Headscratchers / Doom Eternal

Hell's numbers

• Where do the legions of Hell get their warriors from?
  • Overrunning an 8 billion strong technologically advanced civilization is no mean feat (let alone practically overnight), and it's implied that Hell consumes inhabited worlds on a regular basis. They must have a massive pool of fighters to draw from, but Hell itself is a bleak and blasted wasteland with barely any resources and any world they do consume is apparently wrecked to the point of uselessness. If that weren't enough, the forces of Hell are constantly duking it out with each other when no other outlet for aggression presents itself. That said, most people don't play DOOM to ponder the finer points of infernal logistics, but butchering hellspawn is even more satisfying knowing just how much time and effort went into their creation.
  • Quoth Dr Egon Spengler: "People die every day."
  • Same place as Chaos in Warhammer 40,000. It's also possible that lesser demons have some sort of resurrection abilities, or there are other areas of Hell and Hell Dimensions the hero doesn't visit in the first one. They also rely heavily on Blitzkrieg style tactics...and possibly have a lot of forces 'offscreen'.
  • We have seen several demons that have explicitly been killed by the slayer before(the Cyberdemons, Doomhunters, and the Icon of Sin) so it seems they can simply resurrect there dead to form a truly endless legion
  • That's pretty much what happened in Doom 64. After the events in Doom 2, the Mother Demon managed to mount a counterattack by simply reanimating all the fallen hell warriors.
  • The Nekravol levels state that the corpses of people killed by demons and harvested for Argent Energy will eventually become demons as well. That plus the indications that demons can reproduce fine on their own, and that Hell is a really big place, seems to be it.
  • It is stated in the codex that the Hell Priests use a lot of bizarre and strange Hell magics to render many of their warriors immune to conventional weaponry and also to disrupt technology and infrastructure. The enslaved hellbeasts holding up their citadels, for example, are completely immune to outside attack. This means that they would need far fewer warriors than you'd think, especially since so much of the damage Hell is inflicting on earth is caused by demonic terraforming and transformation of the landscape.
  • Plus, DOOM 2016 implies that although there is one Hell, its connected to any number of parallel Earths/universes. Which means a literally infinite number of species, all of whom have people dying on a regular basis, constantly supplying Hell with fresh soldiers.
  • To sum up, Hell has Argent Energy to power their takeovers of other realms, a matured mechanized procedure for transforming victims into more energy and into more demons (at least some of which can reproduce and maybe resurrect), intelligent leadership that can empower them even further, terraforming processes that don't even require ground forces, and possibly limitless realms to pull fresh blood from.

End of 2016

• Where did Samuel Hayden shunt the Doom Slayer off to following Doom (2016), and how did he return?
  • It could have very well been possible that Hayden teleported the Slayer to the Temple of Doom, given how Hayden seems to have a surprisingly deep amount of knowledge regarding Maykr and Sentinel technology. The Slayer was probably absent during the initial demonic invasion of Earth because he was still trying to get the Temple of Doom operational. Even at the beginning of the game, the Temple of Doom is only running at minimal capacity.
  • In that regard, Samuel probably sent the Slayer to Sentinel Prime, where the Fortress of Doom laid abandoned until he got it working and in Earth's vicinity.

Mysterious voice

• Who is the mysterious voice that lets out the Big "NO!" following the Khan Maykr's demise?
  • Maybe the Dark Lord?
  • Sequel Hook.
  • Or perhaps a DLC Hook.
  • The collective mind of the Maykrs?
  • The Ancient Gods: Part 1 has the answer: it was the Dark Lord.
  • The Ancient Gods: Part 2 changed the subtitles back to crediting it as a "Mysterious Voice", so we're back to square 1.
  • It's probably still the Dark Lord. They just changed it to avoid a spoiler since your not meant to know about him until the DLC.

The Father

• What happened to "The Father" of the Maykr homeworld?
  • Given that VEGA seems to come to the realisation that he is The Father, it points to some sort of connection between VEGA, Samuel Hayden, and Samur Maykr.

Maykr corpse

• What's up with that giant naked Maykr corpse in the pool in the room just before the boss fight with Khan Maykr?
  • It may have been the corpse of a previous Khan Maykr. However, the main meta reason is that it serves as Foreshadowing about the true nature of the Maykrs, as they heavily resemble demons themselves both in appearance and motivation.

Taking the Plasma Rifle

• Why does the Slayer take the Plasma Rifle off the soldier in the Phobos base? It seemed pragmatic in the trailer, but he already has a rifle at that point, so it seems more vindictive in-game.
  • That's kinda the point. It is a vindictive move on his part toward the arrogant guard. Remember that the majority of the first mission was done by the Slayer solely to scare the piss out of the other Hell Priests. He is a vindictive person.
  • On the pragmatic end the people said guard works for are not exactly friends of the Slayer, and while it's unlikely to do to the current demon situation best not to risk being shot in the back.
  • My Watsonian side says that the Slayer wanted to give the grunt a reminder that he's the only one who can really handle this and to stay out of his way. My Doylist side says that they probably originally intended for this part to happen earlier on in the game and that this would be how you got the Plasma Rifle, but changes to the gameplay flow and narrative structure shunted it too late in the campaign. It was a great moment (one that they showed in the initial gameplay blowout at QuakeCon 2018 to thunderous applause) that they clearly spent a lot of time perfecting and they couldn't stand taking it out.

Alternate Earth

• Is this the same earth the Slayer is from? it is now confirmed that the slayer is the original Doomguy, but in the original games hell had already invaded earth once, so is this an alternate earth that has yet to be subjected to that fate or did everyone just collectively forget that fact?
  • It's heavily implied even in 2016 that the Slayer came from an alternate Earth, as the UAC scientists noted how the Slayer's Praetor armour appears to be of Earth origin, but can't trace its source. Eternal also shows that both the Argent D'Nur empire and Hell spanned across multiple dimensions, so it's not out of the question the Slayer happened to find his way over from an alternate Earth through Hell.
  • I'd like to add a line of dialogue from Hayden. While in Taras Nabad, he mentions something about how Argent D'Nur has fallen, and how Earth will be different, “this time”.
  • Id Software has explicitly said that the Doom games and the Wolfenstein games exist in the same cosmology, and that the Doomguy is Blazkowicz's descendant. And in Wolfenstein: Youngblood we learn that there are hundreds of alternate universes, with ours being implied to be one of them. As such, I think it's a safe bet it does take place in a different universe.
  • Adding to that, it's heavily implied that both Hell and Urdak are Multiversal Singularities, in that there is only one Hell and one Heaven, whereas there is an infinity of Earths.
  • Confirmed as of The Ancient Gods: Part 1 this universes version of the Doom Slayer is the Dark Lord, Davoth; absolute Ruler of Hell and all Demons.

Icon of Sin loyalty

• If the Icon Of Sin is the Betrayer's son, why does he cooperate with the demons if they made him this way? Shouldn't he hate them just as much as the Doomslayer?
  • All demons are the corrupted and remade husks of he souls of those taken by Hell. The Icon works with Hell for the same reason that all other demons do.

Urdak's location

• Is Urdak Another Dimension like Hell or just another planet?
  • One of the codexes describes Urdak's location as being on another plane of existence/dimension like Hell.

Sam and Samur

• What is the connection between Samuel Hayden and Samur Maykr?
  • Until DLC or sequel, there is no concrete information to base anything off of. Samur's voice is currently the only thing making the community believe there is a link at all, so this is purely the realm of WMG at present.
  • The Ancient Gods DLC has the answer: Samuel Hayden was a human body constructed by Samur Maykr that he transferred his consciousness into.

2016 Argent D'Nur

• In 2016, the final level is Argent D'Nur, fully absorbed into Hell and indistinguishable from any other part of it, and in here lies the Wraiths. The lore entry for the level even mentions that it is "the corrupted ruins of a lost realm - a world that has been entirely conquered and absorbed into the Hell dimension" (the entry on the Wraiths themselves make it explicit that Argent D'Nur was brought into Hell in its entirety as is under Hell's boot heel). It even says that "the Hell energy that emanates from this region... appears on Mars at the Argent Fracture". Yet in Eternal, we go to Argent D'Nur several times to find it not only not in Hell, but not too worse for wear. The people and remaining Night Sentinels aren't so much ruled by Hell as they are business partners with it, and that Nekravol is the real place where Argent is created and disseminated. So where did we go in 2016, and why were the Wraiths there? If Wraith energy isn't Argent Energy after all, but merely one component of it, why are the Wraiths out in the open in some ruins instead of hooked up to an infernal machine at Nekravol? How is Argent Energy still being produced at Nekravol if the Slayer used the demonic Crucible to suck up all the Wraith energy? How is Samuel Hayden able to make more Argent Energy to power the ARC's defense efforts with only the demonic Crucible, which apparently doesn't even contain any demonic energy at all?
  • Argent D'Nur was not one planet but multiple worlds. The codex on the Night Sentinels says that they incorporated many worlds into the realm of the Argenta over their thousands of years of waging war against Hell. Exultia and Argent D'Nur itself were different realms.
  • The demons took the capital planet with the top prize, the Wraiths, but left the smaller colonies, got it. But what about Hell not having access to Wraith energy post 2016?
  • Presumably, that was a task done by either the Hell Priests or direct Maykr intervention given their intimate familiarity with the Wraiths and their energy.
  • The wraiths are out in the open because they can only be killed with a Crucible, which was something that the demons kept deep under lock and key. No Crucible, no Wraith-killing. It's possible that they were left rooted there because the demons feared how powerful the Wraiths were (according to 2016, the Night Sentinels were founded to both protect the Wraiths and protect other creatures from them). It wasn't deemed worth the risk to try moving them when, as far as they knew, there was no way they could ever be killed.

Timeline

• What is the timeline for the Slayer's rampage through Hell? The codexes in 2016 describe a conquest spanning from the beginning of the first age, and we're now in the fourth. Yet the Betrayer, who was a fully-grown man with a son old enough to die in battle and who is a big reason as to why the Slayer was in Hell for so long wrecking house in the first place, is still alive and still seemingly middle-aged in Eternal? Not to mention that the entry on the Slayer in 2016 says that his sarcophagus appeared to be "millennia-old" and the Cyberdemon is said to have been a Baalgar demon slain in an "ancient battle" in the third age.
  • WMG here, but it's possible the demons threw in Immortality into their deal with the Betrayer. They planned on resurrecting his son as the Icon of Sin anyway, so making the old man suffer for eternity seems like a cherry on top. Considering the Betrayer also possessed the knife that could stab the IoS's heart, it may be that he was linked to the Icon, staying alive as it did. Further, time might move differently in Hell; 1000 years could've passed for Doomguy, but only 100 or so outside.
  • The first rampage was as Doomguy, then he got found by the Sentinels and did his second even worse rampage as the Doom Slayer. Which probably makes him worse to the demons compared to the Betrayer and other heroes that rampaged Hell as Doomguy was there from the start of their invasion and only gets stronger while others died or burned out.
  • The codexes describe that the Doomguy/Doom Slayer has been around since the start of hell's existence, meaning that either Hell's 'ages' are improbably short, or it has a temporal problem of one form or another.
  • It's possible that exposure to Argent Energy can lengthen lifespans - the Khan Maykr has been using the stuff to extend her lifespan since the Father's disappearance.

Khan Maykr's vulnerability

• If the Khan Maykr can only be killed in her own domain on Urdak (as they say in the first level), why does she ever go there considering she would be impossible to kill if she just stayed somewhere else. Imagine if you had Complete Immortality but could only be killed if you went to, say, Rhode Island. Why would you ever go there?
  • Might be backwards. Some of the codex lore implies that Urdak itself lies in/is a higher dimension. So, the Khan Maykr is always stationary, and the one that interacts with lesser races would be an Avatar, and destroying that would be pointless. VEGA just words it the way he does so Doom Slayer doesn't waste bullets.
  • Also, all her POWER resides in her home dimension. To put it another way...she is only vulnerable when she is at her most powerful. If she leaves her Sanctum, she sacrifices the power to do what must be done.
  • The reason no Maykr want to set foot in Hell and the like is that they can be killed.

Cultists

• How exactly did the deal with the UAC Cultists work? The flavour text claims that the (yet uncorrupted) humans siding with Hell worked alongside the Hell Priests to develop cyborg demon tech and aid them in their earth conquest, but we never really see any beyond Olivia in the first game and the UAC Spokesperson in the holograms. When we're at the Cultist Base there are no humans at all. Surely by now they know most of them will turn into zombie husks if they keep working with demons right? Outside of the higher-ups possibly getting high ranks why would so many work for literal demons?
  • To add on to this, when you visit Phobos station the (still living) UAC employees are fighting off a Demon attack, which is confusing as they're supposed to be allies, and the bridge crew are completely in the dark and confused when corporate tells them to "Let them [the demons] through." The exact context of the UAC's alliance with Hell greatly contradicts the flavor text IMO.
  • Simple. The higher ranks were corrupt, but the lower ones were not. The higher ranks are at the centre of corruption. By the time Doom Slayer gets to them, they've all outlived their usefulness, and are corrupted. They THINK that at least some of them can become like the Hell Priests...and are wrong. Much like Olivia.
  • To expand, the UAC had been operating as a cult for a long time, with the lower ranks being led to believe that they would get some kind of reward in Hell for their servitude. The events of 2016 proved to the ones that survived that they were just being used by the higher-ups and that nothing but eternal misery awaited them. So, they took what resources they could and fought against new management (Deag Ranak). At first, there might have been some hesitation to work with the ARC since it was being headed by Hayden, part of the old guard of UAC leadership, but Olivia was the real head honcho of the cult stuff and Hayden only tolerated it as far as it continued to generate Argent. The BFG 10000 likely smoothed over any hard feelings.

Icon of Sin and previous entries

• How is the Icon of Sin related to the one Doomguy defeated in Doom II, or to that dormant Icon in the Necropolis from 2016? Clearly the IoS from Doom II couldn't be the Betrayer's son, since Valen's betrayal happened long after Doomguy became the Slayer. Does that mean there were several Icons? If so, who is the IoS found in the Necropolis? Is it the original one from Doom II, or Betrayer's son who was transported in Urdak later in Eternal? Or maybe that was a completely different Icon, unrelated to other two?
  • I think it's a separate one. Both of the Final Doom campaigns have another Icon Of Sin as the Final Boss (Although only the Doom 2 one is referred to by that name.) While I'm not sure if Final Doom is canon, it does seem to set some precedent for their being more than one.
  • Keep in mind that the Spider Mastermind was killed in the original Doom games, but got resurrected in Doom 2016 by using Oliva Pierce as a host. I imagine the same thing happened with the Betrayer's son.

Getting the Super Shotgun

• Is there any particular reason why couldn't the Doom Slayer himself retrieve his Super Shotgun? He took control of a Revenant and made it get it for him instead.
  • The Revenant's pod had direct access to the area the Super Shotgun was being held in, while the Slayer couldn't reach it from where he was at.

Angels

• So are the Maykrs angels or not? The game tells you that they are aliens yet the game also tells you that Urdak is basically Heaven or a heaven-like afterlife.
  • The two are not mutually exclusive in this setting.
  • For all intent they are but they have stopped doing their job for a while. Urdak was supposed to be a paradise for the Sentinels that died in crusades but after the deal with Hell they seem to just toss all the souls in Nekravol. If they were not full-on evil before the Father leaving and deal with Hell they likely did allow the sentinels to ascend, which is why they are ghosts instead of fuel. They aren't, however, Earth's angels and most of the dichotomy of Heaven and Hell was made up by them so people follow their rules.
  • Perhaps the souls of brave Sentinels and other believers, after the extracting process, get taken to Urdak instead of becoming Essence and later Argent Energy (but their empty bodies still become demons)? The Khan Maykr's fairly demonic appearance after blasting off her armor seems to be hinting towards a common link between the Maykrs and the demons, possibly with The Father at the root... but the nature of that connection is WMG territory right now.

Meathook

• Why can't the super shotgun's meathook be used as an actual grappling hook? Yes, I know it's called a meathook but if it can embed in a freakin' cyber-mancubus's armor, You'd think it could embed in a normal concrete wall/cliff face.
  • I may be remembering this wrong, but I seem to remember reading somewhere it was originally supposed to act as a regular grappling hook, but it wound up making levels too difficult to design around it. I mean, let's be honest, all those platforming segments would have been a breeze with an actual grapple mechanic.
  • The Super Shotgun is strongly implied to have been transformed over the years of the Slayer slaughtering demons with it, and became a supernatural weapon. It might well be that it can only pierce demon flesh and armor.

Medals for priests

• What are those medals that the slayer leaves behind after each priest's death and where did he got them?
  • The first priest you kill taunts you that "[his] soul is guarded" but then gets an Oh, Crap! look on his face when he sees the medal. It's likely there's a resurrection scheme for the hell priests and the medals are able to disrupt that process so they stay dead.
  • More importantly, why do they resemble Praetor Tokens? And how did the Slayer even get them in the first place?
  • Worth noting that the Slayer apparently had the first medal with him before the game begins, and the third come floating from the corpse of the Gladiator. Supposedly, the second medal could have come from the corpse of the first doom hunter. Maybe it's supposed to represent a link between the priest and his guardian, in that the priest can't be killed until his guardian is killed. With that in mind, maybe it's all a hint about a DLC taking place before the campaign, explaining how the slayer got the first medal and killed the guardian of the first priest.
  • For the first medal, he could have gotten it from when he killed the Spider Mastermind, when he got the Fortress, or even just from the first Cacodemon of the game.

Titans on Earth

• There are still living Titans left on Earth after defeating the Icon of Sin, what's gonna happen with them? Will they be pulled off the planet now that the Slayer stopped the consumption of Earth? Will that include dragging the Icon back to Hell? Moreover, what's the deal with them anyway? The living ones seem to be oddly docile, like the one on the first level and the two who simply walked away after the Slayer broke the chains they were keeping aloft.
  • There is a codex entry about them being different than the destructive titans like the Icon. They are more like the blind demon that sort souls in that their use for Hell is not an offensive one. As for what will happen to them the Doom Slayer is just gonna kill them with the other demons remaining on Earth.
  • The Ancient Gods Part Two puts this at ease; upon the Dark Lord's death, he takes all demons outside Hell with them, this most likely including the Titans. In short, they're dead.

Where is the Father

• Where is The Father (who's implied to be God himself) during all of this? You'd think he'd be appalled about what the Maykrs are doing, though maybe he's fine with it?
  • It is stated in one codex that he's inexplicably gone missing, and it's thrown all the Maykrs into a panic. In particular, his absence has disrupted the Maykr life cycle (in that they cannot resurrect after death anymore) essentially turning them into a Dying Race. This is why the Khan Maykr was desperate enough to strike a bargain with hell in the first place, using Argent Energy as a crude substitute to keep her race going in the Father's absence.
  • If it's true that VEGA is The Father and has been an Amnesiac God for an unknown period of time, then it's possible that he didn't go AWOL by his own choice.

Bisecting Sam

• Who (or what) bisected Samuel Hayden?
  • Sam was tough and resourceful enough to be the sole survivor of the initial demonic outbreak in Doom 2016. He also personally led the charge into hell to retrieve the slayer, from which only he returned. In Doom Eternal, he's competent enough as a leader to become the undisputed ruler of humanity during the greatest crisis it has ever faced. This is NOT a man to go down without a fight, yet he's a broken shell by the time we meet him. What did we miss?
  • Hell knights? In Doom 2016 he was just walking around and letting his guards doing the killing and dying in his resilient suit with force field on, he isn't a fighter just a scientist with a lot of good gadgets to not die but nothing we saw of him shows he is any good at ripping and tearing demons even if he has a crucible. Doom Slayer is a demon-killing machine and can still be murdered by imps and zombies if he is not careful Hayden will not be able to withstand a direct encounter with the demons if they get serious on him.
  • Given they have their own Crucibles, more than likely a Marauder.
    • That could be it, given that the room Hayden is kept in is also the room you fight the first Marauder (though that one portals in, so uh)

Killing Titans

• So, if Titans apparently can't be killed by conventional means and the best a person can hope to do to them is seal them with the Crucible, then how did the Doom Slayer kill the original Icon of Sin back when he was Doomguy and then later kill the Titan that Titan's Realm gets its name from during his rampage through Hell?
  • The Titan in Hell was retrofitted into a lair and the Icon of Sin was just waiting to be rebuilt, it's likely the crucible is more to stops demon from claiming the Titans back because if you dismember them across the landscape of Hell they won't be able to come back on their own.
  • Not all of the titans can only be killed with the Crucible. It's implied there was a Great Offscreen War between titans and Humongous Mecha, as you see the remains of both during the game.
  • It's not specifically the Crucible that stops a Titan, it's a weapon that uses pure concentrated Argent energy, the Crucible is the Doom Slayer's personal weapon, the Betrayers hammer or the Marauder's axes could do the same thing, the Betrayer specifically tosses you, what looks to be an Argent pocket knife, presumably because he knew the Doom Slayer would encounter his son the Icon of Sin, but didn't have the crucible back yet.

Crucible name

• Why is the Crucible called that? It's a magic key/sword, not a molten cauldron. Does Id just think the name sounds cool and don't care it means?
  • Crucible has more than one meaning, literally it's a cauldron but figuratively it's a harsh test or trial, expression popularized by the book of the same name. It's like wondering why a sword is called Judgment.
  • A crucible is defined as a "heat-resistant container in which materials can be heated to very high temperatures". Throughout fiction, crucibles have been used as a way to melt different materials together; it's possible that's what the name refers to.

Maykr gender

• Why is the Khan Maykr female (instead of genderless like the rest of the Maykrs?) Have all the previous Khan Maykrs been female? Or not?
  • The Maykrs aren't genderless, the Seraphim and angel you met are guys, way it is said to work in the lore is that at one point their conscious will form around one of them that becomes a Khan with no real say if they have to be female or male although the image of Hive Mind and the Father being the one that renews the process fits more when it's a queen bug they might not always be female.

Hayden's Knowledge and View on Argent

• Why does Hayden suddenly display extensive knowledge of the Maykrs and Argent despite having made no mention of them in Doom 2016? If he was Samur Maykr all along why did he spend the whole previous game arguing in favour of Argent Energy rather than admitting he knew it was bad and was working on a synthetic replacement?
  • Presumably, through some combination of his possession of the Demonic Crucible containing the Wraith energy, the global-scale demon invasion, the presence of the Hell Priests on Earth and his discovery of the existence of the Khan Maykr allowed him to get a more complete picture of this universe. We have no reason to believe that he knew the true nature of Argent in 2016.
  • He says what the Doomguy needs to hear to not kill him and do the job. Not much changed from 2016 as he is trying to harvest Argent energy his ways instead of bargaining with Hell's lord.
  • It's worth noting that the Codex entries mention that Hayden was looking into developing synthetic Argent energy that wasn't dependant on soul-harvesting. His possession of "organic" Argent energy was likely for both research purposes (kinda hard to replicate something without a point of reference) and as a stopgap to bring humanity out of its energy crisis until the synthetic Argent was developed.
  • The Ancient Gods codex mentions that Hayden was perfectly well aware of the true nature of Argent energy. He also knew that humanity would inevitably discover and dabble in it, which is why he infiltrated the UAC so he could control its development and prevent humans from repeating the same mistakes of Argent D'nur.

No Humans In Urdak?

• Why are there no humans in Urdak (which is meant to be Heaven?) Even assuming that currently everyone goes to Hell and gets tortured until they become demons, you'd think there would be some souls of humans who died before the current Khan Maykr took over.
  • When Doomguy arrives, Urdak is suffering an apocalypse and being invaded by demons. You barely even see any maykrs; if there are any humans, presumably they're in hiding. The area doesn't really look like it was designed for human habitation anyway, so maybe they're all just somewhere else.
  • Assuming that the Maykrs weren't just lying to their subservient races, like the Sentinels, they were probably locked in whatever collective consciousness that the Maykrs are part of so there wouldn't be any resistance to the Maykr allegiance with Hell to create Argent Energy and keep the current Maykrs alive forever.
  • Just before the fight with Khan Maykr, near the pool with the giant naked Maykr, you can see glowing humanoid figures with halo-like sigils above them in what appear to be stasis tanks. It's a Wild Mass Guess, but maybe these are the human souls?
  • Urdak has a heaven-themed aesthetic but nothing in the game says it's literally a heavenly good afterlife, it's just another dimension/alien planet.

Was the Icon of Sin squatting?

• I am doing an Achievement Hunt and got to the last level, and I noticed something: the Icon of Sin places both hands on the building you are standing on, then his head rises, and you are roughly at level with his belly/groin. Halfway through the fight, he turns and simply walks away. You remain roughly level with his lower back/buttocks. So, why did he rise that way? Was he squatting in front of that particular building, waiting for the Doom Slayer? How long was he waiting there? I know the two are prophesized to fight, but in that case, why was he walking around in the first place? Why didn't he immediately engage the Doom Slayer in combat?
  • The Icon was not active for a while, maybe he was doing some stretches? If you were about to fight your prophesied nemesis and knew he was coming soon, you would want to limber up first too.

Why Not Destroy the Super Shotgun?

• So, according to its Codex entry and the Collector's Edition lore book, the demons are almost as terrified of the Super Shotgun as they are of the Doom Slayer himself, basically regarding it as an Artifact of Doom in their scriptures. But despite saying that they will "cast it into the smelter", they for some reason instead just keep it lying around in the open at the Cultist Base for the Doom Slayer to retrieve and start blasting them into chunky salsa again. Why didn't the demons destroy the Super Shotgun when they had a chance?
  • The Super Shotgun is essentially the Slayer distilled into a singular weapon; nothing that's spilt and drunk that much demonic blood can be destroyed by simple demons... which is probably why they were having a Hell Priest look into doing that for him.
  • They kept it so the Marauders can build some of their own based on the model.

Vega DLC

• Okay so is confirmed the Vega is The Father, the source of all creation, converted into a machine by Samur Maykr so that he could look over humanity in secret even though he had no recollection of who he was, in part to keep him safe from demons. Firstly, how? The Father departed from the realms and his key to resurrection was hidden away and somehow Samur Maykr took a part of The Father, the most powerful being in existence and placed him in computer. Second, why? If you're worried that The Father will be consumed by the forces of Hell and they'll gain the power of the multiverse potentially becoming truly immortal, why would you then place him in direct harms way at the one point in the Earthly realm you purposely created a two way portal to Hell. And Thirdly, Samur Maykr leaves Vega to die and it's only the Slayer that decides to back him up in a USB Flash Drive.
  • Samur was the right hand of the Father and was basically given to him to hide, at the cost of his place among the Maykrs for essentially dooming them to Transfiguration. All the fluff about him departing the realms was just that: fluff. He had his life sphere entombed in a safe place no demon could access and trusted Samur with the rest. It's also possible that Samur/Samuel had hoped that Vega could find a way to undo all the corruption done to the demons and the Hell realm which is why he was on Mars. Finally... I'm sure that Samur/Samuel counted on the Slayer feeling pity for a being that had no motivations against him. That backup button was fairly obvious on the terminal back on the Vega core, so it surely had to be planned. Samur knew that the Slayer is ambivalent and perhaps sympathetic to anyone who isn't a demon or hoping to exploit them, so him seeing all the files detailing Vega surely would have pushed him into getting the Father off Mars in the best, safest way possible: with the Slayer.
  • Well, as it turns out Vega was never The Father, just an AI that assumed the role. And Samur was corrupted by The Dark Lord, influencing his decisions. Which makes a bit more sense but still, does come across as Writing by the Seat of Your Pants.

King Novik berating Doom Slayer?

• So what was the deal with that? The Betrayer handed over the Sentinel's homeworld on a plate, for his son, and he is disgraced, the Deag's strand the Doom Slayer and the Night Sentinel forces in Hell crippling them, and take over many more planets for hell, all for their own personal gain, and King Novik is like "no you can't do that, they are blood", is this just something they planned to expand on and forgot about or what?
  • Because the Sentinels largely still follow Honor Before Reason. Even though they are leading Hell's forces, the Hell Priests are still highly ranked members of Sentinel society and direct agents of the Maykrs who the Sentinels worship. Novik apparently is unwilling to break his own people's ancient laws.

How did the Intern chart a course for The Holt...

• ...despite Hayden saying that Urdak was completely inaccessible?
  • Depends on what Hayden meant by "completely inaccessible". In the introductory cutscene for The Holt, the Intern states that the Doom Slayer can get through to Urdak as his possession of the Dark Lord's life sphere means that his "portal signature will read like you're one of them." This implies that, while travelling to and arriving at Urdak is heavily monitored/restricted, it's not impossible for any Random Joe with a portal and the correct coordinates to plot a course to it anyways. As for why the Slayer was able to ride the Argent Stream to Urdak at the end of Nekravol Part 2? Since the portal above Nekravol was expressly designed for siphoning Argent energy from the factory to Urdak, it having the same safeguards would be the equivalent of a water main possessing a retinal scanner (especially since getting there would require riding a stream of pure Argent Energy, which likely wouldn't bode well for those who aren't the Slayer).

On killing Hell Priests in Sentinel Prime

• It's flat out stated that Doom Slayer can't kill the last Hell Priest on Prime, due to Sentinel law. That being said, why didn't Doomguy just kidnap the Priest, take him to the Fortress of Doom, and kill him there? Or did he just pull a Did Not Think This Through?
  • That's assuming that Doom Slayer still cares about that law at that point. Which considering that the remaining Sentinels are the loyalists to Khan Makyr, is safe to say that Doom Slayer is done with everything regarding the Sentinels.
  • If the Slayer didn't care about the Sentinels anymore, then why didn't he just kill the guards who were about to arrest him?
  • His goal was to kill Grav and leave. Killing any more Sentinels would not only make no progress in the mission, but they'd also actively hunt the Slayer down or even try to kill him on the spot.
  • From the way he bows to King Novik, it is clear that the Slayer till holds some esteem to Sentinel law and protocols even if he will still pursue his own path. He is also likely aware that the Sentinels are Honour Before Reason types. It is possible that by killing the corrupt leadership (the priests and their Maykr overlords) and not harming the rest of the Sentinels, he hoped to encourage a few of them to become Defector from Decadence without forcing them to lose face. The fact that the King and Valen later supported the Slayer's actions could support that.

The Right Doomguy becoming the Wrong Slayer

• It's stated multiple times in the codex entries of The Ancient Gods: Part 2 that Davoth masterminded the creation of the Slayer "in his image", from manipulating the Khan Maykr into creating the Divinity Machine to planting the seeds of doubt within Samur's mind that ultimately gave rise to the Slayer. Are we also led to believe that the events leading up to Doomguy becoming the Doom Slayer were also preordained by Davoth as well? Were the events of The Ultimate Doom, Doom 2, Doom 64 and everything in between all orchestrated to ensure that Doomguy would end up falling into the hands of the Sentinels and inevitably assuming the role of the Slayer? Or was it just extremely poor luck on Davoth's behalf that, out of all the Argenta warriors that Samur could've shoved into the Divinity Machine, it was the one angry foreigner whose previous experiences with Hell have manifested into an absolute zero-tolerance stance on anything remotely demonic in origin or association?
  • He more than likely planned it all out. If Doomguy never became the Slayer nor was found by the Hell Priests, his revenge would never come to pass. And while the Spider Mastermind, the Icon of Sin, the Mother Demon and more may have led the forces of Hell over the years, in the end they all had to come from somewhere... That being said though, this probably still has minimal impact on the classic games: Davoth just willed a guy into being born, the guy looked like him in adulthood, he became badass and he got screwed over by demons.
    • It would seem this isn't so: According to recent interviews conducted with Hugo Martin, the Dark Lord had absolutely no hand in Doomguy's birth. This makes it likely that he either lucked out into becoming the Slayer or is potentially being guided by this "higher entity" Martin has been hinting towards in these interviews.

Two questions about the Dark Lord

• Why exactly did Doomguy take the Dark Lord's orb instead of the Father's? He didn't know the truth about the Dark Lord then.
• If the Dark Lord is the same person as the Father, who was in the other orb?
  • The Slayer took the Dark Lord's orb because he already knew that killing him would also kill all demons outside of Hell. As for the other orb, it contained VEGA's physical form AKA the impostor Father who the Maykrs started crediting with Davoth's creations, as an attempt to cover up that they betrayed the real Father and caused him to turn into a genocidal demon god.

What's with the dragons in the second dlc?

• You encounter the first one when right near The World Spear, which helpfully gives you a ride. Later, in Immora, there are a bunch of them helping the Sentinels invade. So, what the hell are these dragons and why have they never shown up (or even been mentioned) until now? And why does one just happen to show up at the exact time and place that The Doomslayer would need a ride?
  • They're either sapient and intelligent enough to recognize the meaning behind the signal being activated, or they're beasts of war trained by the Sentinels and were sent to assist. Plus they look pretty darn cool.

"Corporate tells us to let them through."

• At the start of the Mars Core mission, when the Slayer is walking through the Phobos Base command centre, you can hear Mission Control being informed that "Corporate tells us to let [the demons] through", with a second person responding with "Wait, why?"
  • Now, by "corporate", we can assume they meant the UAC, given this is a UAC base. But as this base is fighting against the demonic invasion, they cannot be the UAC faction that turned cultists, so they must be ARC-affiliated. But then, why are they looking for authorisation from "Corporate" on what to do? And why are they so surprised that corporate is telling them to let the demons through, given that by this point, UAC's demonic affiliation should be known to everyone.

  • If by "Corporate", they meant the ARC-affiliated UAC faction led by Hayden, why is ARC telling them to "let the demons through"? Surely, a "commence retreat" type of statement like the one we heard at the ARC base would make sense if ARC decided the base is lost.

  • So what is going on? Is this some weird holdover from an earlier draft when the UAC's affiliation was less clear?

"Mortally challenged?"

• What is mortally challenged even supposed to mean? I get that its a joke about the UAC trying to come off as PC over their affiliations with the demons and give them a new "polite" name, but what is it even supposed to mean?
  • Demons are undead, being, essentially mutated corpses, the Revenant enemy is basically how ALL demons are basically made, only much slower, so being "Mortally Challenged" is actually an accurate description.