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There was a tweet going around from someone a few days ago stating that multiple studios approached Epic about remastering Unreal back in 2017, and the response they all got was that they had no interest in re-releasing old games because nobody wants to play them.

Considering the overall reception for the remasters, the Halo Master Chief Collection, etc, that tweet has aged like expired milk in the desert sun.  Epic just wants to sell their new engine everywhere and went out of their way to kill their old IP's, and throw more crap into Fortnight.  Unless they see enough $$$ from what Nightdive is doing I doubt they'll want to do it.  From their perspective I imagine they see the Q1 and Q2 remasters as just a marketing hype push for a future Quake game, since we're talking the narrow-mindedness of corporate suits here.  Hopefully I'll be proven wrong and they'll decide the old UT needs some love, but I'm not going to hold my breath for that to change any time soon.

There was a tweet going around from someone a few days ago stating that multiple studios approached Epic about remastering Unreal back in 2017, and the response they all got was that they had no interest in re-releasing old games because nobody wants to play them. That tweet seems to have been deleted because I can't find it now, but whether or not anyone actually tried to do a remaster, it's currently impossible to purchase any part of the Unreal franchise anymore, so the "no interest in re-releasing old games" part certainly tracks.

I do agree, though, but given part of Nightdive's whole deal is a form of preservation by making these old games as widely available and easily playable as possible (because the average person doesn't want to deal with making source ports work, no matter how simple that process is, if they even know what a source port is in the first place), the inevitable demand of EGS exclusivity would likely be a dealbreaker for them.

Christ I'm good at writing long sentences that somehow aren't actually run-ons.

Since Epic has pretty much abandoned the franchise i think it would be great to see night dive to a remaster of unreal

Yes! The launch angle is what first tripped me up, and made me start to question the overall physics. The reason behind it is a fascinating, and I appreciate you explaining it. Maybe they should just pay you to polish up Generations Arena for the inevitable Q3A rerelease?

That would certainly be nice! 

The stealth mechanic has always been there. [...] In single player you've always been able to carry the powerups except for the adrenaline. [...] Multiplayer had them instant by default [...]

Ah, okay! I feel kind of silly for having forgotten so much of the game. For as little as I played singleplayer, I spent months straight in multiplayer — especially the old Lithium mod. That might be why I remember the power-ups working as such.

Grenades are completely off now.  [...] The launch angles are wrong now as well.

Yes! The launch angle is what first tripped me up, and made me start to question the overall physics. The reason behind it is a fascinating, and I appreciate you explaining it. Maybe they should just pay you to polish up Generations Arena for the inevitable Q3A rerelease?

I personally don't think the chaingun needed a buff, but I never understood the need for that bit on the machinegun.

While certainly not necessary, I always thought that the machinegun climb was a super neat feature for the time. I don't think that it existed in multiplayer anyway, which may be another instance of multiplayer balancing being retroactively applied game-wide?

Intentional or not, I definitely echo Pho's want of a way to toggle things back to their original behaviors.

That seems like a reasonable desire. I wouldn't think that a "legacy" togle would be too difficult to provide, but that's just my unprofessional opinion

Some of these things seem like oversights (especially the grenade behavior) and if they're reported, there's a good chance that Nightdive will fix them; Doom 64 and Quake both received patches to fix things that weren't quite right with the engine changes they made, or at least they got "close enough."

Stuff like the chaingun windup/down, machinegun not pushing your aim upwards, and railgun damage were definitely intentional. I personally don't think the chaingun needed a buff, but I never understood the need for that bit on the machinegun. The railgun change seems like someone went "I don't understand why the damage values are different in multiplayer" and figured they were making enough other changes to single player things that they'd just wrap that in, as well; I wonder if that's a change Id intended to make at some point and just never did.

Intentional or not, I definitely echo Pho's want of a way to toggle things back to their original behaviors. Q2R is a large departure from how Nightdive handled D64 and Q1, and while there's clearly a lot of love for the game that went into it, the omission of a full "classic" gameplay option is definitely a thing to be addressed.

Either way, the reception to Quake 2 Remastered has been extremely positive, from what I've been seeing, and I think that's great. The game has been derided by a lot of the talking heads on the internet as slow and mediocre for much of the last 20 years, and it's nice that it's getting its day in the sun again.

The stealth mechanic has always been there.  Best place I can use as an example is there are two gunners on a ledge above you with the laser control switch in the Processing Plant level.  If you start up the stairs just enough you can rail them without them seeing you, and they would gib.  Well, they used to gib.  Now it just kills them.  The railgun damage in single player was reduced to 100 points.

Grenades are completely off now.  Since they upped the internal timer from 10Hz to 20Hz they now bounce like Q1 grenades.  I had to deal with this issue when coding the grenade physics in Gen.  The launch angles are wrong now as well.  If you look straight up and fire a grenade it should arc back behind you.  In the remaster it arcs forward no matter what.  I am not really happy about this change in particular.

In single player you've always been able to carry the powerups except for the adrenaline.  The original CD release of Quake 2 had the rather laughable ability to carry multiple copies of the same powerup.  The Makron had to deal with a completely invulnerable Quaded marine.  That was later patched to only allow you to carry only one at a time.  Multiplayer had them instant by default, and that's a good thing because playing with powerups anyone can activate at any time was not fun.

So yeah, they did make changes where I think changes should not have been made.

[lot]

I'm currently  halfway through Ground Zero, and looking forward to seeing the brand new episode soon! I've played a lot more Q1 than Q2, so it's been fun to go back through it start-to-finish. I still think that Q2 probably has the most fun movement physics of the series! And those weapon designs? Perfection!

There are some things that feel off to me though. Without loading up an old copy of the game, I'm going to chalk them up to a faulty memory, but though I'd put it out there anyway. The aforementioned Berserker jump is obviously new, as is the way a lot of enemies react. But beyond that, it feels like some weapons have been nerfed — especially in regards to the railgun's damage output and the way grenades interact with the environment. While others were made "simpler" to use, by making the chaingun spin-up and down quicker, or removing the machinegun's climb. It also seems like exploding barrels have a delay, which often makes them kind of pointless in setups.

I also have to ask... did the stealth mechanic exist before, or is it a wholly new invention? I like it, especially when paired with the previously underwhelming silencer item, but it doesn't feel as though many levels are set up to really make use of it beyond one or two enemies. And speaking of the silencer — adding power-ups to the inventory is neat, but being able to spawn invulnerability and quad damage whenever I want (and at the same time) has made a lot of areas completely trivial, while also removing the fun of areas designed around quad runs.

It's just a shame that we'll have to wait quite a while longer for the release of the mod.... eh. And just a couple of days ago came out a great remaster of Quake 2. 

p.s: I wouldn't be surprised if Nightdive Studios released a remaster for the third installment of the game as well.

And can we just take credit here for the Adrenaline becoming a holdable item?  Just a little?  We did that first. 

If anyone at Nightdive happens to have gotten that bit directly from Generations, still takes a peek here now and again, and wants to admit to where this came from, please let us know. Just for fun.