A small Doom Eternal update rolled out earlier this week revealing a new Halloween-themed Mancubus coming to the game as part of the Ghouls, Gourds, and Galleons event, and fixing precisely one bug. But it also made a change that I thought was far more interesting than any of that: It reset the main menu music back to “the same as it was when Doom Eternal launched in March 2020.”
It’s a weird one, right? It turns out that when The Ancient Gods Part Two showed up in March, it brought with it new music for the main menu. And fans noticed: Users across multiple threads on Reddit and Steam ask what happened to the original music, and how they can get it back. Mod makers eventually took the matter into their own hands, with creations like “Old Main Menu Music” (now set to hidden, with a warning that “if ever the main menu music is changed again, you can count on me to make a new version of this mod”) and “Mick Gordon Main Menu Theme.”
There’s no mention of the change in the DLC release notes, and as far as I know Bethesda never explained why the theme was swapped, or even acknowledged that it happened. There is speculation, however, that Bethesda’s “complicated” relationship with composer Mick Gordon is at the root of it. That first came to light in April 2020, about a month after the release of Doom Eternal, when Gordon said on social media that he hadn’t mixed most of the official Doom Eternal soundtrack and expressed doubt that he’d work with Bethesda again in the future.
