The E3 announcement for the upcoming Doom sequel was just a teaser for the next showing, which Bethesda said would come during their annual QuakeCon event. Now we know almost exactly when. The Doom Eternal gameplay reveal will take place on Friday, August 10 at 9 am PT on the second day of QuakeCon.
The QuakeCon 2018 panel list reveals that Game Director Marty Stratton and Creative Director Hugo Martin from id Software will showcase the game during the show’s keynote address, in addition to a separate behind-the-scenes panel later during the convention. Quake Champions, Rage 2, and The Elder Scrolls Online will also have their own sections of the panel. The address will be streamed live on their Twitch channel.
id Software has stayed quiet regarding Doom Eternal. It takes place on Earth and will have “the ultimate combination of speed and power with the next leap in push-forward, first-person combat,” which sounds a lot like its predecessor from 2016. Also, while it may be hard to believe, there will be demons in this game — twice as many according to Martin. Also on the E3 stage, he said that there are some things about Doom Eternal that we “might not be expecting.”
It is one hell of a reveal to save for the returning keynote speech in the biggest QuakeCon ever. The convention has not had a keynote speech in the past few years, which is probably partly due to John Carmack’s departure from id Software in 2013.
Doom (2016) was also shown at QuakeCon 2014 but that demo was kept secret for almost a full year. It then got a full reveal during Bethesda’s E3 2015 conference. Bethesda Softworks VP of PR and Marketing Pete Hines stated that they kept it secret to show the biggest fans that everything was going well while also avoiding the scrutiny the game would have met if that same demo was put online.
