Will Doom Eternal have multiplayer?

A refocused multiplayer

Doom Eternal and it looks incredible, if early previews are to be believed. There's little doubt that the campaign will be awesome, with an aggressive heavy metal soundtrack occupying most of the space in players' thoughts as they rip and tear through hordes of demons. This time around, though, Bethesda is doing their best to make sure the multiplayer gets its fair share of the fun.

Rather than shove a bunch of mismatched and safe gamemodes like Team Deathmatch into Doom, Bethesda is creating a new match type called Battlemode that is specifically tailored to Doom's combat, which should hopefully make for a much more focused experience. Battlemode pits two people as Doom Slayer, the game's main protagonist (and the bane of all demons everywhere,) against a third person playing as one of five unique demon variants. This 2v1 match-up is a "best-of-five" situation as both sides battle it out to emerge victorious. Upgrades and special abilities like Doom's patented "BFG" are available between rounds, shaking things up in the late game.

While most everyone should be familiar with Doom Slayer (loving referred to as "Doomguy" by fans) at this point, the five demons available to play as might be new. The five demons are:

• The Revenant. An agile demon equipped with a jetpack and dual shoulder-mounted rockets.
• Pain Elemental. A flying demon possessing a rechargeable shield and magical attacks.
• Mancubus. A huge, tank-like demon with dual cannons and a ton of health.
• Arch-vile. This demon hasn't been shown in Battlemode yet but should be a wily spell-casting demon.
• Marauder. Another demon that hasn't been fully shown off; this demon should be a close-combat specialist.

All demons will have unique abilities, as well as a way to cast "hazards" onto the field to damage enemy Slayers. The Slayers, on the other hand, will be fully loaded and armed as they would be in the campaign, making them a very dangerous threat if the demon doesn't manage them properly. Just like in the campaign, though, Slayers will have to carefully manage their resources and ammunition to stay on top of things.

There will be six maps at launch to play on, hinting that more features and maps could be added later on. Right now, the Battlemode is the only multiplayer variant that will be present in Doom Eternal, so it's clear Bethesda isn't rushing to make a generic multiplayer mode or, worse yet, a battle royale. If you want to check out the Battlemode gameplay trailer shown off at Quakecon 2019, head here. If everything fits together as promised, Battlemode should be tailored to Doom, and offer a great way to keep playing long after the campaign has been completed.