Hugo Martin: it's called Doom Eternal because people kept calling the first one "Doom 2016"

Calling a new game named after the old one is a cancer of the modern gaming industry.

The name partially coinciding with the old well-known megawad is pure accident. Proving that the developers do not play pwads. They had to consult Doomworld gurus.

10 hours ago, Doomkid said:

Seriously, it's not hard. It's like they're embarrassed about there being 4 of them or something. Doom Eternal isn't the best name Imo but it's a hell of a lot better than just "Doom" or "Doom 2".

My two cents: IMO, there's something about including the number 4 and above in your sequel titles that just sounds a bit schlocky and ridiculous---too in line with what a movie horror franchise would do. 3 is sort of a nice, round number that has a sense of finality to it, whereas 4 brings the immediate emotional reaction of 'oh, this won't ever go away.' Obviously, there's prominent game franchises that have done this with no problem at all, but my guess is that could be one of the reasons id chose to forgo any numbers in the title. More importantly, they wanted the game to sort of stand on it's own, since it was a re-booting of the series that was arriving more than a decade after Doom 3, so calling it 'Doom 4' would have done less to distinguish it from the rest. Obviously, they ran into the problem of people distinguishing the title from the original, but that seems to be something they didn't anticipate, for some reason.   

Why not "Smashing Pumpkins Into Small Piles of Putrid Debris" instead of a generic and boring "Doom" / "Doom 2016" ? :-D

I’d like to think the reason they called D2016 “DOOM” is because this is basically Doom for a new generation of gamers.

That being said, “Doom: The Next Generation” probably isn’t the most baller subtitle one can think of. 

…or is it?

I don't like calling it Doom 4 and 5, because that forces me to acknowledge that 3 was a thing.

17 minutes ago, Xfing said:

I don't like calling it Doom 4 and 5, because that forces me to acknowledge that 3 was a thing.

Doom 3 was a very good game. It was just 1 year to late. Nevertheless it was I'd Software's most successful title (in sales) back then.

So I guess that if Doom 2016 had just been called Doom by the community, then Doom Eternal would also have been called just Doom. And then you'd have Doom, the sequel to Doom which is the reboot of Doom, and that would have been so much better and less confusing.

Doom 6 will probably be called Doom 666

On 8/12/2018 at 2:31 PM, Hofmann said:

So basically we got the year of release, 2019?

At the Doom Eternal panel at Quakecon, both Hugo and Marty said no official date has been set yet.

9 hours ago, LuciferSam86 said:

Why not "Smashing Pumpkins Into Small Piles of Putrid Debris" instead of a generic and boring "Doom" / "Doom 2016" ? :-D

Because Billy Corgan would sue them

Out of all the suggestions for an alternate title for DOOM, it would've been a nice idea to reuse a scrapped name for another Doom game

DOOM: ABSOLUTION

17 minutes ago, Sgt Nate V said:

Out of all the suggestions for an alternate title for DOOM, it would've been a nice idea to reuse a scrapped name for another Doom game

 

DOOM: ABSOLUTION

As long as they never call one Resurrection. God knows movie and game sequel titles have already beaten that dead horse enough already. 

Nonono, you were all just pronouncing it wrong. See, you have Doom, and then there's DOOM. That was what the naming scheme obviously intended.

22 hours ago, Knee Deep In The Fan said:

As long as they never call one Resurrection. God knows movie and game sequel titles have already beaten that dead horse enough already. 

https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Doom_Resurrection_(iPhone)

Damn it.

They should haved called it Doom Resurrection when they had the chance.

They should have titled Doom 4 to... DOOM: Awakening. Because it makes sense!

3 hours ago, dsm said:

 

https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Doom_Resurrection_(iPhone)

Oh yeah forgot about that one lol. Well as long as they don't name any of the "real" games that it should be fine.

On 8/12/2018 at 10:02 PM, Linguica said:

people ended up calling the reboot "Doom 2016" which apparently people at id Software didn't expect / intend

Then they shouldn't have fucking named it DOOM when a DOOM already exists. 

Resurrection is way overused in the Doom series as it is - not only the iPhone game, but Erection of Evil back in the early 00's as well. That's on top of how cheesy it already is by default to add "resurrection" to any title.. I cannot think of a more overused word in sequel titles, except perhaps "returns"..

On 8/15/2018 at 7:51 AM, MFG38 said:

 

Then they shouldn't have fucking named it DOOM when a DOOM already exists. 

No, no, no, there is a Doom and a DOOM. 

The original Doom from 1993 was also styled DOOM back then. Likewise for QUAKE and RAGE by the way.

It's like their house style. lower case for the studio ("id software" not "Id Software") and ALL CAPS FOR THE GAME TITLES. Meh.

They didn't expect people were going to call Doom from 2016 "Doom 2016". They wanted 'em to call it just "2016" (?)

On 8/13/2018 at 7:13 AM, Caffeine Freak said:

 

My two cents: IMO, there's something about including the number 4 and above in your sequel titles that just sounds a bit schlocky and ridiculous---too in line with what a movie horror franchise would do. 3 is sort of a nice, round number that has a sense of finality to it, whereas 4 brings the immediate emotional reaction of 'oh, this won't ever go away.' Obviously, there's prominent game franchises that have done this with no problem at all, but my guess is that could be one of the reasons id chose to forgo any numbers in the title. More importantly, they wanted the game to sort of stand on it's own, since it was a re-booting of the series that was arriving more than a decade after Doom 3, so calling it 'Doom 4' would have done less to distinguish it from the rest. Obviously, they ran into the problem of people distinguishing the title from the original, but that seems to be something they didn't anticipate, for some reason.   

I remember reading some time ago (do not ask me where thought) about a survey or something like that, that movie goers are likely less to go see a movie that has numbers on the title, and/or numbers beyond 3, that is why we get all those subtitles instead, because having Doom 10 in the title kinda cheapens the "feeling" when you see a game/movie/whatever.

And yet that didn't stop one of the most successful movie franchises ever to start with Episode IV.

Could have at least added a subtitle to the end of it to distinguish it. At least this one has a unique name, and not just Doom II.

DOOM: Nightmare Reborn

Wait a minute..  Isn't the original Doom's full title "Doom: Evil Unleashed"? As Doom 2016 is just "DOOM".

Please correct me if i'm wrong.

Doom Evil Unleashed is the Atari Jaguar port, it's a leftover because, in The Doom Bible, one of the episodes is Evil Unleashed.

Let's be honest, there was not a good thing they could have called it. The name Doom 3 was fucking stupid because it made it seem as though it was a sequel. To someone just reading the names, it would seem like the series went: Doom, Doom II, Doom 3, Final Doom which is dumb. Doom 4 would sound like a Doom 3 sequel, which it most certainly wasn't. Imagine explaining that shit to your friend who has only heard of the new game "Oh yeah so Doom 5 is a sequel to Doom 4 which is not a sequel to Doom 3 is not a sequel to Doom 2 which is a sequel to Ultimate Doom which was an expansion of Doom 1 but it was just called Doom".

So what would they call the reboot? Doom: Reborn? Sounds hostile to newbies who want a convenient entry-point into the series. Even so, what would the sequel be called? Doom Reborn 2? Come on, it's ridiculous. They're best off keeping to this new system of non-numbered game names.

To be welcoming to new players, they had to do some things that some people may not have liked - given it the name of the old one, given it a generic cover but in the end, it brought players into neo-classic FPS mayhem. And it has not overwritten Doom's legacy. Many of my friends who would never have considered playing a flat, fake 3D game from the 90s are now playing it after having played the new game. 

And hey, anything to avoid the Wolfenstein cluster-fuck of naming. Castle Wolfenstein, Beyond Castle Wolfenstein, Wolfenstein 3D, Spear of Destiny, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Wolfenstein, Wolfenstein: a subtitle, Wolfenstein: another subtitle indicated past tense, Wolfenstein 2: a subtitle, Wolfenstein: a subtitle.

I call the Doom reboot Doom 4. Doom Eternal should be called Doom Armageddon since there's a mod called Eternal Doom out there.

Could have always just called it "New DOOM".

I mean it worked for Coke, right? Oh, wait...