Hugo has said more than once that the team don’t intend to make the same game mechanically twice. He likened Eternal to driving a sports car and said that the next game would feel like driving a monster truck. Anybody expecting this to be just like Eternal is in for disappointment.
Like I said before: Skill Issue. That tends to be the problem for a majority of Eternal haters.
I don’t doubt that Eternals mechanics and combat flow were off putting to some people because they viewed it as being hard, but not every criticism about the game falls into that category.
Eternals art direction was a misstep, particularly with how colourful it is. The Maykr designs are straight up dogshit and about as anti Doom as you can get. Some demon designs are worse than 2016. And why did they change secrets to giant fucking yellow question marks? Why are breakable walls painted with a massive glowing green crack? 2016 did the art side of things significantly better.
The lore also leaves a lot to be desired. It’s almost as if Bethesda can in and said “add more generic fantasy bullshit please” and the team acquiesced. There’s nothing metal about the Slayer, the Night Sentinels, or the Maykrs. The 40K universe is fucking metal, Nu-Doom is made to appeal to teenagers by comparison. What Eternal gave us in that respect was absolute fanfic wank.
The implementation of platforming was shit. I’m not one of the many people that are opposed to platforming in a Doom game. Quake is amazing and has plenty of platforming, but I don’t like having everything telegraphed for me and I don’t like the climbing points. None of the platforming sections in Eternal actually felt like a natural part of the environment. It felt as videogamey as the Mario games
The combat was the least worst and offender. It provides more mechanical depth than 2016 but forced you to play the game a particular way. It isn’t horrible, but it was a big step away from every doom game that came before it. I don’t want to be forced to use the chainsaw or glory kill enemies to replenish my health and ammo. I want to scour the levels looking for health and ammo I missed like I did in the original games. They literally took away every incentive you have to fully explore the map.
Eternal is a good game but it isn’t the best Doom game by a long shot. It felt very fresh and built on the strong foundation laid by 2016 but some aspects of the game have never sat right with me. I don’t know if Dark Ages will do enough to placate me but it’ll get its chance. What I’m increasingly certain of however is that I don’t think this team can be trusted to revitalize Quake in a way that would make me happy and so part of me is thankful that they are seemingly relegated to the Doom mines the way Raven was related to the CoD mines.
Fire
