Previously announced to get 2 DLCs after its release, Doom Eternal is finally getting its first expansion with The Ancient Gods—and it runs independently from the main game.
The Ancient Gods will be a standalone DLC, which lets players enjoy it without the need for the base game. This means that anyone who is still yet to play Doom Eternal can skip right into the DLC.
A Developer Speaks
The move comes from the developer’s desire to reach a wider audience. A goal that they believe is possible with an independent DLC. Marty Stratton of id Software, via a talk with PCGamesN, stated:
“It’s important as we want the DLC to reach as many people as possible. In fact, you don’t even need to own Doom Eternal to buy the DLC and play it.”
It is uncertain whether the DLC was intended to be massive from the start. But it is quite clear that the developers have overdone themselves with it to reach the project’s existing scope. Something which Doom Eternal’s game director, Hugo Martin, seems to be “very proud” about.
“Multi-Part”
While most people would typically attribute DLCs as a smaller scope of the main thing, Martin claims otherwise.
“Most people would associate DLC with being of smaller scope—it’s kind of like the made for TV version of the movie, and the movie was the main game. For us, this is very much like a two-part film—this is every bit as grand as the main game was.”
Standalone expansions are nothing new in the gaming scene, and it is not relatively recent either. Throughout gaming’s history, titles have been getting expansions irrespective of the main game’s assets. This is not to say that the two titles don’t necessarily share similar files at all. They may be, but all the while remaining independent from one another.
An Old Business Practice
One need not even have to look farther just to understand the reality of the notion. Just some years back, Bethesda managed to spawn a few titles that are technically expanded contents of their precursors. Examples, specifically, being Wolfenstein: The Old Blood and Wolfenstein: Youngblood.
Now, there are plenty more titles that bear the same case and whose extent different to how far you’d go from the timeline. But if there is a takeaway from the initiative, it’s that the step id Software is heading towards pro-consumers, one that could potentially bring good results, especially for the franchise.
Image used courtesy of Bethesda Softworks/YouTube Screenshot