The canceled Doom 4 was apparently going to be wildly different than its predecessors, and a new video of unedited footage shows off just how big of a departure the game could have been.
Released on YouTube by video game documentary channel Noclip, the footage shows off a much different vibe for the franchise. It shows the player being chased in the sewers by demons crawling on the wall and ceiling, as horror music swells in the background. It gives off more of a survival-horror vibe than the high-octane action of the Doom games. Some of the early prototype footage also evokes memories of Rage, another series developed by id Software.
🚨 NEW GAMEPLAY SHOWCASE🕹️
It's almost been six years so we figured it was time to release the unedited footage of DOOM 4 and development footage of DOOM (2016) we sourced from Bethesda/id. Some cool stuff in here. Enjoy DOOM fans!
WATCH: https://t.co/hPfN9uY9mm pic.twitter.com/Hfr23X00ki
— Noclip (@noclipvideo) July 11, 2022
Doom 4 was officially announced back in 2008. After disappearing from the news cycle for a number of years, it was officially re-revealed as Doom, which would go on to launch in 2016.
In our IGN Unfiltered interview with id Software Executive Producer Marty Stratton, we learned Doom 4 was abandoned in favor of Doom 2016 because the project was "more Doom in name than really anything."
"The thing is; it was still good. It was a good game. It was still a ways away from launching, so it had a ways to go," Stratton said at the time. "We were multiple teams at a time… a lot of people were working on Rage and then we… refocused attention around [DOOM] and it just kind of lacked some of those fundamental DOOM things."
For more on Doom, check out the weirdest devices that can run the 1993 original, including a LEGO brick.
Logan Plant is a freelance writer for IGN. You can find him on Twitter @LoganJPlant.