Talking to Doom: The Darkish Ages undertaking director Hugo Martin and producer Marty Stratton for our upcoming print challenge 408 (396 within the US), I needed to ask concerning the Marauder.
This notorious miniboss in Doom Everlasting cut up the participant base, with some loving its next-level problem, whereas others decried it as an unwelcome problem spike. With The Darkish 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 concerning the large man from The Darkish Ages’ trailers, revealing the brand new enemy’s identify 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 is Capra Demon-coded, wanting like a type of non-plot-critical FromSoftware bosses who nonetheless manages to traumatize the participant base.
“He is not based mostly on the Marauder. He is not like, ‘Huge Marauder,’ it is Darkish Ages, so it’s extremely completely different,” Martin clarified. “However he is related in that a number of the bosses they will problem you in numerous methods. It is all about pushing: parry, dodging and weaving between projectiles.
“We take the whole lot that you have been doing within the sport as much as that time. It is prefer it’s examination time, the whole lot else is a quiz. Once you get to the boss, it is the ultimate examination.”
Marin described the Agadon Hunter as having combo assaults that we’ll must 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 Darkish Ages’ parry system sounds similar to that sport.
Maintain up your defend to dam, and in case 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 Lengthy Arm Centipedes or Lone Shadows.
And that feels 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 very good problem,” and that the Marauder’s minor controversy got here extra from the way it was launched and defined to gamers, reasonably 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 obtained annoyed. Individuals who obtained it, they did not thoughts as a lot. They appreciated the problem.”
“After I take into consideration the Marauder,” Martin stated, “A lot of what he was asking you to do, the core of what he was asking you to do, by way of taking pictures him and faltering him throughout these home windows, you hadn’t actually achieved a lot of that within the sport as much as that time.
“So when the Agadon Hunter reveals up, or many bosses, the whole lot he asks you to do. You’ve got been doing the entire sport.”
If all goes as deliberate, the Hunter’s parrying-centric problem shall 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 Darkish Ages total: A core gameplay mechanic that is meant to be extra intuitive than Everlasting’s weapon quick-switching.
“You should not be preventing the controls,” Martin stated at a press preview forward of Doom: The Darkish 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 reasonably than between particular person firearms like in Doom Everlasting. And we cannot have lengthy to learn how all of it feels within the hand: Doom: The Darkish Ages will launch on Could 15.
Forward of that, you possibly can try my full interview with Martin and Stratton within the upcoming challenge 408/396 of PC Gamer’s print journal. We additionally mentioned The Darkish Ages’ loopy new weapons, just like the one which’s consistently chewing up skulls and spitting the shards at enemies.
