Late to Quake

The Forgotten Sepulchre is a dark and atmospheric Quake level created by Henrik Oresten and Simon O’Callaghan.

These sorts of articles usually embark on a deeply nostalgic journey, as the author recounts their experience of their favourite videogame and how it took over their life. But not me. In 1996 I played the demo of Quake and was unimpressed: the game was murky, indistinct and sluggish as hell. It couldn’t compete with the faster and funnier Duke Nukem 3D which I’d already been playing for months. With hindsight, I had rather poor taste back then.

Quake didn’t enter my sights again until earlier this year when I read an article discussing Forgotten Sepulchre, a huge level in a mod called Arcane Dimensions.

The screenshots of a rotten ruin had a dark and oppressive aesthetic that reminded me of a favourite old game: Thief: The Dark Project, all dark passages and bright windows, a maze of opportunities to explore. It looked like a place I’d once visited in a dark dream and I immediately wanted to visit this gloomy old world.

However, I’d never played all of Quake before and thought I should do that first. I bought the remastered version on GOG for a few quid and played it to the end.

It was quite a blast exploring the old dark corners of Quake’s mysterious worlds. Playing it after all this time sparked a certain kind of joy for the lost art of simpler games. However, there was just one problem: I sucked at it.

I could handle the puzzles and traps and combat against the lesser foes, but once the fiends, shamblers, vores and spawns turned up I almost noped out of there. I stayed with it, but godmode and noclip became my allies when the going got tough. I was fine with cheating: I wanted to see the world of Quake, even if I needed some extra help to get there.

Quake’s entrance hall from the 2021 remaster. I’d never seen Quake look this good, a far cry from the game in 1996.

I was ambivalent about the experience. I loved the vibe of the game, the grungy old-school visuals, the fear inducing soundscapes and the chaotic architecture. But the frantic gameplay was not my thing at all: much too fast for my ageing dulled reactions.

Some parts of the game hadn’t aged well either. I’d played the remastered version from 2021 with improved enemy and weapon models and great dynamic lighting and shadows. While the levels looked great – dark spaces full of disturbing architecture and creeping shadows – the enemies were still very low resolution and unattractive by today’s standards. Trying to see them by the standards of 1996 wasn’t easy, which does prove the power of nostalgia. I had no nostalgia for these chunky critters and thought they were crude and outdated.

Arcane Spasms

Despite my criticisms, I still wanted to play Arcane Dimensions. The screenshots had compelled me enough to want to explore those sinister other worlds. The first thing I needed was a source port, a new version of the engine that takes advantage of modern hardware. Source ports can do much more than the original, including rendering huge levels and adding coloured lights, skyboxes and fog.

Out of many Quake source ports I settled on the wonderfully named QuakeSpasm. It was easy to set it up with the Arcane Dimensions mod and then I was off on a new adventure.

Over the next few weeks I played as many of the Arcane Dimensions maps as I could. Some of them were breathtaking, beautiful chunky examples of what modern Quake levels can be. I was still bad at playing most of them, or at least I’d start off OK but by the time a level had ramped up to its finale, I just couldn’t keep up with the action and had to enable god mode. It’s a bit unsatisfying, but I felt better about it when I realised that these levels were made by Quake experts for other expert players and I was a mere noob.

The Horde of Zendar by Simon ‘Sock’ O’Callaghan, a level from the Arcane Dimensions mod.

Back catalogue

After playing Arcane Dimensions, I discovered Quaddicted which strives to carry every single player mod made for Quake.

There’s a huge variety, from basic levels built in the 90s all the way through to the present day with huge mods containing not only new levels, but new sounds, graphics, monsters, weapons and gameplay. Some of it was bad, most of it was good, and some of it was quite exceptional. Regardless of quality, I played them to understand the progression of Quake modding since the beginning.

It was an entertaining education and I came out of the other side several months later, with great admiration for the talents of its modding community.

One curious outcome was that I hated the void maps: levels suspended in the sky. These triggered my vertigo! I couldn’t play most of those levels, especially those with very narrow platforms: they made me feel physically sick with the same palm-sweaty response I’d had clambering about on bridges in Half Life 2 and Dying Light.

Questionable Quake

When I was researching the history of Quake, I found a page on the Scout’s Journey Devlog, an unfinished game that was being built with the Quake engine. This is how Quake was described:

Quake is a game where a lone protagonist shoots fantastic monsters (or other players) with simple, effective weapons in fantastic, otherworldly environments, running and jumping, collecting keys and pressing buttons, using platforms and overcoming various obstacles that provide variation.

It’s an accurate description, but is it enough of a draw for this old gamer who doesn’t really play FPS games anymore?

It’s not unfair to say that Quake and its mods rely on outdated gameplay tropes: monster closets, combat based gated progression, teleporting keycard squads, cheap monster respawns in previously cleared rooms… the list goes on. But these tropes can’t really be argued against: they defined early first person shooters. And after reading contemporary map reviews, these tropes are still expected in Quake maps.

Dwell is another huge mod for Quake with some beautiful level design. This incredible temple was designed by Benoit ‘Bal’ Stordeur.

Gated progression through combat is a particular frustration. It’s a huge blocker for explorer style players like me who aren’t great at combat. Without an alternate way to progress, those players will give up or worse, break the game by using cheats. It’s one of the reasons I loved the original Thief games and later the Dishonored series. Those had multiple non-violent ways of achieving your objectives.

One can argue that I shouldn’t play Quake if I dislike its combat: after all, this is a basic first-person shooter, what else was I expecting? It’s a fair point: why am I playing it at all? That’s easier to answer: Games can be more than the sum of their parts, and if some parts don’t appeal there are other things to enjoy about them.

For example, secret hunting is great fun and I love this aspect of Quake and similar games. Trying to outwit the devilish mind of the level designer is a brilliant challenge. The huge Forgotten Sepulchre has no less than 50 secrets, when a typical Quake level has just a handful of them. I didn’t find them all, I got 39 out of 50, but I had far more fun doing that than any of the combat encounters.

Can you separate these aspects of gameplay and still say you’re playing the same game? Could I play an exploratory, secret hunting Quake level with no combat and still call it Quake? Purists would likely say no, but I definitely could.

Final thoughts

We all have different reasons for playing games. Thirty years ago I enjoyed the fast paced fighting of shooters like Doom. Now I prefer just exploring. I love being immersed in fantastic environments, places rich in culture with amazing history, architecture, believable characters and compelling stories.

Quake doesn’t deliver much of a story and its culture is surface level at best, but it does deliver amazing spaces to explore. Modern mods like Arcane Dimensions, Dwell and Alkaline have incredible architecture and great design. Each mod raises the bar of Quake’s brutal aesthetic, which still commands attention to this day.

Objectively I recognize why Quake was a milestone in gaming history, but I’ve come to it much too late. I can enjoy the dark worlds it offers to explore, but the gameplay relies on outdated tropes and demands abilities that I no longer possess.

And yet every now and then I will double-click that crescent and nail, fire up a random map and take a wander around a fantastic other world.

Maybe Quake got its claws into me after all…