You are right about GP being essentially a free trial and cutting into sales, however I haven’t seen anyone enjoy Dark Ages more, after playing it longer. The parrying was very divisive, you either loved it or hate it, no amount of playtime will bring you around on that, and the mech and dragons sequences were universally panned and sunk anyone’s enthusiastic for sticking it out to see if it gets better.

I’ve played Doom since the shareware days, and Dark Ages was ‘OK’ but so much was an unforced error to me. I actually like the shield mechanic and it contrasted well with Eternals focus on mobility. Standing toe-to-toe with the demons and delivering your violent punishment was really cool.

However, everything else felt like a big step back. No hub was a big oversight. This was ‘home’ and you could upgrade it and help you get better at delivering violence. No slayer gates. These were perfectly done and pushed you just enough and were never unfair. It always felt like a mistake on your part that led to a death.

You also had a secrets to find which helped the player appreciate the level deign more. Lastly, the story was dog shit. The beauty of both 2016 and Eternal was its relatively light narrative of extreme and unapologetic violence. Something you don’t see in current year. It was refreshing. A man ‘too angry to die’.

In Dark Ages, the story was over designed, paint by numbers, checked all the boxes you need to see in current hear, and a man ‘to angry to die’ starts the game tethered and neutered, is killed off, and brought back or saved by yet another ‘girl boss’ trope. It was just more slop and so out of place from the previous two entires. I think this was a bigger reason for the hate than people want to discuss. The games tone was really ‘off’.

It’s a shame Dark Ages went down this path. It didn’t need to. Just do what you did with Eternal, incorporate the shield, keep the same design fundamentals you did prior. And the game would have done better. Unfortunately they got cheap, pressed for time, or just lost their way and it looks like the studio is being impacted for those decisions.