First Doom 3 expansion announced

By Tom Bramwell Published 25 October, 2004

And the Resurrection of Evil will also see the resurrection of the double-barrelled shotgun.

The first official expansion pack for Doom 3 will be co-developed by Nerve Software and id Software and will herald the return of the double-barrelled shotgun, publisher Activision announced this afternoon. Say Hell-o to Doom 3: Resurrection of Evil.

Few details are available about the expansion - we don't even known when it will ship, although we could hazard a guess that it'll be "when it's done" - other than the developer and a few scraps about the story: apparently you hold in your hands a timeless and evil artefact that holds the powers of Hell, and the demons want it back.

The expansion will consist of new locations, characters and weapons, including the classic boomstick arguably made famous in the first-person shooter genre by id Software's efforts with Doom II. It will also feature multiplayer support for up to eight players, rather than Doom 3's four, on a selection of new maps.

"Doom 3 defines first-person cinematic action," id Software CEO Todd Hollenshead modestly observes, "and the expansion pack continues right where we left off - with a terrifying atmosphere, a new story and one of the most classic weapons ever, the double-barrelled shotgun."

The expansion "delivers players deeper into the heart of the UAC to uncover new secrets and technology used to destroy the demon force that's Hell-bent on destroying you," he added.

Although the game is being co-developed by Nerve and id, the likelihood is that Nerve will handle most of the grunt work; assuming the collaboration is in keeping with the trend set by past id Software FPS expansions and sequels. Indeed, Nerve's previous work includes Return To Castle Wolfenstein: Tide of War for Xbox, an online-enabled reworking of an id property originally exported and re-imagined on the PC by Gray Matter Studios.

Picture of Tom.

About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (37) Latest comment 7 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • AtomicBanana #1 7 years ago

    I predict prettiness and averageness in equal measure.

  • Machiavel #2 7 years ago

    Doom3 was long enough as it is, thank you. But then, double barrelled shotgun?

    /dives into needless hype

  • UncleLou #3 7 years ago

    A double barelled shotgun you say? And people complain there's no innovation!

    I don't want to dive deeper into the heart of the UAC though, I want battles outside, on the Mars surface.

    Really, I liked Doom 3 a lot, but I am not sure there's the need for an expansion pack.

  • Dirtbox #4 7 years ago

    I wonder if there are going to be a lot of corridors in it.

  • praetorian #5 7 years ago

    Now if it featured a gun with a torch on it, I'd be interested...

  • Dire #6 7 years ago

    "and the expansion pack continues right where we left off - with a terrifying atmosphere"

    i take it i've been playing a different game then, all i got was cheap scares that bored me quickly.

  • JC #7 7 years ago

    praetorian, there's a mod for that you know!

  • Tejstar #8 7 years ago

    lol - great stuff blah!!!

  • commander dixon #9 7 years ago

    "....Really, I liked Doom 3 a lot... "

    /puts Uncle Lou on ignore
    ;)

  • Feanor #10 7 years ago

    LOL, very funny.

  • space_ace #11 7 years ago

    i don't care about the double shotgun but i'll gladly use it on the doom 3 haters - i told you to stay the hell away! go home, to the sims or something..!

  • brutal #12 7 years ago

    well i can run it on ultra at 60fps :p

    so there.

    all other points are valid tho :)

  • Freek #13 7 years ago

    Maybe they can add some light and oh I dunno, actaul gameplay!

  • spiny #14 7 years ago

    Oh good. More corridors. Yummy.

    bleh.

  • Tyronne #15 7 years ago

    Thing is how can it be resurrection if technically nothing was really laid to rest in the first one...I know lets bring something back to life that we havent killed yet...add some corridors and a few of those pizza faced things coming out of grills and stuff and then charge 20 quid.

  • APR #16 7 years ago

    /patiently waits for Quake 4...

  • Sko #17 7 years ago

    "Doom 3 defines first-person cinematic action," id Software CEO Todd Hollenshead modestly observes...

    He's right you know. I never really understood how truely mediocre an over-hyped piece of software could be before Doom3 came along and defined it.
    Edited by 1 at 26/10/04 @ 00:09

  • mash the x button #18 7 years ago

    motorbikes?

  • space_ace #19 7 years ago

    no motorbikes, planes or parachutes, i'm afraid. still better than halo though.

  • #20 7 years ago

    There will be guns though!

  • UncleLou #21 7 years ago

    The number of people slagging off Doom 3 amazes me.

    Either you

    a) stupidly bought into some kind of hype, actually not having the foggiest what you would buy;

    b) haven't even played it;

    or

    c) are Commander Dixon ;)

    I bought it and knew what to expect, and had a fantastic time.

    /shrugs

  • #22 7 years ago

    Heh. Hey, that's exactly the post I was contemplating doing.. but then I started thinking about the possibility of new and wonderful guns.

    Ah.. guns.

    Hm. Anyway; Doom3 -- good game. Not very long-lived though, but still.

  • ChrisOTR #23 7 years ago

    Seems to me that anyone who deals only in extremes with their opinions on games is daft as a brush. Doom 3 isn't revolutionary. It also isn't crap. As many people have said, it's a very old game with a very new graphics engine, and, for a while at least, it's bloody scary and good fun. There. Next argument?

  • WoodenSpoon #24 7 years ago

    I didn't mind all the indoor fighting in Doom 3, I thought outdoor locations looked pretty average (Could be because they're on Mars, not much chance for variation I guess. Heh), the engine's meant to be used for indoor stuff more though, I thought?
    Anyway, I'll look forward to an expansion pack, assuming it doesn't cost more than £15. On second thoughts, not gonna happen. Ah well.

  • jumpdeveraux #25 7 years ago

    I hope it's set in the UAC Base Design Department, I will take the double barrelled shotgun straight to the Corridor Designers forehead...

    Perhaps the next innovation will be multiple paths through a level rather than deciding whether to walk to the left or right of a pillar.

  • Freek #26 7 years ago

    When ever something is bad and people acknoledge that fact there's always somebody out there who has to say: "They're just being trendy".
    It's not trendy it's reality: Doom 3 is a game padded out with miles and miles of identical looking corridors and rooms and they all play exactly the same way: go into room, trigger monster spawn, kill monster infront, kill monster behind.
    And it does that same thing, over and over and over. That worked in 1993, but it doesn't work anymore today.
    With only having some verry rare moments of glory in the verry last hour of the game, like the Hell level. "You gotta contineu the game, it gets better near the end". Yeah, if you call wadding through hours of repetative nonsense to get to half an hours worth of fun gameplay "better" then yes it did get better.
    And the fact that unreal 2 sucks just as hard and got flamed just as badly when it got released doesn't change that.

  • #27 7 years ago

    Heh. Yeah, that's actually one negative argument about Doom 3 that I agree with. The restrictiveness of the levels, a more open-ended levelstructure would've done worlds of good. Sure, it'll take a whole lot longer to design levels with multiple paths and more stuff going on, of course it will. The whole 'try every door, and the one that'll open is the way you're supposed to go next' isn't really a forward-thinking way of designing a level.

    I have a feeling this won't change with this expansion-pack though. :|

  • ozgamer #28 7 years ago

    More of the same bore. Thanks for the pretty graphics iD.

  • commander dixon #29 7 years ago

    go to bed verm ....

  • #30 7 years ago

    You do realise there were no such thing as a scripted game in 1993, right? .. Freek

  • Eraser #31 7 years ago

    whine whine whine whine whine

    That's all you people do these days.
    Doom 3 never pretended more than to be a game with run-off-the-mill gameplay. All that id Software ment with re-defining gaming is the immersion into the game, the atmosphere, the detail with which everything has been set up and the livelyness of the entire world. In each of those points they succeeded IMO. You can disagree with that, yes, but that doesn't mean that id Software "suck" for creating a game with simple gameplay.

    Gameplay of this type has been succesful since Wolfenstein 3D. Why fix what isn't broken? I still enjoy shutting my brain off and just blasting away some baddies, that's what it's about. I don't need fifteen million body implants (*cough* deus-fucking-ex *cough*) or so-called advanced AI (Far Cry or better yet... Halo.... bwaahahaha what a joke). Just give me a shotgun with a lot of oomph, a bunch of hell creatures to shoot and I'm happy.

    Shit, I've had the time of my life yesterday playing classic PacMan on a Taito game box. PACMAN people. All you spoiled whiny 13 year old people that call themselves "gamers" should take an example out of that. But noooo, if a game doesn't require 15 CPU's to run and 12 keyboards to control then it isn't good enough for you anymore. sheesh.

  • #32 7 years ago

    Heh. If you said PAC-MAN 3 you could've had a point there.

  • praetorian #33 7 years ago

    praetorian, there's a mod for that you know!

    I know, the Duct Tape mod... but it would be nice if Carmack would actually acknowledge the fact that it was an oversight.

  • AtomicBanana #34 7 years ago

    doom 3 is immersive, scary (at least in the beginning), looks good, SOUNDS awesome, and has a believable world built around it (the whole UAC thing). now how many other games can you pull up here of which you can say the same?

    -----

    I liked the game, but the scripting was so rigid and the base design so non-sensical that I don't think it was believable or that immersive. How come I'm the only one that survived more than 2 seconds? why is no one else capable of what I could do? why do the AI people u meet nigh on completely ignore the monsters and often visa versa . . .

  • Khanivor #35 7 years ago

    Doom 3 was a lot of fun. It never set out to revolutionise the world, just to provide a very fine looking simple blaster that was quality entertainment.

    It's like Star Wars monolpoly. It's the same game with new, jazzed up bits. Why complain because your pieces cannot kill each other or at the lack of sound effects? It's the core gameplay that counts and wheter or not you find it fun. Football is still a good game without the inclusion of jet-packs, innovation and re-invention does not garuntee a good time.

    Althouhg the jetpacks would work for me.

  • Sko #36 7 years ago

    I love those who go on about people complaining too much and then follow it up with a half-page bleat. It's so hilarious. :)

  • Skeeve #37 7 years ago

    Personally, I liked doom 3, it didn't break new ground for gameplay, but it was fun while it lasted even if it isn't really replayable.

    As far as the expansion, since its a followup to doom 3 and adds the doublebarrel shotgun, the logical setting for it would be earth like doom 2.

    On the flashlight issue, the gameplay idea behind it was fine in theory, it simply didn't work for most people. Rather than the lazy copout of the ducttape mod's approach in the expansion it would be good if they'd let you use the torch and any one handed weapons at the same time, but prevented you from using the larger stuff and the torch all at once.

  • Xensor #38 7 years ago

    Doom 3 is a big shiny normal-mapped tech demo/advertising hoarding. It has added next to nothing to the 1st person shooter genre - the original half-life batters it into submission in gameplay terms. I'm not saying it's all bad - very good atmosphere, sound and use of lighting but they should enhabce the gameplay, not make up the bulk of it. And the use of little cubbyholes full of imps that open behind you is cheap old-school gameplay that frankly smacks of laziness and a lack of ideas. I also thought the physics implementations is patchy at best and even tho all the various bits of whirring machinery look good a little more interactivity would be nice.

    IMO of course :)

    /2 cents

  • Artemus #39 7 years ago

    Yawn. These slagging off Doom 3 arguments are tiresome. Are people trying to prove that they are a 'higher breed' of gamer or something or is it just trendy? Anyone would think this deserves to be in same gaming bin as Rise of the Machines, TR: Angel of Darkness and Driver 3 from some of these rants.

  • DNM #40 7 years ago

    "Unreal 2 was better"

    Oh please, I was merrily reading through the comments agreeing and disagreeing, but wasn't going to post anything, but that is the biggest load of 'hate Doom 3 bandwagon' crap I've ever read! Unreal 2 was awful .. end of.

  • DNM #41 7 years ago

    "...any one handed weapons at the same time, but prevented you from using the larger stuff and the torch all at once."

    Or have a helmet or shoulder mounted light.. I found it rather odd that with all the tech they had at their disposal, he was using a simple flashlight anyway! Maybe have battery life or sommat to keep from overuse..

  • space_ace #42 7 years ago

    Xensor has added next to nothing to the 'doom 3' hating.

  • #43 7 years ago

    More interactivity is a very valid point, even if he mentioned it inside a subjective point, space ace. Wouldn't you want more crap to mess around with inside the game? ID talked up the physics a lot before releasing the game, but it was never really taken use of in-game. Shooting boxes around is one thing. Having physics 'puzzles' (or any other word for obstacle) as a larger part of the gameplay is quite another thing.

  • #44 7 years ago

    I don't think you understand.

  • #45 7 years ago

    Not physics 'as seen in' this or that other game.

  • #46 7 years ago

    You can still play it, you know.