Video Game / Doom: The Dark Ages

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Because of its Prequel status, this page assumes you have played Doom (2016) and Doom Eternal. There will be spoilers for those games. You Have Been Warned.

Doom: The Dark Ages is a Dark Fantasy First-Person Shooter action game in the Doom video game series. It is once more developed by id Software and published by Bethesda. It was released on May 15, 2025 for Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5 and PC.

Serving as a Prequel to the 2016 Soft Reboot of the series, The Dark Ages follows the Space Marine turned berserker-packin' man and a half who would eventually become the legendary "Doom Slayer" in the medieval fantasy world of Argent D'Nur prior to him being sealed into a sarcophagus in Hell and awakened on Mars by the Union Aerospace Corporation, once more ripping and tearing through wave after wave of The Legions of Hell. Here, the Slayer fights alongside the Night Sentinels against demonic forces led by Prince Ahzrak, who works alongside the mysterious Witch Ulsamir in search of the Heart of Argent.

Previews: Official Trailer 1, Developer Direct, Gameplay Sizzle, Official Trailer 2, Launch Trailer

IMPACT CONFIRMED. THE TROPES HAVE BEEN ACTIVATED.

• Ace Custom: King Novik has his own blinged-out version of the Atlan, with gold-accented plating, gigantic cape and dual shoulder-mounted Wave Motion Guns. During the level "Final Battle," as the Slayer is unable to get his own Atlan back into working condition, Novik decides to lend him the royal Atlan so that he may continue to lead the charge. If Novik's expression is anything to by, the King is NOT so happy to having to give the Slayer his Atlan.
• Acquired Poison Immunity: The Maykr Restraining Bolt on the Slayer keeps him pacified until they need to utilize him, but the Slayer grows increasingly resistant to its effects, eventually completely overcoming the device at maximum power.
• And Show It to You: Whenever the Slayer acquires a Demonic Essence he does so by ripping the heart out of the demon and crushing it in his hands in front of their final moments.
• And the Adventure Continues: By the finale, the Slayer, now freed from Maykr control by the Night Sentinels, decides to commandeer the former Kreed Maykr's ship and remain in Hell, waiting for when they next strike to take the battle to them.
• And Then John Was a Zombie: When the Slayer dies, he appears in hell as a zombie, a shout-out to the same way his equivalent from the Trope Namer fanfic did.
• Angels, Devils and Squid: The game introducing the Cosmic Realm as the second half of the game's Big Bad Duumvirate completes the trifecta of the Doom Slayer fighting demons, angels, and Lovecraftian abominations.
• Anti-Hero: While it was always clear the Doom Slayer is not exactly an Ideal Hero from the get-go, this game really affirms he sits at being Unscrupulous Hero as he is so obsessed firmly with his crusade against Hell that, even though he does not intentionally mean to bring harm to his allies, he will prioritize his Forever War with the dark realm foremost to the point he becomes clearly, if indirectly, responsible for Argent D'Nur's societal demise later on by killing Ahzrak in his blind pursuit of revenge, ensuring that Hell will never back down and continue the onslaught until Argent D'Nur was unable to keep up the fight and lead to a whole lot of unnecessary death because of him.
• Ascended Meme: In the Chapter "Harbor of Souls", the Slayer is killed in action in an attempt to free himself and kill the demons responsible, at which point he comes back to life as a zombie, in a series of events that strikingly mirror DOOM: Repercussions of Evil's infamous plot twist.
  • The achievement for completing the above chapter and resurrecting the Slayer from death is "Too Angry to Die," a memetic epithet often associated with the Slayer which, now, has become rather literal, or at least, too angry to stay dead.
• Badass Cape:
  • Befitting the game's dark fantasy aesthetic, the Slayer's Praetor suit this time around is adorned with a large fur cape.
  • The Royal Atlan, which belongs to King Novik, has a cape that's as big as the enormous bipedal war machine itself.
• Bad with the Bone: The Pulverizer, a gun that grinds up skulls and fires out their flaming shards.
• Ballistic Bone: One of the new weapons, the Pulverizer, is a device that shreds skulls into bits that are later used to attack enemies as flak bullets.
• Big Bad Duumvirate: Prince Ahzrak and the Witch, rulers of Hell and the Cosmic Realm, respectively. Their alliance is formed out of the mutual need to take power from the Night Sentinels, Ahzrak to defeat the Slayer and the Witch to resurrect the Old One and return her dying home world to its former glory.
• Bittersweet Ending: Hell's siege on the Argent homeworld is thwarted for now, and with Thira rescued and now properly in control of her Wraith-borne powers, some semblance of peace is returned to Argent D'Nur. However, the Kreed Maykr's betrayal still weighs heavily on their minds, and the Maykr church's attempts to cover up his actions have sowed doubt among the Sentinels that the Maykrs can be trusted, something that the future will unfortunately prove right. Furthermore, the Slayer has disappeared to parts unknown, heartbroken by the loss of yet another animal companion at the hands of the demons.
• Bling of War: King Novik's Atlan mech is distinguishable from other Atlans not only by it's enormous cape, but also gold-colored parts adorning it's armor.
• Bookends: The game begins with the Doom Slayer being deployed from the Kreed Maykr's ship to stop a demonic invasion on Argent D'Nur. The ending sees the Doom Slayer about to be deployed from the Kreed Maykr's ship again, only this time the Slayer is completely free from the Maykrs' control and appears to have taken the now-deceased Kreed Maykr's ship for himself, positioned above the surface of Hell and ready to advance his never-ending campaign of demon slaughter.
• Breaking Old Trends:
  • Unlike the previous entries, the Union Aerospace Corporation is not involved in any way, by the virtue of the game taking place after the Doom Marine goes AWOL and cuts ties with the UAC in Doom 64, and before a new incarnation of the UAC rediscovers him in Doom (2016).
  • This is the first Doom game to not feature the BFG, though it does have a Suspiciously Similar Substitute in the BFC, or "Ballistic Force Crossbow", that fills the same combat role.
  • This is the first game in the series that completely lacks any form of pistol, whereas even in Eternal it was a functional but removed weapon that mods would re-include.
  • There is no chainsaw in the game. The closest we get is the shield's buzz saw. Mechanically, the Slayer's melee attack has been combined with the chainsaw, now requiring ammo (that can be picked up or regenerates over time, and for two of the three melee weapons, much faster than the chainsaw did) and making the target drop ammo. Unlike the chainsaw, a melee attack isn't a guaranteed kill, but it will always drop ammo.
  • The Glory Kill system that kept the Slayer alive in the previous two games has been removed. Now, all enemies drop health upon death if the Slayer is below a health threshold.
  • The equipment launcher from Doom Eternal and the grenades from Doom (2016) are gone, replaced by the shield's abilities. The Slayer cannot generate armor from any enemy with the Flame Belch, armor is instead awarded from using the shield throw to destroy the armor of enemies who have it.
  • The double jump unlocked in Doom (2016) and kept through Eternal is no longer present, and there is no Dash ability. Instead, the Slayer has a simple sprint toggle (and even when not sprinting, he's still a lot faster than most contemporary FPS protagonists, in series tradition).
  • The Final Boss of the base game is not a classic demon boss, like Doom 2016's Spider Mastermind and Eternal's Icon of Sin - instead it is the new Big Bad Duumvirate debuting in this game, Prince Ahzrak and the Witch.
• Bullet Hell: To balance out the new shield mechanics, the enemies in this game are seemingly more projectile-happy than in previous titles. Enemies won't just fire shots directly at you; many projectiles have distinct hitboxes and come out in different patterns, meaning that knowing how to dodge and keeping an eye on your surroundings are more important than ever. This is especially evident in the boss fight against the Kreed Maykr, where the Slayer will find himself dancing between multiple waves of golden projectiles with different trajectories.
• Call-Back: Quite a few to the classic Doom games:
  • The Slayer's face once again adorns the middle of the game's HUD, this time with a modern holographic reimagining of the classic face sprites that emote and look around as the player takes damage or picks up items. There's also an option in the settings to replace the hologram with said classic sprites. The Berserk powerup can even cause him to grin - said grinning face is also illustrated in the Ripatorium at the start and end of a round.
  • With their more upright posture, brown hide and muscular build, the Imp Stalkers are a more faithful adaptation of the classic Doom games' Imps than the leaner hunchback designs seen in the modern games.
  • Just as in the cliffhanger ending of Doom (1993)'s first episode, the Slayer is killed by a trap partway into the game, only to reawaken in the afterlife on the shores of Hell (this time literally) and fight his way back onto the mortal plane.
  • Once again, the Doom Slayer ends up losing an animal companion. And just like before, it does not end well for the ones responsible.
  • The BFC is a large crossbow that deals devastating damage, which can bring to mind the Calamity Blade from the official Legacy of Rust map pack from Doom + Doom II.
  • Just as in Doom 64, the Slayer goes AWOL after the finale, to remain in Hell and ensure that the forces of Hell are locked in with him.
• Call-Forward: As an Interquel between the classic Doom games and the soft reboots, the game has as many calls forward to the modern games as it does calls back to the classic ones:
  • One of the demons fought in the game is the Agaddon Hunters, which, according to Doom Eternal, are later hunted to extinction by the Slayer and the Night Sentinels, with their remains being used to create the Doom Hunters. Also the execution on some of them involves the Slayer throwing his shield, bisecting them in the torso, showing how the Hunters in Eternal had to have their entire lower body replaced by a hover platform.
  • The Mars City of Hebeth makes a reappearance from Doom Eternal, this time above ground and in a more pristine state, looking eerily like a Sentinel-made version of Doom (2016)'s UAC-made Argent Tower.
  • When The Slayer awakens in the Harbor of Souls, he escapes the grips of the damned in a very similar fashion to how he would eventually awaken at the UAC facility at the very beginning of Doom (2016) - first by recalling King Novik's "rip and tear until it is done" monologue while the Mark of the Slayer is burned into view, and then after awakening, breaking from his bonds, crushing an Unwilling's skull in his hand, and grabbing the first gun he sees.
  • The second half of the game introduces the Night Sentinel commander Marok, whose Codex entry states him to be Commander Valen's son who has a distrust for the Slayer believing that power like his should belong to a true Night Sentinel. Sure enough, Codex entries from Doom (2016) and Doom Eternal state that Marok would get power rivalling that of the Slayer... after he is killed and his soul becomes corrupted into the Icon of Sin.
  • Adding to the above, in a desperate bid to bring the Slayer back from the dead, Valen is forced to enact a demonic summoning ritual to bring the Slayer's soul back from the Harbor, much as he eventually will attempt to with his own son, leading to his rebirth into the Icon.
  • The Kreed Maykr's Face–Heel Turn forces the Slayer to take action by laying siege to his ship, which have their own exclusive Mooks in the form of the Maykr Drones he commands. They attack in very much the same way as the demon-corrupted Maykr Drones the Slayer would later face off far into the future in Doom Eternal.
  • As seen in locations such as Teroth, while rank-and-file Night Sentinels look like medieval knights, Sentinel squad leaders have a more Barbarian Hero look closer in line with the Doom Slayer's appearance. Almost identical, in fact, to Marauders from Doom Eternal.
  • In a late-game cinematic, Valen is shown carrying a Sentinel Hammer, the weapon introduced in The Ancient Gods - Part II DLC for Doom Eternal.
• Chainsaw Good: The Slayer’s "Shield Saw" has a serrated edge that can spin around the edges and cut like a huge circular saw.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Attacks/projectiles known as "Hell Surges" that glow green can be parried by the slayer's shield, either as a counterattack or to stun enemies.
• Complete Immortality: Just like in the original Lovecraft stories, there's strong indicators that the Old One, Cthulhu, is genuinely unkillable in the permanent sense compared to other Titans in the game, even with Sentinel energy, as Ahzrak makes hints to repeatedly when goading the Witch into fighting the Slayer, but unlike the Cthulhu Mythos version, it seems like the Old One cannot passively recuperate all on his own regardless of how severely injured and needs to be actively revived by his followers, meaning that for the time being, he is effectively neutralized by the Doom Slayer ripping off his head until someone can perform the appropriate ritual to facilitate his return once more.
• Counter-Attack: In contrast to the more movement-oriented gameplay of Eternal, the gameplay in "The Dark Ages" shifts priorities to focus more on parrying and deflecting enemy attacks to open them up for counters. The devs have described this philosophy as "Stand and Fight" in contrast to 2016's "Run and Gun" and Eternal's "Jump and Shoot."
• Darker and Edgier: While not downright grim and scary like Doom³, this game is far more dramatic in tone and presentation compared to the colorful and more comical Doom Eternal. Menu interfaces are darker and less stylized, the visuals are gritty and visceral, and the story is more emotional and even sometimes subdued in tone.
• Decapitation Presentation:
  • A more symbolic variation occurs when Ahzrak threatens the Night Sentinels in a display of his newfound power following successfully stealing the Heart of Argent from the Wraith contained within Thira's soul, by tossing them the shattered remnants of the Slayer's Praetor Suit helmet through a Hell portal that he creates within their own base.
  • A straighter example occurs when the Slayer ultimately halts Hell's assault, by presenting them with the mutilated head of Ahzrak and watching as they disperse.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: In its most literal form; the final assault on Hell culminates in the Slayer piloting King Novik's royal Atlan in a fistfight against the Old One, ending with the slayer ripping it's head off.
• Doomed by Canon: On top of Argent D'Nur as a whole, which when we next see it in Doom (2016) has been all but destroyed and consumed by Hell, the game introduces quite a few important characters who quite tellingly don't make it to the next chronological installments:
  • Marok, by virtue of being the only son of Commander Valen, marking him as the Sentinel whose death will eventually lead Valen to betraying Argent D'Nur and resurrecting him as the Icon of Sin. Subverted, however, as the game ends with his survival... for now.
  • The Slayer's pet dragon, Serrat. Despite him being his trusty steed, he is nowhere to be found in the sequel games... which of course is the case as Ahzrak kills him during the climax, thus completely cementing the Doom Slayer's unending rage towards demonkind and Hell itself.
  • From the demons' side, Prince Ahzrak. The sequel games never mention about any Prince at all in Hell's leadership, with the sole Dark Lord, Davoth, ultimately ascending as the true Big Bad of the reboot series. This game shows that the Slayer killed him mercilessly before that period after killing Serrat and gloating about it.
  • From another angle, pretty much the whole Cosmic Realm. It's stated to already be dying and desolate by the time of this game, and there exists no mention of it in the sequel games - indicating that the deaths of The Old One and The Witch, as well as Ahzrak's death rendering either one's resurrection impossible, put the final nail in the eldritch dimension's coffin. The only certainly known survivors of the Cosmic Realm are the Wraiths, as The Ancient Gods shows there still exists untold thousands of them slumbering within the World Spear.
• Dragon Rider: The Slayer has a pet Dragon named Serrat, who can be used in aerial combat in certain missions.
• Driven by Envy: Hugo Martin commented that Prince Ahzrak, the Big Bad of the game, is not fearful of the Slayer. Hell itself seems to be driven by a very deep-seated jealousy of his power, and his main goal is to seek a way to usurp the Slayer's legend to secure his place as ruler of the dark realm.
• Eldritch Abomination: The Great Old One himself, Cthulhu makes a grand appearance, resurrected as part of the Witch's plan to ally with Hell to restore the dying Cosmic Realm to its former glory.
• Eldritch Location: The Cosmic Realm. A chaotic mess of amalgamated space debris floating amidst an alien sky, filled with floating cyclopean and non-euclidean architecture, pockmarked with both tentacles and eyes alike, and populated with shambling, formless monsters of mismatched tendrils, teeth and flesh.
• Epic Flail:
  • The Slayer has a choice of using a flail as one of his 3 melee options, eventually upgrading to the Dreadmace.
  • The Reaver Chainshot is a flail combined with a railgun.
• Extreme Melee Revenge: After defeating the Final Boss, this is how Prince Ahzrak is killed. With Ahzrak depowered and stuck beneath a pile of rubble, the Doom Slayer, fresh off of watching Serrat be killed by the Prince, uses his flail to smash Ahzrak until he stops moving. While the camera doesn't show the aftermath, Ahzrak screams in agony after the first hit, then goes silent after the second. The Slayer hits him a third time, which Smash Cuts outside, but it's clear that the Slayer went to town on Ahzrak's corpse to make sure that he was dead.
• Fantastic Firearms: The game ditches the Doom Slayer's UAC-supplies firearms in favor of those created by the Sentinels.
  • The Doom Slayer's shotguns zig-zag this trope, on one hand they're still the same guns he's carried over when he was the Doom Guy, but on the other hand they're outright called primitive (at least in the regular shotgun's case) and the Sentinels of Argent D'Nur were able to upgrade them into fantastical shotguns. With the Combat Shotgun having been turned into a semi-auto with a magazine tube that holds shells horizontally, similar to the magazine of the FN P90. The Super Shotgun was turned into break-action and lever-action double-barreled shotgun with exposed hammers.
  • The Skullcrusher machine guns seem to use the kinetic force of its grinder blades to spit bone shards, rather than an explosive charge.
  • The Impaler uses large nails the size of rail road spikes, with runes at the flat head being struck by a hammer on the gun to simulate how gunpowder is used to fire bullets.
• The Ferryman: Subverted. In the Harbor of Souls, the Slayer is stopped at the gates of Limbo by a Hell Priest who requests that the Slayer pay him for his services to ferry him across the afterlife. The Slayer then proceeds to blow his head off to disable the paywall and steal his barge.
• Firing One-Handed: Thanks to carrying the Shield Saw in his left hand, by default, all of the Doom Slayer's firearms are carried and fired with only his right hand. Of course, because this is the Doom Slayer we're talking about, this doesn't even inconvenience him. Interestingly, some of the firearms in the game's arsenal appear to be perfectly catered to be used with only one hand. The Ballistic Force Crossbow is the lone exception, disabling the shield while it's raised.
• Flame Spewer Obstacle: Some sections have flame traps that damage the player. Blue variation of it is also present under water.
• Foe-Tossing Charge: The Slayer has the choice to raise his shield and charge towards enemies, sending weaker enemies flying with the force of his momentum.
• Forever War: The final battle sees Ahzrak attempt to bargain with the Slayer for his life, stating that if the Slayer were to kill him, nothing will contain The Legions of Hell any longer and that they will mindlessly attack the Slayer for eternity. The Slayer proceeds to ignore this warning, as it's what he wants.
• Giant Corpse World: The mines housing the Ancestral Forge is built from one, having been constructed around the body of a fallen ancestral beast and making use of its heart to power the forge.
• Heroic Suicide: Left with no other options when Ahzrak uses the Witch's eldritch magic to imprison him in the Cosmic Realm for eternity, the Slayer detonates the Explosive Leash installed into his suit by the Kreed Maykr, seemingly in a "Eureka!" Moment whereby he realizes killing himself could land him in Hell... much to the chagrin of the demons.
• Hijacking Cthulhu: The forces of Hell quite literally do this following the Old One's death at the hands of the Slayer, reconstructing his body with cybernetics and turning him into a Titan-sized eldritch-cyberdemon hybrid, whom the Slayer then fights one-on-one in Novik's royal Atlan.
• Hollywood Acid: On top of being an encounterable stage hazard as par for the course of the series, it's also how the Slayer meets his untimely demise, his body fully dissolved in a sea of acid within the Cosmic Realm. When he awakens as a zombie in the Harbor of Souls, he's missing large patches of both his flesh and armor, with his nose and lips visibly being entirely burned away.
• Humongous Mecha: Remember the damaged titan mech from the Fortress of Doom in Eternal? It's fully functional here, and The Slayer can pilot the towering Atlan mech to fight and defeat the equally huge demonic Titans.
• Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels: There are a grand total of seven difficulties, much like Doom Eternal. Each mode is a specific preset of sliders that can be altered in any way:
  • Aspiring Slayer^note replacing I'm Too Young To Die:
    Choose this difficulty if you are either unfamiliar with First-Person Shooters or are simply looking for a more relaxed experience.
    You take less damage from incoming attacks
    Critical resources are worth more
    Enemies are less aggressive and attack less often
  • Hurt Me Plenty:
    Choose this difficulty if you are looking for a balance of challenge and experiencing the story.
    You take standard damage from incoming attacks
    Critical resources are at default values
    Enemy aggression is moderate
  • Ultra-Violence:
    Choose this difficulty if you are looking for a challenging experience and are confident in your First-Person Shooter skills.
    Enemies hit harder
    Enemies are more aggressive
  • Nightmare:
    Choose this difficulty if you need more than just a challenge, you want a swift and punishing death if you make a mistake.
    Enemies hit extremely hard
    Enemies are extremely aggressive
  • Pandemonium:
    This difficulty has the same level of challenge as Nightmare, but Life Sigils can be used to restart the current Chapter.
    If you run out of Life Sigils and die, your campaign run is lost. This is not recommended for first-time players.
    Life Sigils will allow you to restart the current Chapter
    If you die and have no Life Sigils your campaign ends
    Enemies hit extremely hard
    Enemies are extremely aggressive
  • Ultra-Nightmare:
    This is the same challenge as Nightmare difficulty, but if you ever die your campaign run is lost. This is not recommended for first-time players.
    One death and the campaign ends
    Only saves on Chapter completion
    Life Sigils only heal you
    Enemies hit extremely hard
    Enemies are extremely aggressive
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: One of the Slayer's weapons is a gun that fires large, metal stakes that impale enemies with enough force to pin them to walls.
• Interface Spoiler: Averted. If the level has any weapons or features you might not have access to, and if the level has missions that require those levels such as the Berserk power-up or the Dreadmace, the mission progress screen will not display any of these until you unlock them.
• It's Personal: It was already personal for the Slayer who had lost his beloved pet rabbit to the demons an untold amount of years ago, but it became even more personal when Ahzrak proceeds to kill yet another animal companion of his, this time right in front of the Slayer. The act was enough to drive the already rage-filled Slayer over the edge into full-blown Rage Breaking Point territory, making him shrug off a major stab wound, now hell-bent on ensuring that Ahzrak will die the most painful death imaginable. To very little surprise, he succeeds.
• Interquel: The game shows the story of the Doom Slayer during his time with the sentinels on Argent D'Nur, fleshing out characters and events that were described in the codex of Doom Eternal.
• It's Raining Men: In a Call-Back to Doom Eternal, the very first level has the Slayer being deployed to the battlefield by being fired from a railgun mounted on his space base.
• The Journey Through Death: The Harbor of Souls chapter features a now-zombified Slayer after his death following a failed escape, fighting his way through a purgatory-like realm just outside of Hell in order to return to life.
• Kill It Through Its Stomach: An Old One swallows the Slayer while he's in its realm. Cue the level, "Belly of the Beast."
• Kill Sat: The Kreed Maykr's ship functions as one, having a massive crucifix-shaped Wave-Motion Gun at its bottom for "total purification". The twist is that it doesn't launch any sort of anti-ground ammunition; it launches the Slayer.
• Lighter and Softer: Ironically for a game called The Dark Ages, the game is the most lightest of all Doom games, with the horror elements pretty much gone in favor of a Dark Fantasy Hero's Journey. Sure, Doom Slayer still fight monstrous demons and Maykrs, but almost none of the elements in the game are played for horror.
• Living MacGuffin: The Heart of Argent, an artifact in Sentinel possession powered by the soul of a Wraith that Ahzrak seeks to use to rival the Slayer in strength, and is revealed to actually be within Commander Thira, the daughter of King Novik.
• Loophole Abuse: Prince Ahzrak has the Doom Slayer imprisoned in the Cosmic Realm, a separate dimension from both Hell and the mortal plane, with absolutely no way out and no allies with the means to rescue him, ensuring that the Slayer can do nothing but sit there for all eternity. However, it's been established that Hell (and possibly other afterlives) is a tangible place that mortal souls eventually end up after death ever since the first game, so if the Slayer can't physically leave...
• Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: The Doom Slayer now has a shield in his off hand. It can be used defensively to block enemy projectiles like that of an Arachnotron or offensively to throw at enemies with it turning into a chainsaw.
• Lovecraft Lite: The franchise has long flirted with Cosmic Horror with the premise of fighting Hell itself, but this is the first installment to explore more abstract evil dimensions beyond it with the "Cosmic Realm" being introduced, a cephalod-inspired dimension brimming with nightmares of its own up to and including the Cthulhu himself as part of this dimension. Indeed, horrors beyond comprehension prove to be no match for the Slayer, who literally punches out Cthulhu.
• MacGuffin-Person Reveal: Spying on Thira while she enhances the Slayer's shield at the Ancestral Forge using the power of a Wraith, Ahzrak's forces realize that she's not just guarding the Heart of Argent... she is the Heart of Argent.
• Made a Slave: The Divinity Machine that gave the Doom Slayer his Empowered Badass Normal abilities in the backstory of Doom Eternal also meant that the Maykrs grew immensely paranoid of someone with that much power running amok on his own terms, especially as a potential Spanner in the Works, so they effectively put a leash on him that allows them to drop him into battlefields against the forces of Hell, and then recall him to be a Sealed Good in a Can until the next operation. When circumstances involving Ahzrak's efforts screw this up, however, they settle for an Explosive Leash the old-fashioned way via a Maykr tether to force him to comply instead.
• Magitek: The Sentinel homeworld of Argent D'Nur is a medieval world with shotguns, chainsaw shields, and a Martian tech base.
• Mirroring Factions: The previous game showed how the Angelic Maykrs and Hellish Demons were both created by the same being and under the armor, looked very alike. Here, not only are the factions shockingly alike (the Maykr ship has the same armament and weaknesses of the Hell Carriers), and the boss Kreed Maykr is an almost textbook embodiment of greed and gluttony, but the heroic Night Sentinels use dark magic and decorate their weapons and fortresses barely different than the demons themselves. Even their magical forge is powered by a giant, eldritch heart. It seems that heaven, hell, and mankind are all not so different.
• Mythology Gag: The game has quite a few nods to the classic Doom games in terms of design:
  • The Imp Stalkers, on top of being a reference to the classic Imps in design, also sample part of the Archvile's death sound from Doom II as part of their hurt sounds.
  • The game's incarnation of the Berserk powerup has been reverted to be closer to how it works in the classic Doom games; as opposed to locking the player out of using their ranged weapons, it now powers up your melee attacks while still allowing you to use your other weapons.
  • The Berserk powerup also gives the Slayer glowing eyes in the HUD, something that the Invincibility Sphere did in the classic games.
  • The design of the Cacodemons in this game, with giant exposed brains and tentacles as a result of being corrupted by the Cosmic Realm, brings to mind their character designs from Doom³. The more quadrupedal design of the Pinky demon can also be seen as a nod to this game's design for them.
  • The Combat Shotgun lacks a pumping animation much like it did in Doom 64, which makes sense given that the Codex entries state it to be the same shotgun the Slayer had used in that game, albeit upgraded by the Night Sentinels.
  • Thira bears a strong resemblance to Arlene Sanders from the Doom (1995) novelizations, who is described as a muscular woman with dark red hair and a handsome, androgynous face. It's especially significant as Arlene is said to be a fan of weird horror fiction and Thira is empowered by the lovecraftian Cosmic Realm.
• Nail 'Em: The Impaler, a nailgun whose nails are as big as railroad spikes.
• Obscured Special Effects: Whenever the Doom Slayer gets onto or off of Serrat, there's always a split second cut to black to disguise the transition between the on-foot FPS sections (up close and high in detail) and the third-person flying sections (further away and lower in detail).
• One-Handed Shotgun Pump: As the Slayer is now carrying a shield in his off-hand at almost all times, his shotguns have been modified to allow him to pump them with one hand without his shield bumping into the gun. The Combat Shotgun is now seemingly semi-automatic and cycles on its own, while the Super Shotgun is lever-action, allowing him to reload via Gun Twirling.
• Our Hero Is Dead: The Slayer uses the energy left of his leash to blow up a few Eldritch Abominations who were trying to contain him, then falls into a pit of acid. Though there's a Call-Forward by recalling King Novik's "rip and tear until it is done" monologue while the Mark of the Slayer is burned into view, the Slayer wakes up as a zombie. However, he fights his way out of the land of the dead and comes back to life.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: Upon reaching the barge in the Harbor of Souls, a demonic ferryman extends a hand to the slayer, and the suit prompts, "payment required." The Slayer blasts the ferryman with the Super Shotgun and proceeds through the gate.
• Pile Bunker: One of the new weapons shown is the "Reaver Chainshot", a railgun that fires a large steel ball on a chain which retracts after each shot, putting it somewhere between a Pile Bunker and an Epic Flail.
• Plasma Cannon: The Slayer gets two plasma rifles throughout the game; the "Accelerator" rifle, which has a high rate of fire at the cost of steeply dropping off in accuracy at range, and the double-barrel "Cycler" rifle that allows lightning bolts to arc between plasmoid projectiles.
• Pre-Asskicking One-Liner: The Doom Slayer says all of one word throughout the entire game, presented as one of these. And to top it off, the Slayer pulls up in an Atlan. Too bad for him that his target, Prince Ahzrak, runs away before the Slayer can kill him, which ultimately makes this a subversion, though if the Witch had not teleported him away in time, he would have almost certainly been vaporized by the Atlan's shoulder-mounted cannon. In the Slayer's defense, he spoke not to Ahzrak, but to King Novik, so that he could get out of the way of the blast.
  Doom Slayer: Run.
• Prequel in the Lost Age: The game takes place during the first Sentinel-Hell War an untold amount of time since they first discovered the Slayer. As such, the world of Argent D'Nur is largely war-torn but still relatively in its prime, having not yet been devoured and assimilated into Hell, and quite a few Doomed by Canon characters previously only mentioned in Codex entries, most notably The Betrayer's Son, are still alive and kicking.
• Properly Paranoid: Ahzrak refuses to just kill the Slayer because it wouldn't be a permanent solution, and instead traps him in a shielded platform above a lake of acid. If not for the Maykr Explosive Leash, he would have been trapped there indefinitely. Once he breaks free and is killed by the acid, a quick trip through the realm of death lands him back in the living world to cause more havoc.
• Purgatory and Limbo: The Harbor of Souls, a state of limbo beyond Hell's deepest shores, which the Slayer finds himself in after dying in the Cosmic Realm.
• Real Is Brown: While this game still has some splashes of color, the overall palette is far darker and greyer than its famously bombastic predecessors. This is even reflected in the Slayer himself, whose default armor is a darker shade of olive drab than the previous game's somewhat out of place forest green.
• Restraining Bolt: The Maykrs attached a device to the Slayer's armor that dampens violent thoughts, allowing them to render him docile and keep him on standby until they decide his strength is needed. It also doubles as an Explosive Leash, as any attempt to remove it would at least seriously wound the Slayer and kill anyone else nearby.
• Rage Breaking Point: The Slayer hits this for the first time since the original Doom (1993) with the death of Daisy after Ahzrak cruelly kills Serrat, the Slayer's pet dragon, for trying to defend his master's life, knocking him out of his usual Tranquil Fury and trembling with complete rage as he gets a very heated and vicious Heroic Second Wind.
• Royals Who Actually Do Something: King Novik is most often at the front lines in the ongoing war against Hell, even getting his own custom-made royal Atlan to pilot.
• Saved by Canon:
  • Doom Slayer appears in the sequel games so it's obvious once he becomes a zombie, that he would come back to life eventually.
  • The Khan Maykr meets her end in Eternal, so she escapes the ramifications for the Kreed Maykr's actions by disavowing him.
• Science Fantasy: This installment of the series embraces the space barbarian aesthetic introduced in Doom Eternal to the fullest, giving the Slayer a host of crazy Magitek weaponry, and the Sentinel homeworld of Argent D'Nur featuring an eclectic mix of gothic architecture and futuristic technology.
• Sealed Good in a Can: To a certain degree of, "good," at least.
  • The Maykrs keep the Slayer in a purpose-built vessel under a Restraining Bolt at the start of the game. The Slayer is shown to be slowly overcoming it early in the game, and eventually breaks entirely free.
  • This is Ahzrak's plan to deal with the Slayer. He knows that he can never unify Hell as long as there is someone that the whole of demonkind fears more than him, but as all attempts to kill the Slayer have failed, he engineers a plan to seal him away instead.
  • While not shown in the main game, this is the Slayer's eventual fate before being unsealed at the start of Doom (2016).
• Sequel Logo in Ruins: Inverted, as seen at the end of the announcement trailer. The "DOOM" logo looks pristine even compared to the mechanized-looking one in the very first game. Perfectly conveying how this game is a prequel.
• Shockwave Stomp: When Doom Slayer lands from great height, he produces a shockwave that crushes smaller enemies and falters larger ones.
• Shotguns Are Just Better: While the Slayer has ditched most of his UAC-supplied small arms for Sentinel weaponry this time around, he's made an exception in his trusty shotguns, which are notably the only proper carryovers from his arsenal both past and future. The Combat Shotgun this time is no longer pump-action (or lever-action if its the same shotgun from Doom 64) but instead semi-auto, notably can be upgraded to fire firebombs in its trusty Grenade Launcher rather than sticky or concussion grenades as in previous games, and the Super Shotgun has been retrofitted with a lever on its handle, allowing the Slayer to reload it one-handed by dramatically twirling it.
• Shout-Out:
  • The Cycler, with its boxy design and twin horizontal barrels, is the Nailgun from Quake I.
  • The Slayer's Super Shotgun is lever-action this time around, allowing him to pull a One-Handed Shotgun Pump by twirling it in a nod to the T-800 reloading his own lever-action shotgun in Terminator 2: Judgment Day. As with previous entries in the series, the Slayer will once again give a thumbs up upon sinking into lava in a nod to the same movie.
  • The chapter where the Cosmic entities appear is entitled From Beyond, also the title of a short story by H. P. Lovecraft which is appropriately enough, about eldritch creatures lurking just outside the boundaries of normal space and time. Perhaps even more appropriate to the ultra-violent, 1980s action and horror film-inspired Doom series, it was also loosely adapted into a Bloodier and Gorier (as well as Hotter and Sexier) film by Stuart Gordon, of Re-Animator fame.
  • The gigantic, flanged maces carried by the Titans during the Atlan fight look uncannily similar to the one used by Barbatos (named for a demon in the Ars Goetia, fittingly enough) in Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans.
  • While the previous games were chock full of references to Id's earlier Doom and Quake installments, Dark Ages has a surprising number of elements from 3rd party Doom-engine games. This game's version of the BFG being a giant crossbow with a glowing green bolt recalls the one from Heretic and the double-barreled plasma gun looks nearly identical to the grenade launcher from Strife, also taking place in a strange fantasy world with advanced technology and having a similarly muted color palette compared to contemporary entries in the genre.
  • A more direct shout-out to Hexen can be found in the High Priest character Deag Loric, who shares his name with the Bones of Loric from Hexen II.
  • By contrast to previous entries, Ammo for weapons is found by using melee instead of the chainsaw. Some players have commedically drawn a comparison of this to the piñata skull from the Halo franchise.^note  Skulls in the halo games are gameplay modifiers which allow for changes in gameplay outside of difficulties, each with a score multiplier for game score. The piñata skull in particular has enemies drop grenades everytime a player uses melee on them.
  • The Atlan sections/levels have drawn comparisons to the Pacific Rim franchise. Hugo Martin, one of the directors for the Dark Ages, worked as a concept artist for the 2013 film.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: The Praetor Suit has an onboard assistant that updates the slayer and serves as Mission Control in a few levels. VEGA hasn't been invented yet, with his inventor and the raw materials Out of Focus in this installment. Despite this, the suit's voice is very similar to VEGA's, and the suit itself doesn't speak in the later games where VEGA is present.
• Tailor-Made Prison: Prince Ahzrak has the Witch imprison the Doom Slayer within the Cosmic Realm in such a way that he will live out the rest of his seemingly-limitless lifespan in complete isolation, never to threaten demonkind again. The Slayer is placed on a floating island above an endless sea of deadly acid, surrounded by a forcefield actively powered by three eldritch abominations, which the Slayer is unable to break through despite his strength. No one will be able to help him due to the Sentinels not having the means to open a portal to the Cosmic Realm on their own, and even if they did, the dimension is such a vast and hostile place that it would be virtually impossible to find the Slayer. Fortunately, there is an alternate way out.
• Tanks for Nothing: Hell Tanks, seen as background elements in Doom Eternal, appear here as an enemy class — and despite their large and imitating appearance, are incredibly weak. Their turrets fire Hell Surge bolts, and reflecting a single one back at the tank with your shield causes it to instantly blow up, making them easier to kill than Imp Stalkers, which are the weakest non-fodder demons in the game.
• Throwing Your Shield Always Works: Yes, the Doom Slayer CAN toss his chainsaw shield at distant enemies.
• Tough Spikes and Studs: The Slayer's armor in this game has been fitted with some nasty-looking spiked pauldrons, contrasting the demons' usual Spikes of Villainy. The Power Gauntlet upgrade even has more spikes on it than his regular gauntlet.
• The Underworld: Implied to be the location of the Harbor of Souls, a more neutral purgatory-like realm on the outskirts of Hell where the Slayer finds himself after death.
• Unstoppable Rage:
  • The last two games have already established this as a defining trait of the Doom Slayer, but this one features a few notable instances:
  • The Doom Slayer escapes the Cosmic Realm by dying, ending up in the Harbor of Souls. Instead of being another feeble lost soul waiting for his final judgment, he has instead manifested as a Revenant Zombie with his strength, intellect, and equipment still intact, and it only takes a modicum of effort to break free of his bonds and continue his rampage in the afterlife. The achievement you get from finishing this chapter is called "Too Angry to Die".
  • Prince Ahzrak seems to have become a Physical God after obtaining the full power of the Heart of Argent, with the Doom Slayer clearly getting overwhelmed by his power during his boss fight. However, Ahzrak killing the Slayer's pet mount Serrat and then gloating about it sends the Slayer into such new levels of unbridled fury that he manages to turn the tables around and soundly defeat Ahzrak in the next round, all by himself.
• Wham Episode:
  • The chapter "From Beyond," which reveals that Hell isn't the only dimension bent on destroying the Sentinel homeworld, as Lovecraftian eldritch beings begin attacking the Sentinel command station from a portal very unlike the ones Hell had been using.
  • The chapter "Harbor of Souls" marks the Darkest Hour of the campaign, with Prince Ahzrak successfully stealing and harnessing the Heart of Argent, and the Slayer dying at the beginning of the chapter, with him spending the rest of it as a Revenant Zombie fighting his way back to the land of the living.
• Wham Line: A minor one in "From Beyond", just as eldritch Combat Tentacles encircle the command station's spires.
  Sentinel Soldier: It isn't a demon. Energy readings are all wrong.
• Wham Shot: The Harbor of Souls chapter begins with the Slayer plunging into acid and seemingly dying, only to reawaken as though nothing happened, at which point the camera switches to a third person view... revealing the Slayer to have been zombified.
• Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?: Actively discussed with Kreed and Ahzrak; the former demanding the latter should kill the Slayer while he's unable to retaliate due to the Wraith's magic agonizingly freezing him in place, but Ahzrak counters that they need something far more permanent than outright killing him, as given how unbelievably angry he operates at there's no guarantee he won't come back from the dead as he had before... and sure enough, when he does accidentally kill himself trying to escape Ahzrak's prison, he proves to be able to self-resurrect and continue to be a perpetual motion machine of death and horror for demonkind almost immediately after.
• Womb Level: The Belly of the Beast, a chapter that takes place almost entirely within the stomach of the Old One, who swallowed the Slayer whole following his return to the Cosmic Realm.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: Despite being substantially more clever and forward-thinking than other demons, Ahzrak attempts to threaten the Slayer with the possibility of a Forever War if he kills him due to being the only one capable of rallying Hell presently... forgetting he is talking to a Blood Knight so singularly focused on killing demons that the possibility of a neverending war with Demonkind is exactly what he wants, and that's before taking into account the Slayer's current stance of wanting him dead specifically for more personal reasons than his usual modus operandi.
• You Don't Look Like You: With the exception of the Imps, Unwilling, Maykr Drones, Mancubus, Hell Knights, Whiplash, Arachnotron, and Lost Souls, every other enemy from the previous games that return in this game have all gone through a complete makeover. Especially hit hard were the Barons and Cacodemons, who have received all-new designs that are more Lovecraftian than demonic since the game's incarnations of them are eldritch-demon hybrids created by exposure to the Cosmic Realm.