Now this is what you call a nostalgia trip. Time to blast some heavy metal and go absolutely ham.
The early titles of the Quake series definitely fuelled many of our passions’ for gaming, it certainly played a big role in mine. With its release in 1996, Quake took some heavy style influence from the very first Doom, which was released almost three years prior in 1993. id Software certainly did not let us down.
With 12 total Quake games, spin-offs, and all included (the last release being in 2017), you could say that the series isn’t doing too badly.
To celebrate the 25th anniversary of the original Quake release, Quakecon 2021 made the announcement that this FPS action-RPG title that was originally released on platforms such as Sega Saturn, Nintendo 64, Amiga, and MS-DOS, among a few others, has been remastered by Nightdive Studios and published by Bethesda.
What will we be getting?
Considering this game is 25 years old, I would say that they haven’t done too shabby of a job with this remaster.
You can expect to see some majorly enhanced graphics with up to 4K resolution and widescreen support. There will also be enhanced models, colour & lighting, a better depth-of-field system, anti-aliasing, and new maps. They’ve also thrown in the original soundtrack for Quake by Nine Inch Nails.
The Quake remaster includes all expansions of the game, The Scourge of Armagon and Dissolution of Eternity; as well as an entirely new one, Dimension of the Past, that was developed by MachineGames specifically for this release.
It will also support cross-play and even the traditional split-screen for co-op and Deathmatch, with the latter now also having AI opponents available. There will be the typical multiplayer option, with up to 4 players locally with split-screen or 8 players online. You will also be able to play through the entire campaign with a 4-player co-op.
Official Quake 2021 Trailer
Quake remaster was released on 19 August 2021 and is available on PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PC, Switch, and Xbox Game Pass. Although it runs perfectly fine on the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S through backwards compatibility, there will soon be a free update to allow a much more pleasant 4K 120fps experience.
If you already own Quake on Steam you can expect to get this as a free update.
The best part is that they’ve managed to keep that authentic Quake feel to it instead of revamping it into an entirely modernized remake.