Video game openings have always been a source of fascination for me. As a player, you're excited by the prospect of the game to come - the sights you'll see, the challenges you'll face - and first impressions can make or break your entire perception of what a game is versus the one you had stored in your head before switching it on. For video game creators, however, a new beginning is often racked with questions. What, exactly, do you choose to show players first? How will you introduce them to something they've never seen before? And if that game is successful, how do you keep reinventing that first impression across what could be several decades?
In revisiting every mainline Doom game to celebrate its 30th anniversary this month, it's clear that even id's iconic shooter has wrestled with how to answer these question, and the ways it's tried to reinvent itself over the years paints a captivating portrait of a series trying to move with the times. Nowhere is this more apparent than in its opening levels. Played in close succession, crushing 30 years into not even quite three hours, what emerges isn't just the evolution of one of the all-time great PC games, but also a potted history of the FPS. So join me as we chart Doom's rise, fall and rebirth through the lens of its first stages.