DOOM Eternal's creative director speaks about expanding the franchise's lore

DOOM is usually about Earth, Hell, and the UAC. DOOM Eternal is looking to expand things beyond that. Hugo Martin, creative director on the game, talked a bit more about that in an interview with TechRaptor.

TR: With this game, you’re making a whole Doom universe, bringing in new locations that haven’t been a part of the lore, beyond just the UAC, Hell, and Earth. In general, what has it been like and what has been your team’s philosophy behind expanding this universe and balancing it with what the lore has been and bringing in new places to it? What has it been like to take the classic lore and expand it?

Hugo Martin: I think it’s been good for the game. The goal is to make every aspect of the game engaging. A good game is engaging—grabs a hold of you and takes you on a journey for x amount of hours. So like, I think, lore and story and everything, having a background and a history to it adds to the engagement level. If you look at Game of Thrones, or Star Wars, these are worlds, fully realized universes, that have depth and history. It just makes for a more interesting entertainment experience. It’s a necessity, you have to do it if you want to make something good and entertaining and engaging.

Secondly, it’s been fun because— it’s kind of a perfect opportunity because it’s a brand that has a lot of meaning to people but it didn’t have a lot of story. So we were able to look at it as a whole—not so much the specific story of the original Doom, of the marine and all that stuff—which is great. I don’t want to say too much, but we’re certainly respectful of that storyline in Doom Eternal. But we could look at it in 2016 as a whole and say: What does the brand mean to people at a high level? This super badass take, one man against the armies of hell, you know, that guy’s pretty badass. So how do we spin that and make that an interesting and somewhat believable storyline while still being like completely comic book and crazy? We arrived at the story of the Doom Slayer and stuff, and in Eternal we’re going to answer a lot of questions: Is it the same Doomguy, all those things. So it’s been very fun and honestly kind of easy to work with because you could do anything and the brand itself is so strong and fun. It’s just been a blast turning him into this character that everybody loves, reintroducing him to a whole new generation of fans.