We recently had hands-on with Doom Eternal though a three-hour preview demo, which exposed us to many of the ways the game is building on the Doom formula. This time around, Doom Slayer is going to have a home of sorts, a hub area called the Fortress of Doom, which you’ll visit between missions. It’s a fortress in space that overlooks hell-torn Earth and houses several unlockable items.
In the Fortress of Doom, you’ll find several rooms with upgrades and gear locked behind doors. Throughout the game you’ll collect what are called Sentinel Batteries; you bring these back to the Fortress and choose which doors to power up and open. While we’re not entirely sure of what each unlockable will consist of, we spotted a mod bot, Praetor tokens, and possibly armor capacity upgrades. There’s also a powerful weapon that unlocks with Empyrean keys, which you get from completing tough Slayer Gate challenges within missions.
There are several floors to the Fortress of Doom, and in the basement, there’s a training grounds that you can use for practice fights. It’s called the Demon Prison (or Riptorium, which is much more fun to say). What’s more fascinating is that you can see a giant mech-like Praetor suit being constructing–if this alludes to things to come later in the game, we can only imagine what that’d be.
If you want a closer look at combat, exploration, difficulty, and everything in between, be sure to read our in-depth impressions of Doom Eternal‘s first three hours. You can also watch our detailed discussion on Doom Eternal or see a breakdown of the game’s wild combat.
