Transcription
With every passing generation, fellow technology enjoyers around the world breathlessly await the arrival of new id Software games. While the id of today largely differs from its origins, the mission remains the same: to produce beautiful visuals at blistering frame rates, and its latest work is no exception.
Doom: The Dark Ages marks the arrival of idTech 8, and with it, a massive slate of impressive technology awaits. Large-scale battles and locations unlike anything we've seen in prior Doom titles make for something that manages to feel fresh. So, today, as is tradition, I'd like to take you through the many visual features and flourishes, those that impress me the most and define the visuals in Doom: The Dark Ages. From its reliance on ray-traced lighting to robust physics simulation, new material systems, atmospherics, and much more, there's a lot to get to. We also have, as with the Doom Eternal coverage, a wealth of behind-the-scenes clips demonstrating major improvements on hand and how they actually work. So, let's get started.
One of the things I really appreciate about modern id Software games is the willingness to experiment and pivot. While the fundamentals are largely similar—shoot, pummel, and otherwise vanquish demon hordes—the way in which this is achieved varies dramatically from game to game. Doom Eternal, for instance, is very different compared to the 2016 reboot. And this is also true of Doom: The Dark Ages, which shifts to a different style of play in larger, more open areas with significantly higher enemy counts and unique new mechanics. I'll share my thoughts on that aspect of the game later, but the key here is that it's this desire to change the formula that ultimately helps drive its underlying technology. Fundamentally, idTech 8 was designed to support this game very specifically, which means it needed to support these larger maps, more on-screen enemies, and all the other major changes to the way the game is lit and designed on the back end.
When it comes to major changes from idTech 7, the most impactful stems from its shift to fully ray-traced lighting. But beyond the obvious, ray tracing is also used for other techniques and to improve the development experience. So, similar to Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, the headlining feature here is ray-traced global illumination. This allows for light sources to directly and indirectly light the surrounding space, creating these beautiful, realistic, natural ambient shadows and light. Unlike Doom Eternal, The Dark Ages features a lot of soft lighting from the skies above rather than the high-intensity electric lights everywhere. As a result, the game has a very different, more natural appearance. Let's demonstrate using this clip here. First, note that The Dark Ages uses a radiance cache in probe volumes, as you can see visualized here. But let's go ahead and toggle the lighting features themselves. And as we do so, pay close attention to how it influences the game's lighting. Without bounce lighting, only that which falls directly within the light sources' influence appears lit. But when enabling RTGI, the light now bounces around the room, filling the space realistically. It's all dynamic. All right, let's check this out from a different viewing angle around the back of this statue here. This time, we'll leave light scattering enabled. Note how the rear of the statue here is lit entirely indirectly. Without indirect lighting enabled, it's basically pure black. It's the same here in this scene where disabling indirect lighting bathes the world in shadow. But of course, before real-time ray-trace lighting like this became common, developers would often pre-calculate these results through baking. This technique meant that world lighting was much more static or required some major sacrifices, and the actual iteration in build times within the editors themselves were much, much slower. This is one of the most important shifts for the team.
Then, speaking with Billy Khan, director of engine technology at id, Billy noted that the ray tracing essentially allowed them to shift to a "what you see is what you get" model, or WYSIWYG as they call it. This means when using id Studio, artists can adjust lighting directly in the editor and see those results instantly. This is very similar to working with Lumen GI within Unreal Engine 5, of course, but it basically makes the artist's life a lot easier. You can see, for instance, how a light placed in this specific position influences the overall light levels and colors in this room. This is something that would previously require baking to even preview it. So, it saves a lot of development time and allows the team to work at a much larger scale. It basically takes the guesswork out of things. You don't have to place a light, bake it out, and wait to see the results. It's now just instant.
Beyond the ray-traced global illumination, however, when played on PC, players also have access to ray-traced specular reflections, much like Doom Eternal. The result is good, but the game features a much higher concentration of rough materials, so it's a lot less noticeable than Doom Eternal's shiny Wonderland of Pain. It most often appears in things like puddles or specific types of shiny materials, because there are a few in this game. SSR is still layered in, mind you, but the RT reflections look excellent. Beyond this, ray tracing is also used for things like impact effects and footsteps. When talking about hit impacts, for instance, I'm speaking about things like the decals that appear on models as you shoot them with your weapon. While the game still uses a specific collision mesh for determining where the shot hits as far as damage values are concerned, ray tracing helps determine the most accurate position when rendering these decals on the models. So the extra precision is leveraged just to improve these types of effects.
Then there's the fully ray-marched volumetric effects. From the clouds to the fog and more, the game now leans heavily on these ray-marched volumetrics, lending the game a thicker atmosphere. You can see it in action here in this shot. The technique isn't new, per se, but it's still rather uncommon, and it's producing some seriously stellar results here. In this shot, you can see how easily the artist can essentially just paint these clouds into the scene. You can create a fast-moving cloud layer, all quake-variable cloud cover and shapes, as well as just generally creating these beautiful images. These large outdoor spaces essentially necessitated a move towards a more robust system, and it does work very well. They also use it during this intro cutscene when the clouds split apart after launching the slayer down to the planet surface. That's not a pre-calculated effect; that's actually being done using these ray-marched volumetrics.
While on the subject of lighting and shadow, The Dark Ages also makes use of two other depth-enhancing features: SSDO for ambient occlusion and parallax occlusion mapping. Both of these increase surface depth and complexity like this. While the RTGI solution is indeed very effective, it still has some limitations compared to using a full path tracer, which definitely necessitates the use of a screen-space solution like SSDO. But in this case, it's used for both direct and indirect situations. Shadows are applied in the correct direction per local light source, making it more effective overall. Of course, you also know we're big fans of parallax occlusion maps here, and yeah, they're used everywhere in Doom: The Dark Ages.
Speaking of such effects, this brings up the game's more robust and flexible material system. Designers can now combine up to eight bespoke physically based material layers on a single surface. This allows them to create more complex composite materials while also keeping the memory footprint in check since you can create complex-looking surfaces using a multitude of smaller textures. One of the key benefits to the system is how said surfaces can reveal underlying materials based on how you interact with them. So if you unload a shotgun on a wall, for instance, the underlying structural material is revealed as the top layer is destroyed, and chunky parallax occlusion mapping helps create that impression of actual damage to the surface. See what I mean? It can also be used in situations like this where I'm basically just shooting the mud here, which is causing it to disappear, allowing the puddles to expand around it. Basically, it's almost like a deformable surface at this point. All of these surfaces are designed to be reactive to your actions, and this goes beyond a traditional decal system. I feel the combination of more advanced decals and the material composition layers just adds a lot to the presentation. And frankly, so do the physics, which are another major component of the visuals in The Dark Ages. But it's a complex collection of systems that all work in tandem to create the effect.
So, I mentioned this in my preview, but my favorite addition is the inclusion of breakable objects like these shacks in the first Siege mission. Breakable objects are actually featured all across the game. From simple railings like this that break apart when you walk up to them, buildings and structures that realistically collapse into pieces as you engage with them, and scenery that just generally reacts to your movements. It's all here and very precise. You shoot individual chunks and pieces out of an object, for instance, it'll break apart and then collapse under its own weight. There's shades of Crisis here for sure. Something we just don't see very often these days, but it's a really nice touch. At its core, id worked closely with Havok, according to Billy, to create the perfect tooling for use in id Studio. The idea was to create a powerful rigid-body collision system while minimizing object inner penetration while presenting realistic weight and mass. Objects needed to properly behave amidst the chaotic combat loop while also remaining performant. So the destruction then is, of course, one of the key pillars. It's also optimized to run on the GPU, and we'll actually have a lot more information on this later in an upcoming interview. But one of my favorite details about this is just how well the weight of the slayer is communicated. If you, say, jump from an elevated point on the map, your landing causes a shock wave such that it destroys objects and kills enemies around you. It feels remarkably satisfying.
But there's more, such as the weather system and wind system, both of which are extremely robust. There's two types of wind in this game. There's a global wind value that can be changed for each specific region in the game or applied during cinematics. And this is what affects things like cloth, vegetation, and more. The team can essentially customize the value here to ensure that the scene looks great. But there's also a local wind system which is computed around the character specifically, and this relies on a real-time 3D fluid simulation which can produce some dazzling results. For instance, if you fire an explosive weapon like the grenade launcher near a patch of grass, watch as the explosion causes the foliage to react. See what I mean? Let's watch that again. It might be tough to spot during the heat of combat, but it definitely adds a bit to the realism. On top of this, then it also features a robust cloth simulation. So things like the flags in the game, the slayer's cloak, and more are all included in this wind simulation. It seems like the idea here was to create a very cohesive system that made everything feel alive and consistent across the board with these secondary animations. When combining this with already discussed atmospheric effects, fog volumes, and weather, I'd say they achieved their goal. The very first stage, for instance, takes place during a heavy rainstorm, and everything just comes together beautifully. I absolutely love the rain in this game. It's one of the best I've seen in a long time.
Of course, this needed to extend across the game's entire world, so they introduced a new water surface simulation as well, allowing proper ripples and reactions in bodies of water. I'm a sucker for effects like this. I mean, it's nothing new, per se, but it's always great to see in action, and it looks really great in this case. There's also areas where you can swim under the water with some nice full-screen ripple effects. And there's even long-distance vista shots with waves crashing against the shore. It looks awesome.
The key here, though, is that all these systems combined allow the team to create environments that feel very different than what's come before. Their prior two games were all about high contrast and bright lights. The inclusion of ray tracing, new atmospheric effects, and all that enabled the team to create something that looks more subdued with a darker tone, free from the usual visual limitations associated with this style. It's fun to think about just how far they've come since Rage on PS3 and 360. That game was extremely static in terms of its visual presentation, whereas Doom Eternal is now full of life. So much animation, so much movement, and all the lighting is fully real time. Not to mention all the destructibles. Plus, all of this is depicted at a much larger scale. If you recall in Doom Eternal, the Super Gore Nest was the most geometrically dense map in the entire campaign. But with The Dark Ages, there's now maps featuring upwards of 10 times more detail. The maps are now broken up into multiple sectors, though, and a single sector can offer as much geometric detail as the entirety of Super Gore Nest. Yet, from the player perspective, it's all one giant seamless map.
But while we're talking about detail, prior to launch, I had pondered whether it had shifted towards a virtualized geometry system, à la Unreal Engine's Nanite. But it turns out that's not actually the case. Rather, they've simply expanded the number of LODs, changed the way they generate them, improved the blending between the various LODs, and honed their scene-culling systems, which you can see in action here. By the way, the basic idea, of course, is that they're focusing more on pixel quality above all else. To that end, pop-in can still be observed at times, but most of the game scenery is very stable when running through the environment quickly. In addition, things like grass rendering are offloaded entirely to the GPU and tessellated according to camera proximity. Grass is flexible and can be adjusted on a per-platform basis. In practice, I found that pop-in issues did remain in some specific situations like this. There's also issues where vegetation can pop in or occasional textures, but by and large, it's a very seamless and coherent environment.
Since we're talking about these large maps, though, another key improvement stems from the addition of a proper data streaming system. Prior idTech games generally needed to store the map in memory upon loading. But now everything is broken up into these sectors, which means that less data is needed at runtime when initially loading a mission. Right. As a result, the loading times for this game are so fast that it's actually among the fastest I've seen this entire generation. It's so fast that I almost question the inclusion of loading screens at all. It's that good. This also has gameplay implications. It means that when you die, the time to continue is very short, which makes you want to keep trying again. Something key for the higher difficulty levels.
On top of all this, in my tests on two different PCs, I never encountered a single stutter or hiccup during play. There's no lengthy pre-compilation step, and yet there's still no stuttering. Also, no traversal stutter or any of those other usual flaws we see in PC releases. It's virtually flawless at this point. That said, this specific video is not focused on actual performance numbers. That's something Alex has coming in his video very soon. But I did want to at least mention that I played and captured this game primarily on a Razer Blade 16 laptop since I'm on the road. This one uses a mobile 5090 GPU, but that's more in the 5070 class in terms of how it compares to desktop GPUs. When using it with the built-in 240 Hz screen with multi-frame gen, I was able to enjoy the game at the highest detail levels with DLSS quality while still hitting around 240 FPS. Without frame gen, though, I could still get 80 to 90 FPS at those settings on this machine. But again, this is not a video focused on performance statistics. I just wanted to share my positive experience on that front.
But okay, let's move on to our next point of discussion: this time, the enemies themselves. There's multiple cool elements in play here that make for some responsive animation work, great hit reactions, and interesting behaviors. So, to demonstrate this, I opted to drop the game speed down to 50%, allowing you to observe everything in slow motion. The result: chaotic beauty. Obviously, there's the individual animation. Characters move with proper weight, shifting that weight as they change direction. The way they storm onto the battlefield in these huge numbers feels epic and grandiose. In addition, as you kill them, the way they stumble, fall, and react to your weaponry is very satisfying and highlights the excellent secondary animations as well, like the dingle-dangles attached to their waists here. It also highlights the rather, uh, expressive gore system, shall we say. Basically, as you unload on foes, their flesh breaks away in a shower of blood, leaving exposed bone and sinew visible below the surface. It feels rather dynamic this time as a result, in addition to those aforementioned precise decals. This is a detail that a lot of games still don't get quite right. I especially love how this enemy's momentum carries him forward after being blasted as he trips and stumbles to his death. Just look at that. Seriously, let's look at that again. It's really, really good-looking. I think it just makes a big difference in terms of communicating the sheer impact of the slayer on his foes.
In addition to this, the engine can now support many, many more enemies on screen at once. It's the first modern Doom game that actually manages to get reasonably close to capturing those original Doom games in terms of sheer numbers. Remember those games used sprites. The shift to polygon graphics back in '96 put massive limitations on this, but that is now in the past.
So to summarize up to this point, idTech 8 supports larger levels, tons of new visual effects, stunning ray-trace lighting across every platform, additional features for PC users such as RT reflections and higher settings, huge numbers of enemies, advanced physics and damage modeling, virtually zero loading times, and buttery smooth performance. Oh, and like Doom Eternal, it supports HDR, though it doesn't get as insanely bright as it did in Eternal, something that might be down to the darker hue they're aiming for.
Speaking of that, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the cutscenes. Now, yes, they've included more story sequences in Doom, and on paper, it doesn't sound like a great idea, but in reality, I actually really enjoyed them. I'll leave you to judge the narrative for yourself, but the quality of these scenes in terms of the technical implementation is very, very impressive. A gigantic leap forward from prior id Software titles. The beautiful character models, lighting, camera effects, color grading, and more, all dialed in beautifully. They've even implemented a strand-hair system, allowing every character to have exceedingly detailed hair. And that extends to the Slayer's cape, which not only has a full strand-hair system applied across the entire cape, but it also has cloth physics tied to it as well. To really push these cutscenes, though, it developed a more robust cinematic editing tool, allowing the artist to dial in every pixel with excruciating detail. And due to the "what you see is what you get" nature of the engine, they could essentially light each scene as if it were a movie set and see those results on screen right away thanks to ray tracing. Don't like a certain light angle? That can be adjusted just like this. A cool peek behind the scenes at how these are made, right? Thankfully, as far as pacing is concerned, these cutscenes tend to only play at the start or end of a mission and serve as kind of a nice breather, I'd say. I certainly enjoyed them, I have to admit.
Another important element then is the game's audio. And this is an area where I expressed concern prior to release, but it turns out that overall the music is better than I anticipated. Part of the issue is that the default mix has the music volume a little on the low side, at least for my tastes. So, crank that up to 100%, and I think the results become a lot better. Essentially, the soundtrack is better than I expected based on that demo experience. I was pretty hard on it. But in the end, as I had hoped, it's actually pretty good. Take a listen. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat.
But okay, let's talk about the game itself. So, this is an interesting one as fundamentally it's a very different beast compared to the last two entries. The whole "stand and fight" thing basically means the flow of combat differs as you're ultimately less mobile, but that doesn't mean you don't have a lot of movement options. While it's still a little slow at first, once you have full access to your arsenal, it really takes off. The second half of the game, which I haven't shown much of in this video, by the way, really is good stuff. There are elements here that remind me of bullet-hell shooters as well. Obviously, there's the projectiles, which we saw in the preview, but there's also things like, say, these shield guys that come in a group. You'll quickly learn that taking them out involves slamming your shield into them after warming up their shields. They blow up and take out surrounding enemies as well. So, ultimately, it becomes about comboing your attacks to take out larger groups faster. And of course, there's also identifying threats and tackling them appropriately. You need to understand how enemies attack and which ones are most dangerous. The difference here compared to Eternal is just the way you deal with them. The weapons are all rather different overall, and the glory-kill system, while not completely removed, is drastically altered. Essentially, it does not take control of you before when you engage it.
That said, having just played through Doom Eternal again in Nightmare, it sort of reignited my love of that game. I was a little harsh on it in the preview video, but honestly, it's really darn good. I haven't yet decided if I like Dark Ages as much as Eternal yet. I can only say that once I go for a proper Nightmare run, but for video creation purposes, I was stuck using a gamepad while playing on default difficulty mostly. I would say that in terms of quality, though, Dark Ages is at least on par.
Then there's the Atlan and Dragon missions, essentially, which I do feel are kind of distractions to some degree, but still a lot of fun. It does alter the flow of the game in a way that doesn't happen in Eternal, but at the same time, it is enjoyable. In fact, the dragon missions remind me of something from Halo. Flying from hot spot to hot spot, then hopping out to deal with enemies on the ground. There's a lot of cool visual treats in those stages as well. It is not, however, the chief focus of the game. Still, I can tell even at this point, having replayed several of its missions multiple times, that it's going to occupy a place similar to other id Software games. I will return to this time and again for years to come. The moment you take control of the Slayer, for instance, it's immediately clear that it just feels better than nearly every other shooter on the market. The controls are virtually flawless.
So, yeah, overall, I'm very happy with Doom Eternal and pleased to see that idTech itself is still delivering. This studio knows what it's doing. While 60 fps has become much more common this generation, it's still amazing to see a game doing so much high-end rendering and physics while filling its gigantic stages with hordes of enemies all while delivering a near-perfect 60 fps. Go check it out.