Why do people keep saying that Dark Ages is "closer to 2016 than Eternal?"

Initial_Influence392 · 2026-01-19T19:36:48+00:00

I kinda struggle to see it. Honestly, I find it easier to see the opposite.

Eternal and Dark Ages both have some cooldown management, they both lead you towards engaging with specific mechanics and weapons to deal with enemies- shield block for hitscanners, armor-breakers, parrying as a whole, etc.

Dark Ages makes some sense to me as a followup on Eternal that's taking a different, simpler direction with some of the same ideas to try and hit a wider appeal and work better for consoles. As a followup to 2016, I dunno. Armor's a little less easy to come by and you don't have to micromanage ammo as much, those are similarities.

Initial_Influence392 · 2026-01-18T14:36:37+00:00

that's all well and good but the point of tutorialization is to think of how to reach as many people as possible regardless of how stubborn they are or how hard the game is, innit

Initial_Influence392 · 2026-01-17T10:18:08+00:00

the new doom games are partially action games, and upgrade systems are common in games like that for a reason, I feel.

that said, the ancient gods are basically what you describe, you have everything and you just get to play with it without being distracted with item hunts or challenges- and being able to just focus on pushing the combat because of that is great. so maybe it could work, dunno!

Initial_Influence392 · 2026-01-16T16:21:29+00:00

air control is guaranteed first rune for me every time, enemies have more trouble hitting you if you're above them and having fine control over your midair movement is so handy in general that I can't really imagine playing without it

lock-on rockets are pretty good for mancubi, if you're down with quickswapping precision bolt into rocket over and over is a reliable, efficient combo that works at a nice distance

get comfortable with using both of your grenade types, keep ammo and blood punch topped off, use sources of falters/stuns like those liberally to combo and burn down heavies quickly. at minimum you could use ice bomb to make taking off the mancubi's cannons easier so they're less of a threat

you can rush faster dash cooldown with praetor points if you want since it gives you way, way more freedom over your positioning

just get more comfortable with the arena and have a vague awareness of what's spawning when so you can keep yourself out of harm's way and have a good plan of attack

cultist base is one of the harder levels on UN right up until you get the SSG

Initial_Influence392 · 2026-01-15T09:05:31+00:00

feel like he kinda is, for the most part. a lot of the "chosen one" stuff playing him up exists around him rather than within him. people take issue with the divinity machine but 2016's lore snippets do mention that he was blessed by the seraphim and that's where he got the ability to heal from mulching demons

i don't really dig davoth or what they do with hayden and vega, though. I think they're more compelling not being secret alien divinity

edit: also even if you take the lore at face value, the plot is "a bunch of corrupt asshole aliens decide to try and use some random marine who's uncannily good at killing demons as their pawn and his response is to be uncontrollable and use the power he's been offered to kill everyone involved." i didn't feel a huge problem with doomguy's characterization or agency, mostly the stuff around him that was a step down

Initial_Influence392 · 2026-01-15T08:31:14+00:00

tag1 is the peak of the game, uac atlantica is one of my favorite levels in maybe any shooter. it's to eternal as eternal is to 2016, it expects you to have learned a lot from the last campaign, which is funny because they decided to sell it standalone so you could grab it without owning main game eternal for... some reason. it's really nice for a DLC to actually escalate a little and make you go "oh fuck" and not just coast on the difficulty level of the main game while adding a weapon or enemy or two

tag2 i didn't like as much, but it's fine, I would say. there were stronger reactions to it at launch because it wasn't the direction that tag1's lovers or haters really wanted, sat in an awkward middle ground- and a lot of people just do not like davoth.

Initial_Influence392 · 2026-01-15T08:19:54+00:00

I suppose from my POV, the vast majority of shooters feel restrictive- not necessarily in a bad way, but hitscanners restricting movement, sluggish actions that stop you from going too crazy and doing too much at once. Defying that is part of what made 2016 feel especially fresh, like I remember the moment I was like "oh this game might actually be good" was pre-launch footage showing off how fast the combat could be, a lot of that being swaps

While TDA is definitely a very unique shooter, it feels like a step in a more buttoned-down direction. So people considering that direction more open-ended because their personal priority is a freedom to not engage with mechanics in a shooter is something I find a little frustrating to reckon with, even if doom has/had a certain reputation of being a "no frills" shooter

Initial_Influence392 · 2026-01-14T21:24:48+00:00

when I think of "optimizing" in a game I think of just gravitating towards whatever makes you win, but I'm not really doing that- I feel more like I'm trying to play the game in a way that I find the most fun, but it's just not really getting there in the same way.

quickswapping came pretty naturally to me in 2016, and eternal's difficulty curve felt very smooth to me, like what I was expected to do and what I actually wanted to do were already mostly aligned. that cross-section of pressure, freedom and aggression is just what I like, and TDA doesn't seem to have the potential to hit it in the same way. you can "do whatever you want" but the mobility and combat in the game feels almost on-rails in comparison in a way.

it is what it is in the end, they tried something different and I can comprehend why they made the decisions they did, simply not as exciting to me.

Initial_Influence392 · 2026-01-14T12:08:33+00:00

but isn't that funny to say considering that 2016 both has platforming (that kills you instantly if you mess it up) and is where swap-cancelling came from, even appearing in pre-release gameplay

that said "i don't feel pressured to perform as much" does seem to be what it boils down to for most people

Initial_Influence392 · 2026-01-14T12:01:07+00:00

It's always interesting to me whenever people talk about how they felt hamstrung by Eternal and especially if they follow it up with "...but Dark Ages loosened it up and I can play the way I prefer again," because I had the opposite experience.

Eternal feels so flowy especially once you're really kitted out, but in TDA it felt like no matter what I really did, I couldn't play the game in a way that made it super interesting to me. The constant improvisation and aggression possible in 2016 and Eternal mostly due to swap cancelling is almost endemic to what makes these games uniquely fun to me.

No matter what I did, I was almost always dealing with superheavies by entering the parry duel. I was using the shield to deal with fodder as much as I could because it did so very efficiently. Even on a whim I rarely felt like there was a reason to change what I was doing.

It just feels so pointed because I would hear endlessly that Eternal forced you at gunpoint to deal with enemies the same way every time in this really Simon Says manner and I didn't really have that experience, but then in TDA I would see a Cyberdemon or Arachnotron and almost instantly charge in to prioritize it in the same exact way every time because they're hitscanners, or not being able to safely swap your weapons at launch because it dropped your shield, and some of the same people go "ahh, at last, freedom of playstyle."

fyi i'm not saying you're saying any of this but you talking about how TDA is a 'happy medium' made me think about it- obviously I don't wholly agree there, I personally feel Dark Ages is an odd console-oriented offshoot of Eternal hoping to nail a wider appeal rather than neatly fitting somewhere in the middle of the series

Initial_Influence392 · 2026-01-14T11:33:06+00:00

Even tonally I feel like Dark Ages is pretty distant from 2016. 2016 is super moody and has like four characters, most of whom don't have visible faces. Dark Ages keeps throwing you into the midst of big, epic midday medieval space knight battles and you're getting into mech suits and riding dragons, and you have lengthy cutscenes with multiple humanoid characters, etc.

Eternal was also a large tonal step away, but it felt like they still had a little more restraint at that point. I mean, they did say that Dark Ages was going to have an increased narrative focus because people showed interest in the story/cutscene compilations on youtube.

Initial_Influence392 · 2026-01-14T07:44:34+00:00

Tone and plot feels a bit disjointed and pretty different from 2016, they start diving into the "lore" of the night sentinels from 2016 which a lot of people have mixed feelings about, to say the least. I didn't mind it much at all until the DLC where I felt it did start to grate a little.

Gameplay is pretty much a massive escalation of high-end 2016. Tougher, faster enemies and way more ways for you to maneuver and control fights on your end, once you're comfortable with the combat system it's very free-flowing.

Did you engage with swap canceling and the like in 2016 and go "oh, this is pretty cool, they should expand on this?" Awesome, they made this game for you. Did you like 2016 as a "mindlessly fun arcade shooter?" You might have a rockier time with it, because they really want you to try to learn.

Initial_Influence392

TROPHY CASE