Every now and then, you stumble across leaked footage that makes you feel like you dodged a bullet. That's exactly what I felt when I revisited the canceled DOOM 4 project. That game had a bit of a grimy charm to it, but as someone who worships the modern trilogy, I couldn't help but feel eternally grateful that DOOM 4 never happened.

Without its cancellation, we would've never had the refined, ferocious beast that DOOM is today. Doom: The Dark Ages reminded me of just how far the franchise has come. And how close we really were to losing everything that made it stand out.

Doom 4 was shaping up to be a soulless shell with no identity

A product of its time, Doom 4 would've been left in that same era, forever

Watching Doom 4's gameplay makes one thing painfully obvious — it had no idea what it wanted to be. The inspirations from military shooters like Call of Duty and Battlefield weren't just apparent, but unsubtle, as if they had been used as blueprints. The demons? Practically mutated humans in riot gear. From what we've seen of the game, the tone was going to be gritty and rather joyless — there was even going to be a vehicle gunner section, which, having now seen how clunky and bland they were in The Dark Ages, makes the whole thing feel like a shallow mimic rather than a Doom game.

Had it launched, Doom 4 would've vanished into the same obscurity as F.E.A.R. or Medal of Honor — the kind of shooter people only talk about in retrospective articles and videos. It wasn't until Hugo Martin arrived after the game's cancellation that the series found its soul again. Martin revered the Slayer like a god and unfused every frame of the rebooted trilogy with that same reverence. The result speaks for itself — from 2016 to Eternal, and then to The Dark Ages, the series' identity has been clear, bold, and unflinching. It's fast, brutal, and unapologetically Doom. This clarity of purpose and identity was born out of rejecting everything that Doom 4 stood for.

The series always needed the Doom Slayer, not an average Joe

The Doomguy is synonymous with the franchise itself

There's a reason that nobody remembers the name of the protagonist in Doom 3 — it wasn't our Doomguy. Doom 4 was about to make the same mistake again. Leaked scripts and concept documents reveal that the player character would have been an unnamed soldier, caught in a fight for Earth's survival. He may even have had a family and a more 'relatable' background. Sure, give me that game, but don't call it Doom, please. Doom has never been about relatability — it's about ripping and tearing your way through hell with uncontainable rage.

The Slayer is iconic — not because we understand him, but because we can't. He's not a man, but a myth incarnate. Even when surrounded by Sentinel warriors or working with King Novik, there's never any doubt — he's on another level. He doesn't follow, he is followed. To dilute that by putting the Doom 4 protagonist in a squad, giving him NPC chatter, or forcing character arcs onto him would have ruined everything.

A huge reason why I love the new Doom trilogy is because it leans into older archetypes, where every character didn't have to be a morally-gray mess with character development. The Dark Ages nails this on the head — he is feared, avoided, and often left alone, by allies and foes alike. That is what adds to the Slayer's legend. Doom 4 would have taken all of that away with a cookie-cutter FPS hero.

Glory kills are the only thing I'm glad they kept

Even a broken clock is right twice a day

In the early Doom 4 prototypes, melee finishers were slow, brutal, and surprisingly cinematic. But they felt like interruptions — sluggish breaks in the flow of combat. Still, they were born during the development of Doom 4, and credit where it's due, that's one of the best things the modern franchise has given us. Doom 4 would've had finishers that had synced melee animations between the player character and the enemies.

Thankfully, for the reboot, these animations were edited, trimmed, and weaponized to craft what we now know and love as glory kills. They weren't just flash — they gave you health, encouraged aggression, and provided quick two-second breaks between relentless combat.

The Dark Ages might have dialed back their utility and variety a bit too far — one of my only gripes with the game — but their presence still feels right. Glory kills aren't gimmicks, they are gameplay. They are a direct remnant of the Doom 4 era — salvaged and polished into one of the defining traits of the rebooted trilogy. It's incredibly ironic how the worst Doom game gave us one of the best ideas the series has ever implemented.

The Slayer stands alone, and the new Doom games understand that

There's nothing that a whole army could do for him

In Doom 4, the player character would have worked alongside a squad of marines to repel an Earth-based invasion. Even if they had somehow shoehorned the Slayer into that narrative, it still would have missed the mark entirely. The whole point of the Doom Slayer is that he doesn't need (or want) backup. You don't fight alongside the Slayer. You get out of his way — Doom Eternal and The Dark Ages understood that perfectly. After all, this is the man who fought demons alone on Mars and its moons, and then chose the path of perpetual torment, fighting demons for centuries trapped in hell, all by himself. There's nothing you can do for him that he can't do himself.

The Slayer's mythos thrives on the idea that he's awe-inspiring. Demons and allies both freeze around him, Sentinels revere him and kings avoid him if they can. The illusion would have shattered if we saw the Doom 4 protagonist or even the slayer use cover-based military tactics, hiding behind cover next to a sergeant, barking orders.

We had plenty of forced camaraderie in the Call of Duty games at the time — what we needed was unstoppable, silent fury in boots, and Doom 4 didn't really understand that. That's one misunderstanding that could've ended the franchise then and there.

Betting against the FPS trend saved DOOM

Redefining the genre instead of sticking to it helped the Doom revival

Doom 4 was a product of its time — and very clearly so. Around the early 2010s, every first-person-shooter was trying to be cinematic, grounded, and story-heavy. Doom 4 would've fit right in, but in doing so, it also would've been forgotten immediately. Instead, id Software pulled a hard U-turn, and the rebooted Doom 2016 didn't chase trends — it actively rejected them.

Gone were the cover mechanics, escort missions, and reload animations. What replaced them was raw, blistering speed, and arcade-style chaos. It's impressive how the shotgun design remained almost the exact same through two different iterations, though. No complaints in that department.

The genius of the modern trilogy lies in its balance. Eternal expanded the mechanics with layers of depth, and The Dark Ages? It dared to bring in modern sensibilities — parries and heavier storytelling — without once losing sight of what makes Doom, well, DOOM. In The Dark Ages, old-school level progression is married with new-age combat loops, and id Software does it with absolute confidence. Where Doom 4 would've tried to impress the market, Doom 2016 redefined it, and that brave bet of going against prevailing FPS trends is why the franchise isn't just alive, it's better than ever.

I shudder at the thought of a timeline that got Doom 4

In an alternate reality, Doom 4 released, fizzled out, and the franchise faded into dusty bargain bins at GameStop. Thankfully, that's not our timeline — ours got a miracle. We got Doom 2016, then Eternal, and now The Dark Ages.

Each of these games built on a foundation that was only possible because Doom 4 failed. And honestly, I've never been more thankful for a game getting scrapped because it gave birth to a series I'm in love with — one that remembers what it is, and never stops ripping and tearing.