How Doom reveals its secrets like a Frank Frazetta painting

John Carmack, the cofounder of id Software and co-creator of the original Doom, once said, “Story in a game is like a story in a porn movie. It’s expected to be there, but it’s not that important.”

That’s not true anymore, and it’s certainly not the view of Hugo Martin, the creative director at id Software and one of the creators of Bethesda’s recent Doom remake. Martin knows that some action fans don’t want the story in a first-person shooter game like Doom to get in the way of the gameplay. But he still sees it as critical to fans of single-player campaigns, and it’s a great way to keep more mature gamers engaged in a video game. And for this storytelling style, Martin turned to the art of fantasy artist Frank Frazetta and his iconic painting, Death Dealer.