“Our goal isn’t necessarily to get too much in the way of the player’s actions, but [the story] is there to enhance the experience. And mostly, it just allows us to take the player on these really awesome adventures, go to really amazing locations, fight awesome demons with incredible weaponry.”

The 2016 game saw the marine brought to Mars by human scientists trying to tap into Hell in order to solve an energy crisis. Over the course of that game and 2020’s Doom Eternal, it became clear the Slayer had numerous hellish adventures in the time since 1997’s Doom 64, imbuing him with infernal powers and leaving his intentions and humanity ambiguous. Except for the part where he really, really wants to rip and tear demons.

“On one end of the spectrum we have Rambo, a man that bleeds and who has real feelings. And then on the other end we have Michael Myers, and I actually think [the Slayer] is more somewhere in the middle, honestly more towards Myers,” Martin says.

“But how far down, inside his eyes, inside his mask, is the real Flynn Taggart? They don’t know. Maybe one day we’ll go there. I think it’s interesting to just wonder how much of his humanity is left ... you can’t answer too many of those things otherwise you lose the spark from the character.”

The story arc that began in 2016 is winding up today with the release of new story content for Doom Eternal, called The Ancient Gods Part Two. Executive producer Marty Stratton promises fans will not only get a satisfying conclusion but a hint at where the series is headed next.

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“The last level has things that players have never seen in a Doom game, or really any iD game, as far as what’s happening around the player as the Slayer storms the castle of the Dark Lord for the epic final fight,” he says.

“That’s one of the exciting things about the universe right now, is it’s just very deep.”

Asked if his MCU inspiration could lead him to take Doom Guy on a dimension-hopping journey to meet other video game characters, Martin says he’d love to.

“The Doom universe is huge, and who’s to say it couldn’t involve [characters from other games], I think that would be super interesting,” he says.

“iD has really strong IPs, with very iconic heroes like BJ Blazkowicz and Doom Guy, I think it’d be a shame not to do something with that.”