, lead designer on DOOM 3. “(It) had a great Metacritic, sold a ton…but it's definitely the dark horse of the series.”

The times were a-changing in the gaming industry in the early 2000s’. Many big-budget titles experimented more and more with cinematic presentation. “We started looking at what we wanted to do with DOOM 3 and we decided to go with the horror route,” says Robert Duffy, chief technical officer at id Software. “Games at that time had begun to stray away from the frantic pace of DOOM (1993) and DOOM II.”

It wasn’t just a desire to try something new – id Software was also raring to showcase its powerful new id Tech 4 engine and designed DOOM 3 to play to its strengths. Trailblazing developments like dynamic lighting and detailed bump map models shone their brightest on horror elements like darkened hallways and grotesque demons.

"All of that (technology) lead to making a haunted house that really lent itself to the horror aspect of it,” says Willits. “We could do some great blood with specular mapping and make some really cool art. The technology really led to a very slower-paced, very horror-driven experience.”

Despite its cinematic design, the initial phases of DOOM 3 maintained id Software’s classic ‘keep it simple, keep it fun’ approach. "We literally had an a good one-page design doc initially,” recalls Duffy. The story elements, of course, took more than a single page to flesh out. “We still have a book somewhere that has the entire storyboard in it that matches pretty close to what shipped," added Duffy.

DOOM 3’s slower, more menacing stint in Mars City stands out from the breakneck speeds of DOOM (1993), DOOM II and even the more recent DOOM (2016) and DOOM Eternal. That said, while the game explored a new direction for the series, several key elements DOOM fans love were still present: engaging environments, hard-hitting weaponry, ample demons to take down and of course, a highly memorable trip to Hell.

DOOM 3 may be the ‘dark horse’ of the mainline DOOM series, as Willits put it, but it’s still undeniably DOOM. Franchises are tricky, but a series like DOOM can dive into new territory and still come out the other side ripping and tearing.