For the cover story of PC Gamer's upcoming print issue #408 (#396 for those of us in the US), I had the chance to talk to Doom: The Dark Ages game director Hugo Martin and producer Marty Stratton about the upcoming FPS. One thing I just had to ask about was that utterly nasty gun from the trailers: The one that's constantly shoving skulls into a woodchipper and blasting the shards downrange.
"That gun started out as the Bonecrusher, and then I think, through conceptual development, became the Skullcrusher," Martin said. "It does exactly what you think it does. It's kind of a spread minigun that you could also turn into a long range minigun."
Among previous Doom arsenals, Martin compared it to your classic chaingun, but there are a few things that differentiate it mechanically alongside its killer visual schtick. It's a much closer-range weapon than prior Doom machine guns, but makes up for this with a rate of fire and movement speed boost that builds up as you're firing the weapon.
"You'll get a speed boost, and the rate of fire will increase," Martin explained. "So it goes from this kind of heavy, slow-moving chain gun to like, you just zip it around the arena. So it gives you an advantage with movement, but you need it because it's not very long range." Both that modification, as well as an accuracy-improving choke mod we've yet to see in trailers, will be part of the gun's leveling up progression, similar to the weapons in Doom 2016 and Eternal.
"The base one that you've seen in the trailers, I kind of describe that as a weed whacker," said Martin. "That's what it feels like when I'm running around with it. And you've got to get close, but when you get close to guys, we've done a lot of custom tuning to the gore and the falters."
Martin compared the effect of letting it rip with the Skullcrusher at point blank to the iconic scene from Robocop with the ED-209 robot going absolutely ham on a hapless executive, holding him spasming in place with machine gun fire, squibs and practical effect gore blasting off in every direction. Martin said that classic action movie fare like this has become a north star for id as it continues to tinker on the demonic dismemberment tech it first rolled out with Doom 2016.
"At this point, it's destructible demons version three, from 2016 to Eternal to now. We've got, I'd like to think, the best gore in the industry," Martin said. "Our gore system is really where we spend a lot of money. So that, coupled with the falters, the incredible animations, the physics, the sound design, the blood squibs, we really create that [Robocop] moment. It feels so good with the Skullcrusher, because you'll run up to a bunch of fodder, and you're just holding them in place as their limbs come off and their bodies shake and they don't drop until you let go of the trigger."
To be frank, that's what I'm talkin' about, baby. I'm usually more of a slow-firing, shotguns-forward Doom player, but I could watch the animation of skulls popping up and disappearing into the thresher on the Skullcrusher all damn day. It feels as well-suited to that old cartoon conveyor belt music—which I just learned is "Powerhouse" by Raymond Scott—as Doom's usual industrial metal soundtrack.
Slow-fire weapon lovers won't be left in the lurch, though: Producer Stratton praised the "Railspike" weapon in our interview, and you can see that gun pinning enemies to walls in The Dark Ages' first trailers. You can read the rest of our Doom: The Dark Ages story in our upcoming issue 408/396 of the PC Gamer print mag, and Doom: The Dark Ages itself will be arriving shortly after on May 15.
