My thoughts about the gameplay, design, and soundtrack have evolved quite a bit since my first experience with Quake. Quake is, had to be, and will remain a product of its time. The unusual combination of medieval knights, cosmic horror-inspired nightmare creatures, military weapons, and odd level structure was a result of the constraints of its development process. It's not a game made from careful deliberate choices. It was brutally Frankensteined together to make a mismatched whole that somehow managed to work despite all its problems. That same brutal crudeness is reflected throughout every aspect of the game as well, from the weapons to the enemies to the models and environments. True 3D games were a new thing, and Quake was pushing the hardware of the day beyond its limits. Everything had to be as simple as possible while still being truly 3D, so you got angular models that wobbled due to vertex precision limitations placed into chunky, crudely shaped environments with simplistic weapons that went from weak to insanely powerful with no real refinement. The soundtrack was even a huge gamble, favoring an ambient feel over the pulse-pounding metal music from Doom. Yet... somehow all this managed to work.
...
Looking back on Quake 1 from my present position I can fully appreciate it for what it is, what it tried to be, and I find it sad that it was never properly followed up on afterward. Overall I do like Quake 2 better. It is certainly a more polished game, with thought-out design, deliberate flow in the level structure, a very balanced progression of weapons, and the weapon variety just seems more flavorful. It's just more to my personal taste, but I certainly like what Quake 1 has become for me in the time since it's initial release and my very unpleasant initial experiences. It's hard to imagine a world of 3D games without Quake squarely at the beginning, like a brooding Great Old One awaiting for the stars to be right once again to awaken from its slumber and terrorize the unwary world.
Well said.
It's not even id's first time they did genre mash in their games. Doom was entirely derivative of 80's action movie culture, with the concept being James Cameron's
Aliens sci-fi but the extraterrestrials are replaced with interdimensional hell spawn. In my opinion Doom aged better than Quake (although the gameplay is a different conversation) because the sci-fi of
Aliens remains relevant in popular media. Quake's grunge dark fantasy stopped being "cool" the moment stuff like (and its equivalents) Nirvana or NIN were no longer transformative agents of cultural taste, and by the time of Quake 1's release those were already on their way out. As a standalone work of art, Quake 1 suffers from its incoherent mix of action sci-fi and horror fantasy. Notably the tech base levels are nice but thematically do not belong.
Nevertheless, I think Quake 1 will always be attractive because of its idiosyncrasies gathered from early 90s pop culture that have never quite resurfaced like other eras have (eg the endlessness of 80s inspired media of the last two decades). The angst, anger, and attitude of Q1 is wonderful. Underappreciated, even? Every element from visuals, gameplay loops, and music channels the vibe of grunge and teen angst. You're fighting for your life just to escape the masochist death traps of Azure Agony, where players are purposely thrown out of their element via level design, where the game actively plots against you with slime and shamblers, trap doors, makes moments like the thunderbolt and quad damage pickups much more satisfying, being able lash out against a hostile world and briefly turn the odds in your favor. In a way, Quake 1 is condemned to be the moody little teenager,
the kid who's not bad just misunderstood, making for an excellent mood piece that excels when compared to Doom or Quake II. Its a shame that the release version didn't turn out to be a video game cultural reset like Doom was before it.
Maybe it's a blessing after all that Quake was released in the state it's in. Romero's next attempt at another historical video game
moment failed pathetically. Besides, all the failures of Quake guaranteed that the genre would no longer be led by a single studio or game. Duke Nukem 3D, Unreal, Half Life, Halo CE heralded the changes for the fps genre without occupying such a towering position Doom had or Quake expected to.
id completely fumbled the Quake reboot, but I do feel like there will be one more Quake revival before 2030.
