DOOM: The Dark Ages' Revelations expansion runs 10 to 12 hours and is built around a new Chain Spear

id Software is closing out DOOM: The Dark Ages with a campaign expansion called Revelations, and it lands July 7. Bethesda announced the add-on last month with a trailer and a date. What showed up this week is the part that actually tells you whether to care: how long it is, how it plays, and what the new weapon does.

The short version is that Revelations is a real chunk of game, not a two-hour victory lap. Previews this week put it at 10 to 12 hours, which the coverage says is larger than DOOM Eternal's two expansions combined. Roughly 60% of that is story campaign and the other 40% is endgame, with a hub area you comb for secrets between levels. If you finished The Dark Ages last year and wanted a reason to reinstall, this is a longer one than most single-game DLCs bother to offer.

The Chain Spear is the whole point

The main addition is a new weapon, the Chain Spear, and id built the expansion around teaching you to use it. You can switch between the Chain Spear and the Shield Saw instantly and weave both into the same combo, which reads fine in a bullet point and only clicks once you are juggling them mid-fight. The catch, per the previews, is that unlocking the spear's full kit takes the entire campaign. By the final hours it gets described as essential rather than optional.

That design choice is worth flagging plainly. Building a whole expansion around mastering one weapon can go two ways. It can feel like a satisfying skill curve, or it can feel like the good version of the weapon is locked behind hours of the weaker version. I have not played it, and neither has anyone writing these previews. They were hands-off, so take the "it's essential and it rules" framing as a preview impression, not a verdict.

Story and enemies

The setup drops the Slayer, wounded and betrayed, into a purgatory he has to fight his way out of, with help from a new ally, before taking on what Bethesda calls "an abomination of the gods." DOOM has never really lived or died on plot. On the enemy side, classic demons are back, including the Archvile and the Pain Elemental, next to new variants and demons built for this expansion.

What it costs and what it gates

This is the part to read closely before you buy anything.

• Revelations is $19.99 as a standalone add-on on July 7.
• It is included at no extra cost if you own the Premium Edition or the Collectors Bundle. The Premium Edition is $34.99 right now.
• Ripatorium 3.0, an update to the game's arena challenge mode, arrives the same day and is free for everyone who owns DOOM: The Dark Ages. It adds more customization, better pass code generation, and personal presets.
• If you own Revelations, finishing its story unlocks three more Ripatorium maps plus extra demons and upgraded weapons.

So the free update is real and goes to every player, and the paid content is the campaign plus the Ripatorium extras tied to it. No surprise season pass, no drip of microtransactions bolted onto the announcement.

Where you can play it

DOOM: The Dark Ages runs on Xbox Series X and S, Xbox on PC, Steam, Battle.net, and PS5, and it is on Game Pass Ultimate, Game Pass Premium, and PC Game Pass. The expansion follows the base game across those platforms.

Revelations launches July 7. The previews are promising and the pricing is clean. Whether the Chain Spear earns the ten-plus hours it is built around is the one thing nobody can tell you yet.