Speaking to Doom: The Dark Ages undertaking director Hugo Martin and producer Marty Stratton for our upcoming print challenge 408 (396 within the US), I needed to ask in regards to the Marauder.
This notorious miniboss in Doom Eternal break up the participant base, with some loving its next-level problem, whereas others decried it as an unwelcome problem spike. With The Dark Ages’ equal enemy, Martin and Stratton hope to supply a equally memorable problem that does not catch gamers off-guard to the identical extent.
“The Agadon Hunter is the brand new Marauder,” Martin stated after I requested him in regards to the massive man from The Dark Ages’ trailers, revealing the brand new enemy’s title within the course of.
He makes a memorable impression, an enormous, beefy demon dude with a fur cape, defend, and Darth Maul-but-analogue double-ended sword. He’s Capra Demon-coded, wanting like a type of non-plot-critical FromSoftware bosses who nonetheless manages to traumatize the participant base.
“He’s not primarily based on the Marauder. He’s not like, ‘Big Marauder,’ it is Dark Ages, so it’s totally completely different,” Martin clarified. “But he is related in that lots of the bosses they’re going to problem you in several methods. It’s all about pushing: parry, dodging and weaving between projectiles.
“We take all the pieces that you’ve got been doing within the sport as much as that time. It’s prefer it’s examination time, all the pieces else is a quiz. When you get to the boss, it is the ultimate examination.”
Marin described the Agadon Hunter as having combo assaults that we’ll need to parry in sequence with the Slayer’s fancy new defend. Martin expressed a love and admiration for Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice in our dialog, and The Dark Ages’ parry system sounds similar to that sport.
Hold up your defend to dam, and in the event you time it to throughout the first few frames of the animation, you may execute an enemy-weakening parry transfer. To proceed the metaphor, the way in which Martin described the Hunter’s moveset jogged my memory of late-game Sekiro bosses just like the Long Arm Centipedes or Lone Shadows.
And that seems like a key distinction between the Hunter and the Marauder, what you are requested to do to defeat it. Martin believes that gamers “do not thoughts a superb problem,” and that the Marauder’s minor controversy got here extra from the way it was launched and defined to gamers, relatively than its sheer mechanical problem.
“I watch lots of people play,” stated Martin, “And I believe fairly constantly it is individuals who did not perceive what to do this acquired annoyed. People who acquired it, they did not thoughts as a lot. They appreciated the problem.”
“When I take into consideration the Marauder,” Martin stated, “Much of what he was asking you to do, the core of what he was asking you to do, when it comes to capturing him and faltering him throughout these home windows, you hadn’t actually carried out a lot of that within the sport as much as that time.
“So when the Agadon Hunter exhibits up, or many bosses, all the pieces he asks you to do. You’ve been doing the entire sport.”
If all goes as deliberate, the Hunter’s parrying-centric problem will likely be better-ingrained in our muscle reminiscence by the point we’re throwing down with him. That additionally ties in with a wider initiative for The Dark Ages general: A core gameplay mechanic that is meant to be extra intuitive than Eternal’s weapon quick-switching.
“You should not be preventing the controls,” Martin stated at a press preview forward of Doom: The Dark Ages’ developer direct trailer in January, “You ought to be preventing the dangerous guys.”
To that finish, the brand new sport is targeted extra on combos between its new defend, melee weapons, and the weapons relatively than between particular person firearms like in Doom Eternal. And we can’t have lengthy to learn the way all of it feels within the hand: Doom: The Dark Ages will launch on May 15.
Ahead of that, you’ll be able to try my full interview with Martin and Stratton within the upcoming challenge 408/396 of PC Gamer’s print journal. We additionally mentioned The Dark Ages’ loopy new weapons, just like the one which’s consistently chewing up skulls and spitting the shards at enemies.
