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Doom 4, in development at legendary FPS developer id Software, is currently without a release date, but it was brought back into the limelight when lead designer Tim Willits promised a ‘faster turnaround’ on its games.
id, the inventor of the first-person shooter genre, is famous for taking what feels like an age – at least to its fans – to get its internally developed games out the door. The last id-developed triple-A game was Doom 3, released in 2004.
PC, 360 and PS3 shooter RAGE, due out next year, will be the first triple-A id-developed game release since then.
Speaking at last year’s QuakeCon conference, CEO Todd Hollenshead disappointed the gathered mass of hardcore fans with news that Doom 4 would not be shown. Instead, Hollenshead promised more details on the highly anticipated title at 2010’s event.
“When we show it to you, you’re gonna love it,” he promised.
Precious little is known about Doom 4. In May 2008 id announced it had begun production on the game via a press release that also revealed it was looking to hire talent to work on the game. At QuakeCon later that year id confirmed Doom 4 was to be the next project that the company tackles once it’s done with RAGE.
When asked by VideoGamer.com when we’re likely to see more of the horror shooter sequel, Willits replied: “Oh wow, yes! Oh boy. You’re going to have to ask Kevin Cloud [id co-owner] that question. My focus is on making RAGE awesome!”
Willits did, however, say that new owner Bethesda has allowed id to bulk up the Doom 4 development team as it creates RAGE, ensuring “a faster turnaround” than previously thought.
“Yeah, those guys are busy working on it [Doom 4],” said Willits.
“But that goes back to that whole Zenimax Bethesda thing. In the past we have never been able to do that, which meant, we’d finish RAGE, John [Carmack, technical director] would say, I have this new idea that’s awesome! So he’d start on a new technology and we’d start a new game, and then it’d take as long as it takes. That’s because of what we did in the past worked for us, we’re small, it took a long time, what does it matter?
“But now, you see the Doom team can work on tech, we can work on the next RAGE game, and then John now can actually develop technology that’s separate from the game. We can do games around technology. You work for a year on something and then you find out, okay, this tech is not going to work or we’ve got to change it and stuff, then throw it all away. Most times we spend four or five years working on a game, but really we make the game in the last 18 months. So we can try to get the technology developed while we’re working on other games, it’ll just work out better.”
Late last year Bethesda sent shockwaves through the gaming world when it announced it had bought id Software and the publishing rights to its games.
That included RAGE, a game that was due to be published by EA.
“It’s much nicer now,” was the way lead designer Tim Willits described id’s relationship with parent company Bethesda compared to its relationship with ex-publisher EA.
“Our relationship with them [EA] is obviously much different than our relationship with the company we are now, because we’re all one family now.
“But it was different. It’s much nicer now. It doesn’t have anything to do with EA. It’s just that we internally have the people and the resources.”
For more on RAGE, including new screens and a hot off the press preview from Bethesda’s recent Gamers Day event in Paris, head over to our game page.
