DOOM Eternal PC graphics and difficulty settings revealed - MW

The time has finally come ... After what feels like forever, DOOM Eternal is here on us, blessed with its hot presence. When we all saw the system requirements last week, I think we all took a sip of the collective to see how demanding it was. Well, to see how well it works, you can look at all our other benchmarking articles around DOOM Eternal, but now we can see what kind of graphical installation you'll find when launch the game.

First of all, DOOM Eternal uses the Vulkan API and nothing else, so you can't switch to DirectX. There are rumors that DirectX12 will be available, but there are currently no options. That said DOOM Eternal comes with a bunch of graphics options to choose from and get the perfect quality to balance performance. For example, there aren't many options like Red Dead Redemption 2, but there is definitely plenty of room to play.

With all that said, let's now take a look at the graphic options available and how much you can customize each one:

DOOM permanent display settings:

• Window mode - Window / Full screen / Borderless window
• Monitoring
• Frame rate
• Resolution
• Vertical synchronization - Adaptive / Disable / Enable / Triple buffer
• HDR On - Off / On

DOOM Eternal Video settings:

• Field of View - 90 > 120
• Motion Blur - Off/Low/Medium/High/Ultra/Nightmare/Ultra Nightmare
• Gamma
• Loot Drop Brightness - 0 > 100
• Performance Metrics - Off/Low/Medium/High/Ultra/Nightmare/Ultra Nightmare

DOOM Eternal Accessibility settings:

• Colorblind Rendering Mode - Off/Protanopia/Deuteranopia/Tritanopia
• Intensity - 0 > 100
• Strength - 0 > 100
• Contrast - 0 > 100
• Brightness - 0 > 100

DOOM Eternal Advanced settings:

• Overall Quality - Low/Medium/High/Ultra/Nightmare/Ultra Nightmare/Custom
• Texture Pool Size - Low/Medium/High/Ultra/Nightmare/Ultra Nightmare
• Shadow Quality - Low/Medium/High/Ultra/Nightmare/Ultra Nightmare
• Reflections Quality - Off/Low/Medium/High/Ultra/Nightmare/Ultra Nightmare
• Motion Blur Quality - Low/Medium/High/Ultra/Nightmare/Ultra Nightmare
• Directional Occlusion - Off/Low/Medium/High/Ultra/Nightmare/Ultra Nightmare
• Lights Quality - Low/Medium/High/Ultra/Nightmare/Ultra Nightmare
• Particles Quality - Low/Medium/High/Ultra/Nightmare/Ultra Nightmare
• Decal Quality - Low/Medium/High/Ultra/Nightmare/Ultra Nightmare
• Water Quality - Low/Medium/High/Ultra/Nightmare/Ultra Nightmare
• Volumetrics Quality - Low/Medium/High/Ultra/Nightmare/Ultra Nightmare
• Texture Filtering Quality - Low/Medium/High/Ultra/Nightmare/Ultra Nightmare
• Geometric Quality - Low/Medium/High/Ultra/Nightmare/Ultra Nightmare
• Chromatic Aberration - Off/On
• Sharpening - 0 > 100
• Film Grain - 0 > 100
• Resolution Scaling Mode - Off/Static/Dynamic
• Resolution Scale - 50 > 100
• Resolution Scaling Target FPS - 60 >1000
• Depth of Field - Off/On
• Depth of Field Anti-aliasing - Off/On

What are DOOM's permanent difficulty settings?

There are also a few tricky settings to choose from in DOOM Eternal. We have typical difficulties Easy, Normal, Hard and Very difficult: I'm too young to die, hurt me a lot, Extreme violence and corresponding nightmare. We also have the option of fan favorite back: Ultra-Nightmare. But joining us this time is a new mode called: Extra life mode.

I'm Too Young To Die

This is your standard Easy difficulty: enemies are weaker and you are stronger. Ammo and health/armour pickups are worth more than normal. Great for newcomers to first-person shooters (especially newcomers to the DOOM Series).

Hurt Me Plenty

Normal difficulty setting, for those looking to experience the standard difficulty. Enemies and players deal normal damage to each other. If you played DOOM (2016), know your way around first-person shooters and looking for something no-too-hard but also not-too-easy, this is the setting for you.

Ultra-Violence

Again, the standard Hard setting. Enemies attack faster and deal more damage. This is the setting for players who are really looking for a challenge. If you played DOOM (2016) and thought it was way too easy, this might be for you.

Nightmare

This is the setting for hardcore enthusiasts. I wouldn't recommend it for any new players, even if you are a DOOM Pro Player, since DOOM Eternal has a lot of new mechanics to master. It's called Nightmare for a reason after all...  Then again, if you feel like causing yourself pain, then why not?

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Luckily, all these difficulty options above can be changed on the fly whilst playing the campaign. So if you're finding that things are a little too easy, or maybe they're a bit too hard, you can swap out to an easier/harder difficulty level as you please. However, if you feel like choosing these last two options, unfortunately you won't be able to change them mid-campaign...

Ultra-Nightmare

For those familiar with DOOM (2016)'s infamous Ultra-Nightmare mode, this will come as no surprise to you. Nothing has changed in this setting, so let me just explain it to those who don't know what this is. The premise is simple: take DOOM's hardest difficulty mode, Nightmare, and play through the entire campaign. The catch is that if you die, your entire campaign is reset and you must start from the very beginning again. Not just the mission, but the entire game. So a potential 6-10 hour run can be completely wiped in an instant. And DOOM Eternal is bringing it back.

Extra life mode

This mode does not necessarily make the difficulty setting harder or easier; instead, it serves as a special mode for players who are looking for a more classic experience; where games need more lives to play games. Throughout the Eternal DOOM; You will find extra lives in hidden areas, run out of them and the whole campaign ends just like in Ultra-Nightmare mode. The interesting thing about this is that you can choose this mode, then choose which difficulty settings to play, but, understandably, you can't choose the extra Living Mode and then choose Ultra-Nightmare.

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So now you know what you will get when you join DOOM Eternal after just a few days. You can check out how each graphic option on the ticket fare about performance in our article DOOM's Most Important Permanent Graphic Options. You can also see how different graphics cards and rigs have performed in our DOOM Perpetual Performance Benchmark article. The game will be released in just a few days, so hopefully you will have some ideas of how well it will run on your system afterwards.

MW