While many developers and publishers upon releasing legacy games tend to be a “one-and-done” situation, Bethesda & id Software are doing more with the re-releases of its decades-old releases. In the past, we witnessed this with Quake. Back in December the game received a new update integrating a full-on horde mode to the game.
Rewinding back to 2020, Bethesda offered the same affection to Doom & Doom II then. Specifically, the original expansion SIGIL for the respected 1993 & 1994 titles was added which included a fresh 60Hz update for the game as well. Now more recently the campaign for additional DLC is continuing for those titles as well.
In that, the re-releases of Doom & Doom II welcome Arrival: a community-created, 11-level free add-on for both games. “A new Add-On has, well, arrived in the form of Arrival – an 11-level episode replacement pack created by Pavera, featuring music by DOOM community alum AD_79 as well as collaborated elements with multiple other notable names in the modding scene!” the description for the DLC shares.
“My primary inspiration for Arrival was simply, create an episode of high-quality DOOM II maps with a loosely connected theme, using only stock resources. I’ve been creating DOOM maps for over a decade but until last year I had never released a full project of my own. I’m very comfortable with DOOM’s stock resource set and I partially wanted to prove that they still had a lot of untapped potential,” development lead Pavera explains.
“Of course, I ended up veering slightly away from that goal with the addition of Mechadon’s skies, but I feel I was able to deliver most of the way. The overarching theme of Arrival is meant to be a bit cryptic and up to interpretation. I wanted to explore the idea that the “Doomguy” is an introspective character. After spending an eternity entering dimension after dimension (WAD after WAD), what is his ultimate purpose? Where does he find his peace? Is he fated to spend another eternity in violence or will he arrive at his final resting place?”
Are you planning to jump into Arrival?
Arrival is available for Doom & Doom II on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PC, and Nintendo Switch.