A mashup of styles and origins; disparities that strangely work together and even in combination (possibly thanks to the limited palette). The game comes with at least four or more unique themes, and most of the monsters are universally usable. It also allows for all kinds of seemingly random custom content, new monsters from some remote dimensions, and it can be integrated into the game just fine.

I love the bulky, angular architecture - originally a technical necessity, it became a style of its own. No filigree stuff and realistic scales, just big 32/64 boxes with sharp corners.
Very atmospheric with its lighting or darkness and strongly contrasted shadows, strange places and hostile places to explore, badass soundtrack. Yet, fast and fun run-and-gun gameplay and uncomprimising deathmatch.

This, along with a good portion of nostalgia and fanboyism, creates a great mix that is, despite (or thanks to) the unfocusedness of it all, which would be held against games nowadays, still appealing to me even after 15 years. 

 

I'd say the very reason Quake's disparate themes come together so easilly is thanks to the lack of cut scenes or character/world exposition. In my opinion whenever anybody has tried (be it by way of mods, fanfic or machinima) to explain Quake's mysteries they've compromised its afforementioned "essence" because as soon as you try to fill in the gaps you enter a world of logistical deadends and contradictions, which are a storyteller's cyanide.

Quake's essence is chaotic and nondistillable at the best of times, and that's why it's the only game to ever have got "the nightmare vision" right. It will never be recreated. 

and lighting.
and proper 3d where you can get lost surrounded by the pseudo blind vores and fiends and death traps.

music as well. but most of all, sounds, especially combination of the water, wind, and scratching sound of chainsaw on the stone. 

I agree with that. Quake leaves a lot to the players imagination - you have to fill in the gaps with your own ideas. This is probably the reason why there are so many different views on what Quake really is. One example is that for me, the enforcers didn't speak in English. I simply ignored that because I imagined that they were possessed by some dark magic, which completely disassociated them from their previous human existence. They don't know what they are, they only know that they have to kill you. That, and I didn't have any good speakers when I first played Quake, so I couldn't make out what they were supposed to say anyway. 

I agree that the environmental sounds in Quake are probably the most important factor in creating its atmosphere. In their combination, they make me feel lonely, lost and isolated, as described above.

Lighting is also very important and I think that adding colored light to Quake changes the original atmosphere significantly because the white-light-only model of software Quake with its hard shadows created bleakness. The complete lack of color adds to the otherworldliness of the surroundings... when even the sunlight is completely white, you know you are not on earth anymore. If you are going to use colored lights, you must do it very subtly, using only tinted lights, because full colors detract from the original atmosphere. 

just like cinematic mood, some games have it and some dont. Quake does. In spades. 

ziggurat vertigo for me is one of the most genius q1 maps; it doesn't make any sense. the pyramid created this sense of "holy shit, this place is somehow connected to ancient civilizations" that Rogue's actual ancient egyptian maps never did.

post 13 wins. 

It's not just that it's all 3d but everything just feels very solid with a great sense of mass. All the models are very distinct and true low poly masterpieces.

All of id's engines and content have always had that solid feeling that has set them apart from much of the competition. 

...but I never managed to express it better than here:
http://www.quaddicted.com/webarchive/teamshambler.planetquake.gamespy.com/rant1.html>

Shambler nailed all there is to say, really.

I remember reading it some 14 years back and going "Yes! That's it."

And be sure to read points 1, 5 and 6.

IMO, Zerstorer is still unmatched when it comes to capturing Quake essence. 

Digging up that old piece! 

The essence of Quake is interaction with the environment with merely movement controls.

No gadgets, no use keys, no "spells", no meaningful inventory.

Also no explicit training. However, E1M1 does say "You can jump here" and has a little secret compartment and a lift to subtlety familiarize you with buttons and has a secret green armor to adjust you to the idea of level exploration. 

 

try now..

http://www.quaddicted.com/webarchive/teamshambler.planetquake.gamespy.com/rant1.html 

quaddicted has flat out stopped working for me. i just get redirected to a virgin media search site. dns trouble perhaps? 

Eww, your ISP is a bad ISP. See if you can disable that kind of redirection. It is none of their business nor should they profit from your misfortune (they usually show ads on such pages).

Everything looks fine from here. You can use 91.121.208.153 for emergencies. ;)

If you are on Linux check what nameservers are set in /etc/resolv.conf and then check what they return for "www.quaddicted.com", eg: dig @8.8.8.8 www.quaddicted.com 

that virgin page gives the option to disable it. so they aren't completely shit :)

i remember reading that article ~12 years ago; still holds true today. and damn if it doesn't feel nostalgic (the article, not quake) 

The essence of Quake is that there was nothing like it in 1996. NOW, many of the elements that made it so great would be rubbished. Now the reason most of us play it is nostalgia and because most of us are designers. If there was absolutely no Quake community left, would any of us still play it? 

You apparently play many FPS.
Give me some modern games like quake please. Fast solid shooter that doesn't try to be RPG or adventure game at the same time, with no fluff, no bullshit gimmick engineered gameplay and arbitrary design inconsistencies trying to make player a cog in a scripted mechanism of a game. With proper leveldesign, using 3d and having multiple paths. 

I dig up qi custom levels time and again for a quick fix.

I will admit to not really playing the original game that much but thats simply because I've played those levels heaps compared to the custom ones. 

...but, I disagree with Kona... To me, it's just a matter of how things are done. "Classic" FPS were simply more muscular and with way better gameplay mechanics than current day ones.

It's a matter of taste , really, but I don't think nostalgia plays a huge factor here. I think that even the more frantic of nowadays shooters pale before the all out fast pace of things like Doom and Quake.
To me, games like HL2 or Bioshock are more like interactive movies with very limited replay value, the goal there is not playing per se, but more seeing the narration unfold....

I quite like games like Painkiller or Serious sam, that offer a similar style of runnign&gunning but if I was to choose only one game for life, that'd be the big Q.

Hands down. 

Dark, atmospheric, gothic/medieval/industrial environment, proper monsters, straightforward visceral combat, general air of brutality. 

You should put up a map review site. 

Gameplay wise Quake is Doom only smoother (ie better collision detection).
The fundamentals are the same

Super human player -> Player is very fast and tough, can can avoid a lot of damage via movement and not tanking it then sucking their thumb behind cover.

Varied monster types -> Not quite as varied as Doom but still, Quake has a small but great monster set, with lots of different attacks, strengths and sizes.

Complex environments -> Not necessarily complex in terms of being labyrinthine, but featuring interesting, abstract geometry. This combined with the monster set creates an enormous degree of variety in potential gameplay. This is the main thing about mapping I love, creating interesting fights with a given toolkit.

Simplicity and predictability -> Monsters are dumb, and the behaviour of monsters is only slightly randomised (even less so in Nightmare). Experienced players are used to how these monsters act, and when they see one, know what it will be capable of. So when that monster is placed in a different position, or around different geometry, the actual monster is predictable but the fight is different.


Regarding stuff I've noted about this in the RMQ mapping guide. I've no doubt the team will disagree with me, but I'm interested what other people think about this point:

Remember Quake and Doom can still be hard as nails despite having very basic and dumb monsters. This is where I have an issue with ideas like removing Shambler Shuffle. Why remove something good players can do, instead, why don't you test there abilities more? Give good players two shamblers instead of one. Give them less cover. As you make monsters cleverer or given them more attacks, you reduce the potential environments and geometry you can have a fair and balanced fight against them. If Shambler shuffle doesn't work, then you now make it impossible to fight a shambler in an open area without taking damage.

I feel the same way about the idea of having monsters that can be flagged to have additional attacks, without any way of the player being aware of this. By all means expand the mapping toolkit by adding additional types of monsters with new attack patterns, but don't just given different monsters of the same type different attacks. It will most likely frustrate a player, as they are constantly wrong footed and not allowed to settle into a groove, which imo is fundamental for an action game. 

I don't have the exact quote, but I recall reading Romero's hype talk for Quake from 1997, and it went like this (paraphrase):

instead of shooting lots of cannon fodder you'll be focusing on a handful of enemies which take longer to kill, it's like a virtual fighter almost

Some releases went completely 180 degrees on that, of course...