Joshua Boyle, a community lead for Bethesda, walked us through a gameplay demo for Doom: The Dark Ages — Revelations, the upcoming DLC for last year’s Doom entry.
Id Software wants people to embrace the power fantasy of being super powerful rather than the approach other games take to being the protagonist. So they’ve made it feel like you’re unstoppable. In Doom: The Dark Ages, the developers want you to feel like a monster, capable of destroying everything in your path.
Doom: The Dark Ages Revelations Is A Meaty Expansion
Speaking with the developers, they’ve mentioned that this expansion is the “culmination of 35 years of Doom,” is equal to the two DLCs for Eternal, and is around 12 hours.
The latest edition is the Chain Spear, a massive new weapon coming to Doom: The Dark Ages — Revelations later this month. It’s meant to add a whole new layer of depth to the combat. And with new content, ID promises that the challenge of the new content is higher than the base game’s while still being accessible. To really be the Doom Slayer, though, you need to master all the game’s tools to become the ultimate killing machine.
Our presentation began with a look at combat and how it’s changed for the expansion. Much of your arsenal centers on dual-wielding weapons, and to come out alive, you need to know how to use each. Knowing that demons are mostly affected by guns, your Spear exploits weaknesses or your shield-saw, and melee provides ammo. The word to remember is synergy, and it’s crucial to know how and when to swap them out.
The Chain Spear is the main weapon the expansion focuses on, with an entire skill tree dedicated to it. You have skills like slam and stab, and can be mastered by the end, with many powerful skills coming towards the end. You’ll want to work towards these if you want to deliver tons of pain. While the developers say you swap between the Shield Saw and Chain Saw, the endgame is tailored to the Spear’s abilities.
The one thing I noticed is that there’s a lot of movement to the Spears’ repertoire with a dash and a grappling hook. “We’re going to make the tanky Doom Slayer fly,” the developers joked.
In our hands-off preview, we saw some of the Chain Spear’s abilities, including a stab and a slam on demons, which, if you remember the Sentinel Hammer from Eternal, the Spear is like that, plus you can throw it for massive damage, and slash at enemies to break armour, kill fodder, parry melee and projectiles, and more.
Guns are still important to the core experience, but are largely the same. Id’s moved the focus to your left hand for Revelations, and the Spear certainly fits the bill as a powerful tool.
You’ll be sad to learn that your suit is damaged immediately at the start of the expansion, so you’ll have to start from scratch. The suit has upgrades like Health Boosts and Ammo Boosts to power your character up.
Doom is called “high-speed chess” as you battle new demons introduced in the expansion. The idea is that these demons are chess pieces you need to figure out how to beat. We saw the Archvile return alongside the Pain Elemental, a new wizard that can buff and evade you, and must be taken out quickly.
The AI has been upgraded for the expansion, too, with Spectre Whiplash, Purple Hell Knight, and Zombies appearing as explosive variants that create environmental hazards.
We then got a look at exploration, which the developers say is a highlight of the expansion. Exploration features tons of secrets, backtracking opportunities and more. You must master the space to unlock all the progression points, and it is apparently some of the best work the team has put out. We’re told the levels are like mazes, and there are six in total: Proving Grounds, Purgatory (a hub area), Hell’s Core, Chasm of Xal’Goroth, Osseus, and Uprising.
The hub area is called Purgatory and includes Metroidvania-like traversal, puzzles, hidden corridors, and much more to uncover. Revelations adds an objective wheel to mark where you wish to go next.
Doom: The Dark Ages — Revelations is also filled with lore for fans, with pages to find, and other pertinent information to assemble. The expansion is a “pivotal chapter in the Slayer’s story” that culminates in a precarious situation after things go awry for him. In this chapter, it’s described as the Slayer’s fall, where he loses his tools. By the end of the game, his actions will shape the world around him.
As an example for traversal, the map has two layouts, one for the base game and one for the endgame. Each mode has its own objectives you need to master. Id says around 60 percent of the experience is the base game, while the rest is endgame. Endgame content here mainly consists of challenges set to Master difficulty, made available only after you finish the base game.
To shake things up, there are unique paths only available through the levels in the end game: Praetor suit encounters, which are “extra hard encounters”; Slayer Trials, which are arcade-mode levels with scoring elements, puzzles, new endgame resources, and unlockable classic Doom levels. Completing everything in-game offers up the Astral Key, a device needed to challenge an Uber boss, which unlocks the Master Arena key, where you enter four combat spaces that offer the toughest challenge. And somehow, there’s still more content available in the Ripatorium.
The developers also confirmed that when the game goes live next week, the PlayStation 5 Pro version includes PSSR support.
“PSSR gives idTech8 an enhanced reconstruction path for Doom: The Dark Ages | Revelations on PlayStation 5 Pro. The game is constantly pushing large combat spaces, dense effects, high octane combat, and a lot of fine surface detail, so stability matters as much as sharpness. With PSSR, idTech8 can preserve more of that detail in motion while maintaining the performance and gameplay feel players expect from DOOM,” says Billy Khan, the director of Engine Software at id Software.
Doom: The Dark Ages Revelations launches on July 7, 2026.
