With Doom Eternal's March 20 release date fast approaching, Bethesda released a new trailer today to highlight the stakes and players of the game's hellish war. In the year 2151, Earth is officially a hot mess and only the Slayer himself can clean it up, but there are armies of voracious demons and obstinate angels standing in his way.
Several characters narrate the trailer, and many of their voices are unfamiliar. We can put faces to some, but we're pretty low on names. One thing's for sure: it's not the Slayer talking. He communicates exclusively in violence and the sound of shotgun cocking, and clearly has no time for games.
"This is humanity's chance to repent," one voice says of the ruined Earth. "Saving your people will not bring you peace, only make the burden you carry worse," another tells the Slayer. "Against all the evil that hell can conjure, all the wickedness that mankind can produce, we will send unto them only you," a third tells him.
My favorite exchange is between the Slayer and one of the new angelic characters who seem to be lording over this whole mess. "For millennia we have survived, made others sacrifice in the name of our prosperity," she says, channeling the spirit of capitalism. "Who are you, a human, to defy our traditions?". To which the Slayer replies by cocking a shotgun. See? I told you.
After that little convo, it's nothing but the pure, unfiltered violence you'd expect from a Doom trailer. We've got frigid environments, grappling hook finishers, big-ol' bosses, dudes with axes, and a laser sword that would make Master Chief proud. As we said in our E3 2019 preview, Doom Eternal is an absolute blast, and it's looking better by the trailer.
Doom Eternal's worlds are more artificial than ever, and that's a good thing.
