id’s Hugo Martin on Doom Eternal’s Lighthearted Gore

I met Adrian Carmack at a bar in Texas, which was fucking awesome. And it was funny because he started telling me like, well, if you guys are going to make it, you know, we were in production on Doom Eternal. He's like, if you guys are going to make a Doom game, here's what we thought when we made Doom. And everything he listed, we were all like, that's what we think. You know, like he's like, we just did stuff that made us laugh and made us smile. Like, that's what we say. You know, like it was cool. He was super nice. So it to me, id Software is kind of like Disney, like they invented a genre. And we are part of the new generation there. And we have a legacy to live up to like, yeah, it's the it's a really special place to work. I've a tremendous amount of I don't want to say pressure, but we're all motivated. Yeah, well, it's it's you know, you're working at the highest spot. That's like, yeah, if you go, I mean, if you think about it, it's like, if it's rap, you're at death row records. You know, I mean, you're like at the highest spot. And the coolest thing is like the type of games that they have always made. Just they they they are able to get away with things that a lot of mainstream AAA games struggle with just because of how violent it is. I mean, they are like, again, it's it's Evil Dead 3 with a Transformers budget. Like who the fuck gets to make that? Like, you know, like we we those the shit you see, we spend a shitload of time making that stuff. I can only imagine. Whereas like in a lot of situations I've been in, it's like, yeah, we want to cut this dude in half. Like, I don't have a lot of money for that dude. So do it pretty fast. Like we're like there are artists like craftsmen, you know, working on the end trails like this looks pretty good. And literally the notes you're like, I need like the intestine to kind of like flap a little when you get the thing off, you know, like and it's how do you know if you've crossed the line? Is there has there been a time when you had a scene and people dial that back? We we actually tonally, you know, you say how do you start the project? It's it's kind of like there's a fair amount of brainstorming and the strength of any creative team is that is at least for a game is how you brainstorm with each other. The synergy in that room has to be good. You got to be selfless. You got to show up. You got to be willing to support other ideas, other people's ideas as much as your own. We have a fucking amazing group in that regard. But tonally, we try to establish that to like, look, guys, we're not making saw. We're not making hostile. It's not malicious. It's not meant to make you cringe. And we actually cut together a little video of like what we thought violence wise was inappropriate and tonally felt off. And then we made another video of what felt right. And that was Evil Dead 2 with like it's not a slow trickle of blood out of a sliced open wrist. It is some dude's head came off and Hawaiian punch just starts fucking shooting out of his head. You know, like that's really what it is. Like it's cartoonish, you know, and it goes so far that you because the thing is you do this so much so often. I mean, you are murdering demons per minute. Like I don't know what it is, but it's fucking crazy. If it was off putting and realistic and kind of like, ooh, you'd be so turned off. It'd be sick. Like you'd make you sick after a while. But so kind of weird way of looking at it. I don't think you're right. What you're doing is like super gory and disgusting. You think somehow or another that will make you less sick. Well, it was more realistic and less bloody. Oh, for sure. I mean, totally. We could we could twist that where every one of those is mean spirited and really off putting for sure. I mean, I don't want you to sell me some PR stuff to sort of defend your game against people that are anti violence because that's what it sounds like. What you're doing is super bloody and disgusting and violent to say that somehow or another that is less off putting than less gory is pretty. That's a ridiculous argument. I don't want you using it here or anywhere else. Well, it's Joseph. It is not. This is no PR. This is legit. It sounds like you've been coached. No, no, no. Like this is my message to the team. I mean, sincerely, like, okay, you're coaching them. Well, because they make the content. So like, think of this. All right. I good. I like this because this is the fucking truth. So you look at Saw, you look at torture porn horror movies. They're they're cutting Achilles tendons with a fucking exacto knife and the dude is screaming in pain and he's a person like this is gnarly shit. He doesn't look like he's having a good time. Like versus on Evil Dead 2 when you flop off the head of that one grandma creature that comes up out of the basement and like fucking buckets of blood start coming out of her head. Right. Cartoonish cartoonish. So like it's it's critical zero PR spin. That is we have to believe that because look, your design story is going to be exposed to the to the consumer in two fucking seconds. Like they can see through your bullshit in five seconds. If they're like, dude, you're trying to sell. No, like so we have to have an honest, good design story that we can stand behind. That is true. And that that is the truth. I mean, we basically looked at like cartoons and like make it over the top the animation. So every time here's a perfect example. Every time you murder a caca demon, which is those flying balls, you pull out their eyeball. What is it called? A caca? A caca demon. A caca? What's the spell? C a c c c a c c a c o c a c o kids. You have kids, right? I do. I have three kids. It's caca. Well, saying caca demon. It's a poo poo demon shirt. The the the so every time you pull out his eyeball, you literally hear like, I can't do it. But yeah, sound like a like a funny cartoony sound. And that is absolutely intentional to take the edge off what you're doing. Because if it was more gruesome, and they're like, it's the exorcist versus evil dead two, those are tonally two completely different movies. You know, House House was a movie that came out in the 80s that was inspired by evil dead. That's like a fucking comedy. I mean, it is a comedy. And it's a horror comedy versus the exorcist, which is fucking amazing, fucking amazing, but really, very serious, you know. And that's that's how we're able to do what we do. Okay, stop selling it. Stop selling the violence thing. I get it. I see what you're saying. What is this? A caca demon? That's a caca demon. It's caca. That's poop. It looks like poop. Like if like if you had a demon shit, that's what it would look like. Like, Oh, no, tearing you up on the way out. What is that an original one? That is the original caca demon from the original Doom? Yes. Oh, cool. So it's an updated version of that. But you know, just more graphically intense. Yes.