We could have got a female Doom Slayer in Doom Eternal

Doom Eternal’s creative director has put “a lot of thought” into adding a female Doom Slayer into the series and has given an insight into how she'd feel if she made it into a game.

As picked up by VGC, id’s Hugo Martin has revealed that adding a female protagonist to the ultra-violent shooter was an ideal that has been actively chatted about by the developers over at the studio.

“I’ve thought about [adding a female Doom Slayer,]” he said in a Twitch stream. “I think if we did it, I’d want it to be lethal. I think it’s interesting how it would impact the Glory Kills and the weapons that she would have. The fighting style [would] certainly [be] all aggression, absolutely, but a different type of aggression.”

It sounds like Martin and the folks at id wouldn’t just want to add a female character for the sake of having a female avatar option; she’d look, feel and play as her own distinct entity – not just act as a reskin for the Doom Slayer(s) we already have in-universe.

“I would really strive to have it impact the gameplay in a way that was meaningful. [...] Tonally, when it comes to designing the action, you think about, ‘if The Slayer is a Ferrari, then what would a female Slayer be? What would a Medieval slayer be?’ How would that effect things and what sort of analogies would you draw from that to allow it to influence the experience? It definitely would be cool.”

To date, we’ve not seen a female playable character in the Doom series – not in the rebooted universe that’s been active since 2016, or in the classic games that kicked off the IP back in the 90s.

You can take a look at how the Switch version of the latest game runs against the PS4 Pro here, and – if you're fancy – you can clock it running at 4K 120fps on an RTX 3080 here.

We also recently heard that we may be getting Doom Eternal VR sooner, rather than later.