We're So Glad the Cancelled DOOM 4 Ultimately Met Its Doom

Let's get the Revenant in the room out of the way first: DOOM 4 is not the DOOM game that was teased during a brief trailer yesterday. The numbered sequel was in development at id Software prior to 2012, but was ultimately cancelled. And judging by this leaked footage of the scrapped release that's popped up on Doom World, we can certainly see why.

The footage – which shows a couple of clips of gameplay, but mostly includes pre-rendered bits – looks more like a Killzone title than anything else. It shows a gritty, slightly more grounded take on the typically raucous series – and looks just about as generic as you can possibly imagine. We're guessing that the atrocious music in the embedded video was placeholder, but you never know.

"Every game has a soul; every game has a spirit," id Software's studio director Tim Willits said of the cancelled game. "When you played RAGE, you got the spirit. And [DOOM 4] did not have the spirit, it did not have the soul, it didn't have a personality. It had a bit of schizophrenia, a little bit of an identity crisis. It didn't have the passion and soul of what an id game is."

The new version of DOOM has been in development since late 2011, and judging by the trailer and rumours, will be plotting a return to the lunacy of the franchise's earlier games. To be honest, we're not entirely sure what we're expecting from this series in 2015; an old-school run-'n'-gun game will certainly find an audience, but we doubt that we'll be queuing up outside GameStop to collect our copy.