Thread:Vorknkx/@comment-3547390-20150204202730/@comment-3547390-20150321093149

Heh, that makes me feel much better. I got the skill to collide with the only possible thing you can hit in a massively open world!

Yes, I remember watching that video a while back. He definitely has an interesting interpretation, explaining how the Industrial style of Quake represented the thoughts of the era and how it was a game fully about hatred/coldness. Doom on the other hand was metal, evil monsters being at the forefront while a long warrior fights through vivid environments.

His points are very valid. The biggest difference is that things he feels are a drawback, such as level design being based on mood and feeling, are things that are strengths to me. If game is to be considered art, art is about mood and feeling. Having underlying tones of the level design, making a room not just a room but a place that creates a feeling, is just a demonstration of why I enjoy Quake. Duke 3d was just based on humor and throwing environments at you, but the world never felt solid or like it really mattered. Duke 3d to me is a game that admits it is made for the arcade factor, then creates levels around it. Doom is a game representing Hell, yet is also arcade-like and running through vivid worlds that don't really matter.

As he describes, Quake is a game that slows you down to evade traps while moves you along due to the harshness of the environment. The slowness means you will be in a room longer than you would in Doom, which means more detail must be added and that each room will be seen more by the player. Quake was basically the precursor for the days of Unreal, where the entire game was a massive mood-piece (albeit one that kept changing) and where the levels were designed to be more appreciated instead of run through at breakneck speeds. Mood based design died with Quake, it no longer was about evoking a single feeling through the entire game. Instead, the levels conveyed a whole bunch of feelings as atmosphere came to the forefront. Odd I talk about the slow paced speed of Quake as Quake multiplayer is the exact opposite, showing just how much faster it could get than the days of Doom, but it shows the contrast between the two environments and how each one is better when its own speed is designated.

Quake was a streamlining, a rethinking of the entire FPS genre. It got rid of a lot of features people liked to create a very simplistic form of gameplay, the entire game is just running and shooting. Yet, by cutting it down to these core essentials, the gamer had less to worry about focusing on in terms of learning controls (otherwise, System Shock would be the best game ever due to the large number of buttons) and more in terms of playing. One reason I am bugged by old school FPS games is that I feel the need to find secrets, yet that means I need to spam every wall and listen to a constant grunting sound. Quake simplified it, making it so that hitting walls was the only thing you needed to worry about. As hitting every wall is slower in animation, that would be negative if it wasn't for the fact that they also made secrets a lot more visible. Doom II had plenty of secrets that had no visible clues, while Quake gives clues to nearly every secret. Then of course later FPS do away with secrets behind walls, instead hiding them in the environment as they got more detailed and less corridor based. Quake was the transition phase, eliminating something that had been established since Wolf 3d and making the process much easier.

Basically, Quake tests the standards to the industry and alters stuff that had been around since the popularization of the FPS genre. Meanwhile, it created a bunch of subtle under-lyings that came to the forefront in later games. Quake isn't Unreal, but it was the first step in the right direction (the second step being Scourge of Armagon, but that is a different topic).