Utterly Mad

Whenever I see the Bethesda logo in the intro to DOOM 2016, I always think "fuck you, you didn't make this shit, fuck off cunt." And now that I've played it for five hours straight instead of just a little hands on for a few minutes, my reaction to seeing their logo is even more vitriolic. Mother fuckers trying to take more than a little credit for something that's good. Id made it, Bethesda didn't. Fuck off Bethesda and learn to make better games like this more respectable company you own does. Learn to put a little fucking love and effort into what you make goddamnit. At least they aren't like the film companies, churning out a movie or two in a single franchise every year. I guess there is that.

It's fantastic. The gameplay is fast and smooth, the violence is visceral but not classlessly over the top, the environments are simple and yet interesting. Monster redesigns are a nice blend of new and old, and killing those things doesn't get old easily. The balance between gameplay and difficulty is so fine tuned that if you fail, it isn't the games fault. There's hardly any fanservice and when there is, it's small and out of the way instead of being waved in your face. It's a game that feels like it was made to be a game. It doesn't have all this stupid horse shit that most games insist on having these days. The upgrades you can get effect gameplay dramatically for the better. Overall, it's a fantastic example of what games should be. The world would be a hell of a lot more fun and less creatively bankrupt if there were more companies making games with the kind of care and attention to detail the id (not bethesda) put into DOOM 2016.

1. Video game publishing is arguably higher risk than actually creating video games (at least if you're working in a manner similar to Id and Bethesda's relationship, where Bethesda is more or less footing all the bills). Besides that, if things hadn't worked out, everyone would have blamed Bethesda. Since they did, everyone credits Id.

2. Frankly, Id got nothing done on the game until they were aquired by ZeniMax, who then forced them to work with Bethesda to get John Carmack to stop fucking talking about a game they'd barely even started, and to actually make a game. Bethesda then footed the bill for all the marketing and kept the whole development on track, as well as provided input on how to actually make it good. This is stated in tons of interviews.

Without Bethesda, you'd have no Doom 2016. You have a team of guys unable to even decide on the setting and John Carmack talking about how it's the best game ever, takes place on Earth or maybe Mars or maybe under the ocean, runs at 30 or 60 FPS during singleplayer or maybe multiplayer, and would be built using the Id Tech 5 or maybe the Crytec engine.

None of that shit was decided on for the first four years of development until Bethesda and Zeni Max made them get their asses in gear. So yeah, they are taking some of the credit, and they probably deserve it.

3. Bethesda doesn't own Id. ZeniMax owns both. There is a difference. Also a difference between Bethesda Softworks (who published this, New Vegas, and Wolfinstien to name a few good ones), and Bethesda Game Studios (who did the Elder Scrolls, Fallout 4, etc.). Since 2002, these aren't the same people even if they are part of the same parent company.