id’s Marty Stratton talks Doom invasions and hints at the game’s new PVP

At QuakeCon, id Software blew the lid off of the delicious combat casserole that is Doom Eternal, revealing a host of information about many aspects of the fast-paced FPS sequel.

Afterwards, Trusted Reviews got some time to sit down with game director Marty Stratton and creative director Hugo Martin to dish up more delicious details about the game’s Invasion mode, which will see gamers able to invade other players’ single player campaigns and raise hell as an intelligent demon to try and mess up their day (check out the rest of the interview here). 

“Everything we do, we focus on the fun,” said Stratton, referring to the game’s invasion mechanic. “One of the things coming out of 2016 was that everybody loved the Doom combat experience. On our side, and even a lot of the reaction from the fans was: ‘I want to do this socially, I want to do this with my friends.’ It’s been a guiding principle of ours to make the Doom that people love a social experience.”

“Invasion is one of the ways we’re doing that. We’ll do a deep dive on that down the road, because there’s a lot of big mechanics behind playing as a demon that people will be really excited about. Just on the campaign side of it, if you leave yourself invadable, it just adds this dynamic of unpredictability to it. You know there’s an invader in your game, but you don’t know where they are. It changes the way that you would play these ambient combat spaces, or even changes your focus a little bit when you know there’s a human-controlled demon in an arena fight.”

Related: Best PC Games

Mixing up the formula

2016’s Doom played like video game thrash metal, a series of arena fights that saw you rip and tear through increasingly large crowds of monsters. This new element could mix up the formula and Stratton points out that it could add an “element of unpredictability and drama” to engagements, as human opponents shape the engagement, supplementing the game’s AI with real intelligence.

However, the team also hint at further multiplayer in the game, which will be developed internally. This is big news because the last Doom suffered critically for its multiplayer, developed externally, which didn’t make the same impact as the popular campaign.

“We’re also doing a PvP component that we’re developing internally,” adds Stratton. “It’s the same thing: very, very Doom, very new for us. I think people will be surprised by it. We’ve got a lot of irons in the fire, and a lot of stuff that we’re excited to talk about even further from a social perspective. We focused on campaign yesterday, but the social side of Doom is big for us.”

Additional reporting by Andrew Hayward 

Will you be opening up your game to allow other players to join as enemies? Let us know @TrustedReviews.