id Software Confirms That Their Major Protagonists are Relatives.

id Software has made legends of themselves with their contributions to the first person shooter genre of games. While hardcore action has been a specialty of theirs, deep lore certainly hasnt. This is why it was such a surprise to learn that all of the studio's major protagonists are canonically related.

According to a Twitter conversation between id software game designers John Romero and id co-founder Tom Hall about the lineage between their iconic characters, they are all related.

"The lineage isn't a theory. Fact."

Hints of this idea have been seen in the Doom RPG and the Wolfenstein hint manual, but there was merely speculation at that point. Now we not only have confirmation of their relation but some information as to the order of the family tree.

Wolfenstein hero BJ Blazkowicz is Commander Keen's grandfather, while Keen himself is Doomguy's father. This does leave one generation open between BJ and Keen, which the id associates had a humorous back and forth about Keen's father being "an awesome, heroic... newscaster" with the stage name "Blaze." BJ Blazkowicz, Blaz-kowics, Blaze. This fits nicely in with Commander Keen's legal name being "Billy Blaze."

The only question left is how the protagonist from id's less successful RAGE ties into this all. Though I think it's better we don't talk about RAGE.