Why Doom's Glory Kill Works

Key Takeaways

Unlike earlier Doom games where the player could deal damage and run around finding health packs, the focus of the Doom reboot and in turn Doom Eternal is to have you keep fighting, keep ripping, keep tearing. And the trick to that is the glory kill. The glory kill is a short animation that finishes off an enemy in Doom while also delivering the player health. This reinforces push forward combat in multiple ways. The first in that it promotes mobility and keeping close to the enemy. The second in that it gives you a brief respite. The animations, while brief, are long enough to let you quickly think and focus on who to target next. Plus, you are invincible during the animation itself, but they serve two additional benefits under the hood in the eye of the designers. First, it minimizes the need to place health on the map while also avoiding a regenerative health system akin to games like Halo, which would probably be frowned upon for a franchise like Doom. But critically for the development of a player's skill, they're not mandatory. You can kill the enemy just by shooting them. And instead, it becomes a critical skill to learn when to exploit the glory kill or not.