Again, due to the time constraints, this was also scrapped, though elements of that original theme are still evident when you look at Quake‘s gothic medieval architecture. This development pivot also affected Quake‘s original theme, which was originally more of a dark fantasy setting, and included enemies like dragons. As development continued, this was dropped, and the game was reworked to be id’s bread and butter genre in the 3D shooter. Originally envisioned as an action game, Quake was to take place in a fully 3D world involving melee combat (a la Sega’s Virtua Fighter) and RPG elements, with your character wielding a hammer that you could throw like Thor. And Quake? Not only did it once again add on, nay explode, the possibilities of what we now take as commonplace for multiplayer shooters, but brought gaming itself into the 21st century with fully 3D polygonal graphics that were blazing fast.īefore all of that came to pass, many don’t realize that Quake started out as something completely different for the team at id.
Wolfenstein established the FPS genre as we know it, while Doom refined the genre into a frantic adrenaline-fuelled shooter with addictive multiplayer capabilities.
Yet from Wolfenstein 3D to Doom to ultimately Quake, that’s what they’ve done, with each iteration specializing in a specific area. It’s difficult to think at times that id Software revolutionized the 3D shooter thrice in a decade.
