In VR, your hands are usually the stars of the experience, but when it came to Doom 3, we knew the weapons would be the heroes of every single moment. By collaborating with our kick-ass partners at id Software, we painstakingly revisited each bit of your arsenal from every possible angle. Design, art, UI, even sound effects have all been upgraded!
But first, let’s talk about the Aim Controller. Supporting the Aim (including left-handed mode) was a top priority for both us and id Software: with it, you can truly hold weapons like the BFG 9000, feel their weight in your hands, and wield them with brutal efficiency. Personally, using the Aim Controller quickly became my favorite way to dive into the demon free-for-all.
Freedom of movement means you can move your weapons independently of your head, which adds fiendishly good immersion to iconic Doom 3 battles. Peek around a corner to pull a cheeky sneak-attack on an unsuspecting Z-Sec, duck your way past Wraith fireballs, and maybe, just maybe, find the perfect angle to make a Mancubus fly.
Motion capturing Demon’s Souls combat system was a very precise endeavor. The game’s attacks, navigation, dodges, and synced kills, or “ripostes,” had to be playable, true to the original’s, and aesthetically sound. If performed too quickly, the movements would lack clear arcs and silhouettes. Performed too slowly, they might lose their weight and inertia. Gavin directed the intention and technique, and Chris made sure the metrics were dead on.
A navigation set for each of the 20 weapon classes had to be captured, including walks, runs, sprints, pivots, starts, stops, turns, and strafes, all done to a rhythmic metronome. These movements were combined into complex patterns that we called “dance cards.” Chris decided to capture the walks in the morning to warm up, build up to sprints, and when I gassed out in the afternoon we captured the “encumbered” movements. The first dance card took us an entire day to capture, but gradually we economized and could finish one in 70 minutes.
When performing combat animations, each move has five stages: opening pose, anticipation (“antic”), attack, recovery, and end pose. Anticipations should match the attacks so that they can be anticipated by other players. Recoveries are short for light attacks, long for heavy ones. Being a Japanese game in spirit, the movement in Demon’s Souls is “pose-heavy.” Rather than performing brutal, character-infused attacks, Gavin directed me to be character-less and focus instead on final poses.