Quake is a 1996 first-person shooter video game developed by id Software and published by GT Interactive. The first game in the Quake series, it was originally released for MS-DOS and Windows, followed by Mac OS, Linux, and Saturn in 1997 and Nintendo 64 in 1998. The game's plot is centered around teleportation experiments, dubbed slipgates, which have resulted in an unforeseen invasion of Earth by a hostile force codenamed Quake, which commands a vast army of monsters. The player takes the role of a soldier (later named Ranger), whose mission is to travel through these slipgates in order to find and destroy the source of the invasion. The game is split between futuristic military bases and medieval, gothic environments, featuring both science fiction and fantasy weaponry and enemies as the player battles possessed soldiers and demonic beasts such as ogres or armor-clad knights. Quake heavily takes inspiration from gothic fiction and in particular the works of H. P. Lovecraft. The game went through many revisions during development, and had originally been inspired by a Dungeons & Dragons campaign held among id Software staff.
The successor to id Software's Doom series, Quake built upon the technology and gameplay of its predecessor. Unlike the Doom engine before it, the Quake engine offered full real-time 3D rendering and had early support for 3D acceleration through OpenGL. After Doom helped popularize multiplayer deathmatches, Quake added various multiplayer options. Online multiplayer became increasingly common, with the QuakeWorld update and software such as QuakeSpy making the process of finding and playing against others on the Internet easier and more reliable. Quake featured music composed by Trent Reznor and his band Nine Inch Nails.
Quake is often cited as one of the best video games ever made. Despite its critical acclaim, Quakes development was controversial in the history of id Software. Due to creative differences and a lack of leadership, the majority of the team left the company after the game's release, including co-founder John Romero. An "enhanced" version of Quake was developed by Nightdive Studios and published by Bethesda Softworks and was released for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Windows, and Xbox One consoles in August 2021, including the original game's first two expansions and two episodes developed by MachineGames. The PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S versions were released in October 2021.
Gameplay
In Quake single-player mode, players explore levels, facing monsters and finding secret areas before reaching an exit. Switches or keys open doors, and reaching the exit takes the player to the next level. Before accessing an episode, there is a set of three pathways with easy, medium, and hard skill levels. The fourth skill level, "Nightmare", was described by the game manual to be "so bad that the entry is hidden, so people won't wander in by accident". The game has no dedicated "use" key; players instead physically push against objects to activate them.
The player can wield up to 8 weapons, but will always carry at least an axe and a shotgun. Four separate ammo pools are carried: shells, nails, rockets, and cells, with each used for different weapons. Like Doom, power-ups can be found and used for a short duration. Among them are the Ring of Shadows, granting invisibility, the Pentagram of Protection, granting invulnerability, and the Quad Damage, which quadruples every weapons' damage. Armor comes in three tiers and grants both durability and effectiveness, and each armor blocks the same percentage of damage regardless of durability.
Quake single-player campaign is organized into four individual episodes with seven to eight levels in each (including one secret level per episode; episode one's secret level has very low gravity). If the player's character dies, they must restart at the beginning of that level. The game may be saved at any time in the PC versions and between levels in the console versions. Upon completing an episode, the player is returned to the hub "START" level, where another episode can be chosen. Although the manual recommends playing them in order, episodes may be completed in any sequence. Each episode starts the player from scratch, without any previously collected items. Episode one (which formed the shareware or downloadable demo version of Quake) is the only episode with a traditional boss at the end; the other three episodes have no bosses. The ultimate objective at the end of each episode is to recover a magic rune. After all of the runes are obtained, the floor of the hub level opens up to reveal an entrance to the "END" level, leading to the game's final boss.
In multiplayer mode, players on several computers connect to a server (which may be a dedicated machine or on one of the player's computers), where they can either play the single-player campaign together in co-op (cooperative) mode, or play against each other in multiplayer (see LAN party). When players die in multiplayer mode, they can immediately respawn, but will lose any items that were collected. Similarly, items that have been picked up previously will respawn after some time, and may be picked up again. The most popular multiplayer modes are all forms of deathmatch. Deathmatch modes typically consist of either free-for-all (no team organization), one-on-one duels, or organized teamplay with two or more players per team (or clan).
The gameplay in Quake was considered unique for its time because of the different ways the player can maneuver through the game. The player can start and stop moving suddenly, jump unnaturally high, and change direction while mid-air. Bunnyhopping or strafe-jumping grant faster movement, while rocket jumping enables the player to reach otherwise-inaccessible areas at the cost of some health. Many of these non-realistic behaviors contribute to Quakes appeal. Multiplayer Quake was one of the first games singled out as a form of electronic sport. A notable participant was Dennis Fong, who won John Carmack's Ferrari 328 at the Microsoft-sponsored Red Annihilation tournament in 1997.
Plot
In the single-player game, the player takes the role of the protagonist, unnamed in Quake but referred to as Ranger in later games (voiced by Trent Reznor), who is sent into a portal in order to stop an enemy code-named "Quake". The government had been experimenting with teleportation technology and developed a working prototype called a "Slipgate"; the mysterious Quake compromised the Slipgate by connecting it with its own teleportation system, using it to send death squads to the "human" dimension in order to test the martial capabilities of humanity.
The sole surviving protagonist in "Operation Counterstrike" is Ranger, who must advance, starting each of the four episodes from an overrun human military base, before fighting his way into other dimensions, reaching them via the Slipgate or their other-worldly equivalent. After passing through the Slipgate, Ranger's main objective is to collect four magic runes from four dimensions of Quake; these are the key to stopping the enemy and ending the invasion of Earth.
Each episode represents individual dimensions that the player can access through the Slipgate or magical portals (in the case of the latter three episodes) that are discovered over the course of the game. The various realms consist of a number of gothic, medieval, and lava-filled caves and dungeons, with a recurring theme of hellish and satanic imagery reminiscent of Doom, such as pentagrams, images of demons, and depictions of torture.
The game's setting is heavily influenced by dark fantasy, including H. P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos. In particular, Dimensional Shamblers appear as enemies, the "Spawn" enemies are called "Formless Spawn of Tsathoggua" in the manual, the boss of the first episode is named Chthon, the main villain is named Shub-Niggurath and is explicitly stated to be an Old One, and the four episodes all have Lovecraftian names.
Development
In the early 1990s, the staff at id Software had a private Dungeons & Dragons game, which would go on to inspire a number of elements in their titles over the following years. With John Carmack as DM, the campaign featured a group of adventurers named the Silver Shadow Band. The group were named for the silver dragon on which they flew, and each represented one of the core stats of the game. Among them was a powerful character named Quake, representing strength, who fought with a magic hammer capable of destroying buildings. Quake was accompanied by a floating magic artifact named the Hellgate Cube which attacked his foes with lightning bolts. John Romero described fighting alongside Quake as the most fun they had playing D&D. The Silver Shadow Band did "contract work for Justice, an even more powerful group". The original campaign concluded in early 1992, after Romero's character made a deal with a demon, exchanging a book called the Demonomicron for a magic sword called the Daikatana, which resulted in a demonic invasion that wiped out the Material Plane. A preview included with id Software's first release, 1990's Commander Keen, advertised a game entitled The Fight for Justice as a follow-up to the Commander Keen trilogy. It would feature a character named Quake, "the strongest, most dangerous person on the continent", armed with thunderbolts and a "Ring of Regeneration". Conceived as a VGA full-color side-scrolling role-playing video game, The Fight for Justice was never released. The team briefly explored making the project in 1991 but abandoned the idea as the technology for it simply did not exist at the time. The project was only in development for about two weeks.
A return to the Quake concept was raised by John Romero in a meeting in late 1994, when discussing the next engine and main project after the completion of Doom II. Newer members of the team, including American McGee and Sandy Petersen, had not been present for the original D&D campaign or game project, but were on board with the idea after it was explained to them, and the team was then in agreement about the broad direction of the title. In a December 1, 1994, post to an online bulletin board, John Romero wrote, "Okay, people. It seems that everyone is speculating on whether Quake is going to be a slow, RPG-style light-action game. Wrong! What does id do best and dominate at? Can you say "action"? I knew you could. Quake will be constant, hectic action throughout – probably more so than Doom".
The team entered into an R&D phase while Carmack was working on the engine. By 1995, the outline for the game included a medieval setting, hand-to-hand combat, thrown weapons, an area of effect attack with the hammer, and feeding souls to the Hellgate Cube. Some early information on Quake was released publicly, focusing on a Thor-like character who wields a giant hammer. A close up of Quake holding his hammer was on the cover of PC Gamer for the October 1995 issue, and screenshots showed medieval environments and a dragon. Romero revealed in 2023 that the dragon model was never actually implemented, and had simply been placed in the sky for the screenshot. The plan was for the game to have more role-playing-style elements. An Aztec-style texture set was developed for the project, but was not used due to artistic opposition from American McGee, who preferred a more heavy metal themed look for his levels. This texture set was reused in episode three for the map Vaults of Zin.