The Dark Ages’ Opening Mission Feels Like Kvatch All Over Again, And Now I Want An Oblivion Crossover

If you’ve played either Doom or Doom: Eternal, then you’ll probably be able to guess how Doom: The Dark Ages starts. ‘Uh oh, the gates of Hell have opened! Doom Slayer, please kill all the demons!’

Yes, it’s simple, but it’s also why we all keep playing these games – they’re fun shooters, and that’s the whole point. But Doom: The Dark Ages twists the formula by plunging it into medieval times, with no shortage of castles and dragons. Well, sci-fi medieval, so there are still guns and ships.

And so the balance shifts.

My favourite thing about this switch-up in setting is the feeling I got from the first mission. Particularly, in that it feels like the fall of Kvatch all over again. And that gives me some ideas…

Doom Slayer, Close Shut The Jaws Of Oblivion

The Doom Slayer wielding the shotgun and Shield Saw.

This comparison is probably facilitated a little by the fact that Oblivion Remastered and Doom: The Dark Ages launched within a month of each other, but as I dropped into the action of Doom, fighting my way through castle structures and scorched Earth to close the big, glowing, orange gates, it felt like I’d done this before; very recently, in fact.

While Doom doesn’t have you actually enter the gates and mess them up from the inside like in Oblivion, I loved the parallels between these quests, where it lets us loose in human settlements overrun by demons, and tells us to “fix it”. We don’t have too many games where this sort of thing happens. Sure, Diablo has plenty of demons invading our own realm, but just let me be the one who can run around and slam shut their doors with angst and heavy metal.

Okay, Now I Need Some Kind Of Crossover

The Doom Slayer overlooking the camera on the side of a cliff

Hear me out – DLC for Doom: The Dark Ages, where the Doom Slayer is dropped into an overrun Imperial City during the final battle of Oblivion. It doesn’t have to be canon or even be explained in any capacity – Doom has spaceships and magic, and The Elder Scrolls is all some weird dream anyway, so just let me loose with a shotgun and a shield saw as I fight through the market district and then take on some gauntlet of demons in the Arena.

Would it be ridiculous? Yes, of course it would. Is Doom ridiculous? Yes, of course it is. It’s such an over-the-top idea that doesn’t need to exist, and that’s exactly why it should. With Doom’s notoriety and Oblivion’s rekindled relevance, it would be the perfect time for these two Bethesda studios to do something really fun, purely for the sake of it.

Let me shoot Dremora and Daedra before mounting a gun-wielding laser dragon as I unleash Hell on Hell itself, taking down the colossal Mehrunes Dagon towering over the Imperial City and taking on Oblivion directly. I do not doubt that the Doom Slayer could end the Oblivion Crisis with ease, but it doesn’t mean I don’t want to try.