- Quake 4 on DVD
- Quake II
- Quake II: Reckoning PC (Expansion Pack)
- Quake II: Ground Zero PC (Expansion Pack)
- The Making of Quake 4: Behind the Scenes
- Interviews with id Software and Raven Software
- Concept and Production Art Gallery
QUAKE 4 is the first game to utilize id Software's revolutionary DOOM 3 technology.
Earth is under siege by an alien race. The Strogg are cybernetic warriors--a mechanical frame and decaying body parts stabilized by flesh consumed in a systematic annihilation of other species and civilizations. In a desperate attempt to survive a Strogg attack on Earth, an armada of Earth's finest warriors is sent to take the battle to the Strogg home planet. Earth's initial assault force is nearly annihilated immediately, but one marine manages to infiltrate the base, bring down their planetary defense systems, and kill the Strogg's collective brain and leader--the Makron. Earth assumed the destruction of the Makron would end it all, but it didn't.
That's where Quake II leaves off and Quake 4 begins.
The Strogg are quickly regrouping. However, with the Strogg's planetary defenses still destroyed, Earth's forces can deliver a full and final assault. This time, you're not alone. You are Matthew Kane, an elite member of Rhino Squad, and part of Earth's next invasion wave. An army of soldiers are fighting with you and an arsenal of weapons and vehicles are at your disposal in this heroic and epic battle between worlds.
IGN Interview with Todd Hollenshead of id Software:
Speaking of big guns, will we see the return of the BFG? The old version? A new version?
Todd Hollenshead: Well, I'm going to have to be a little catty about that one. We do like our super-weapons at id, and Raven likes them, too. There are lots of guns in the game that I can talk about, but there is a certain super-secret one that we're going to hold off on talking about at this point, but you'll see a return of the rail gun and the rocket launcher. In multiplayer, rocket jumping is all back in. You have the nail gun back... the blaster, the hyper blaster. You'll be able to use the nail gun to climb the walls, for example. We have the Quake III style physics and gameplay in the multiplayer, with the more robust Doom 3 physics technology that John Paul wrote for us. Of course, those are single-player weapons as well.
As you play through the game, not only do you get bigger weapons and go through and have the ability to fight the Strogg with rocket launchers, for example, but you also get access to vehicles. You can man a walker. You get to pilot a hover tank, and there are other vehicles you get to ride around in as well, but the two you basically control as fighting forces are the walker and the hover tank.
Are you looking to put any hooks in to make the game ready for the tournament community and go back to Quake 4 as the new tournament game right out of the box?
Todd Hollenshead: It depends on what you're talking about in terms of tournament capacity. There's the tournament support software, whether it's a LAN or Internet play, how you're doing ladders and those sorts of things. We won't have that support out of the box. We'll incorporate that afterwards. But we really have it modeled as a skill-based game, so when you play Quake 4 multiplayer, it's not a luck shot that determines anything, it's really the people who are the most skillful players who are going to win.
With Quake II, for example, we gave you the benefit of slowing the pace down a little bit, the ability to armor up, and a lot of times it took multiple shots to bring anybody down, so you could almost always have the hope for success against even more skillful players because if somebody softened them up, you might be able to take them out with the rail gun while you're hiding behind a box, or what have you. We've gotten back much more to the style of Quake III where it's pure multiplayer with a focus on moving and shooting and really skill-based. I think it will be very much appropriate for people who like to play the tournament style games because it's really a game of skill as opposed to much of an element of chance involved.
Do you think we'll see a Quake 4 test for the multiplayer before the game comes out?
Todd Hollenshead: That's a good question. I think what we'll want to do is test the networking, because we've pretty much redone all the networking and we like to get the community to test that and make sure that it's going to be solid before the game is done. We'll have to see as we get closer to completion of both the single-player and the multiplayer elements of the game as to how that's going to work out.
When you say "test," it kind of makes me think of Quake Test and QIII Test. In both those situations, it was a very early look at what the multiplayer was like. Quake III Test, I believe, came out in February, and the game came out in December, so that's nearly ten month in between. I think that one of the things that we learned from that is that we like to have all of the elements of the multiplayer done and not use it as much as a gameplay testing, but to really test the technology, so you would see a much more polished version of it if I could draw it up and have it be the way I wanted it to be.
Does the game use much art from Doom 3?
Todd Hollenshead: Raven has created all the textures from the ground up. There may be a pixel here or there from Doom 3 on generic stuff like grates or things like that where whether they're on Mars or they're on Stroggos, they tend to pretty much look the same.
It really is a different style and feel of game. As I play it, to me it's much more reminiscent of Quake II than it is Doom 3. In Doom 3 we were going for a lot of fear and trepidation, and felt that the pacing and suspense of the game was the critical element that we tried to balance the gameplay on. In Quake 4, it's this much more epic environment. It's war. You're part of a massive invasion force across the entire planet. There's a lot of variety in the gameplay; not only do you fight by yourself, but you buddy up with members of your squad. There are indoor areas, there are large outdoor areas. You fight on foot, you fight in vehicles -- the walker and the hover tank. I think that difference in gameplay, and not to mention when you become "Stroggified," that sort of adds a whole new element to it as well. That's really the experience we're going for.
From the start of the game, literally when you wake up from being knocked out from your drop ship crashing, you're in the middle of a battlefield and have to get up and get going or else because this battle is going on all around you. That sets the tone for what the game is going to be like; it is really an adrenalin rush, driving action experience, whereas Doom 3 was a lot more about what's in the dark and what's coming around the next corner.
You can check out the full Quake 4 interview here.
