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Abandoned Doom 4 Footage Shows The Path Not Taken
Bethesda is set for a major Doom reveal at E3, teasing some of the game’s new visuals. It’s important to remember that for every game that makes it to market, ideas are abandoned because they just aren’t the right fit.
Recently, footage of what might have become Doom 4 was revealed, and it’s a different direction than what we’ll likely be getting from iD’s in-development Doom. The video below is the demo reel for Mark Bristol, who lists roles as Doom 4 art director, lead writer, and cinematic director on his LinkedIn profile.
Bristol also worked on Enemy Front and Alien Rage for CI Games, and recently finished work on Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation. He indicates that he’s worked on fifty films, seven games, and a number of commercials.
While some of the footage is probably linked to Doom 4 (including the Hellmouth above the city and the armored soldiers) given Bristol’s work we can’t definitively assign all the questionable clips to that title. However, Bethesda does confirm that some of the content did belong to that abandoned vision for the series.
“This is from a game that doesn’t exist anymore,” a Bethesda representative told us. “As we said several years ago, the development of DOOM 4 was not up to the standards of id or Bethesda. The game we are making is DOOM and we look forward to showing everyone DOOM at our E3 Showcase next month.”
We’ll have more on Doom from E3 next month.
[Source: Mark Bristol on LinkedIN, GamesRadar]
Our Take
There’s not much to go on here in terms of artistic vision, and it’s easy to second-guess developers and publishers. For now, I’m looking forward to seeing how Doom looks today, because despite being brief, that teaser clip has me interested.
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