Quake (video game)

Quake is the first game in the eponymous Quake series, and was released in 1996. It began development as a free roaming RPG, but it switched to a First-Person Shooter, like Id's previous series, Doom.

The game has the Heroic Mime Protagonist (called "Ranger" in Quake III Arena) going through 4 worlds collecting lost runes in order to fight against an Eldritch Abomination after a military experiment into teleportation went awry and caused an interdimensional demon invasion. The player, now the last surviving member of his unit, must single-handedly blow them all to bits. Of course, the story was once more than just a basic framework for an adrenaline-packed onslaught of vicious monsters to be blown apart.

As id Software's follow-up to Doom, this game is another big step forward in their graphics capabilities. The game's engine was renowned for its ability to create a fully polygonal three dimensional world, populated with enemies and objects constructed using the same polygons and all animated smoothly, at a time when most games still used sprites in some fashion, such as for enemies or pickups. Built for modding, id freely distributed scripting, design and mapping tools that spawned a practically infinite stream of fanmade content (including, notably, Team Fortress, which went on to spawn two sequels). Quake is also notable for jump-starting the phenomena of speedrunning and Machinima (Diary of a Camper).

Coming on the heels of Quake was QuakeWorld, a mod which contained basically the first networking code designed specifically to combat the types of lag caused by Internet play and pretty much created online gaming as we now know it. All of this put together has made Quake one of the longest-lived games ever made.

Two mission packs for the game, Quake: Scourge of Armagon by Hipnotic Entertainment and Quake: Dissolution of Eternity by Rogue Entertainment, were released.

Quake (video game) is the Trope Namer for:
This game and its Expansion Packs provide examples of:
  • Advancing Wall of Doom: With spikes!
  • An Axe to Grind: The player's Emergency Weapon.
  • Armor of Invincibility: The Pentagram of Protection makes the player invulnerable (the health meter in the console just reads 666).
  • Armor-Piercing Attack: Lava nails in Dissolution of Eternity. Against players, armor absorption is halved but it does the same amount of damage. Monsters take extra damage instead.
  • Ascended Glitch / Good Bad Bugs:
    • The Strafe Jump, also called "bunny hopping", which was a glitch in the game's multi-player. To the point of including a tutorial about it in Quake Live. Along with the Strafe Jump, more abilities were there to be discovered by the player. Not really an issue that divides the Quake fanbase: they've accepted it, unlike the members of similar games or spinoffs.
  • Astral Checkerboard Decor: The Wizard's Manse has this.
  • Attract Mode: Demos of many levels start playing in the menu screen.
  • Awesome but Impractical: The Thunderbolt. It's the game's most powerful weapon by far, but it's hard to aim properly, ammo is very scarce, and in spite of its mass-kill of underwater beings, doing this shorts out the weapon, killing even the player if he's not invulnerable. Even if he survives, all the ammo is gone.
  • Beneath the Earth: Several levels are underground, including one called The Underearth, as well as the game's final level.
  • Blatant Item Placement: Health packs, ammo and weapons abound for no reason at all.
  • Blob Monster: The Spawns are a particular annoying version.
  • Boring but Practical: The double-barreled shotgun. Not only is it very powerful at close range (it can even gib certain enemies) but ammo for it is plentiful and it's available in almost every level.
  • Boss Arena Idiocy: The first chapter boss completely immune to all damage apart from two adjustable columns that can shoot lightning between them. The final boss is impervious to everything except a floaty teleporty doohickey. Neither of these unique architectural features can be found anywhere else in the game.
  • Boss in Mook Clothing: Shamblers and Vores. Both appear at junctures in the game where a boss would be expected (the end of an episode) and are quite deadly.
  • Brutal Bonus Level: The Underearth and The Nameless City are extremely difficult (the latter has something like 95 kills) and will probably eat up all of your ammo by the time you finish them.
  • Call Back: The Vores appear as bosses in the second episode, and then as regular Mooks in 3 and 4. This is similar to the Barons of Hell, the bosses of the first episode of Doom.
  • Chunky Salsa Rule: Zombies aren't normally killed by bullets or nails (since they're already dead, natch) and must be blown up with grenades and rockets. The Quad Damage also splatters zombies as well.

Thou canst not kill what doth not live. But you can blast it into chunky kibble.

  • Color Coded for Your Convenience: Green armor is the weakest kind, followed by yellow (medium) and red (strongest).
  • Convection, Schmonvection: There's lava all over the place, which is deadly if you fall into it, but simply walking over it on a grating is fine.
  • Creepy Cool Crosses: So much it borders on Sigil Spam.
  • Death Trap: Many levels feature spike shooters, crushing blocks, trapdoor floors etc.
    • "Claustrophobopolis", one of the Deathmatch levels, is the home to several Beginner's Traps involving switches, lava, and teleporters.
    • One of the final levels of Scourge of Armagon traps you between two Advancing Walls Of Doom.
  • Dead Character Walking: Typing "give health" into the console will cause the player to assume a bizarre undead state where they're lying on the ground as a corpse, yet can still jump, look around, shoot and even kill enemies.
  • Death World: The entire universe. Lava, chemicals, explosives...
  • Depleted Phlebotinum Shells: Dissolution of Eternity adds lava nails.
  • Descending Ceiling: Several times. In one level, it is played straight with the ceiling moving to crush, then subverted where the ceiling descends, splits into two parts and retreats into the walls before the elevator brings you to the exit.
  • Degraded Boss:
    • Vores first appear as a Dual Boss at the end of the second episode, then as regular enemies in the latter two episodes.
    • The Fiend also appears with boss-like drama the first time it shows up, but becomes a regular enemy later.
    • As little as a few seconds later on 'Hard' or 'Nightmare' skill; two more will oh-so-generously make themselves known and teleport in the moment the first one kicks the bucket. And then a Shambler. Hope you still have some Nails.
  • Drone of Dread: The very creepy soundtrack of the first game, provided by Nine Inch Nails.
  • Easter Egg: Everywhere among the secrets!
  • Eldritch Abomination: Many of the enemies, especially in the later levels. Shamblers are giant bear-like creatures with huge claws that can shoot lightning and have no eyes. Vores are GiantSpiders that shriek and throw balls of exploding matter at the players.
  • Enemy Civil War: The monsters seem to hate each other almost as much as they hate you.
  • Enemy Mine: The Horn of Invocation in Scourge of Armagon, which allows you to invoke the last enemy you've beaten up.
  • Everything Fades: One of the early attractions of Quake's polygonal graphics was the prospect that you'd now be able to look at corpses and guns from different angles (which was new and incredibly cool back then.) Unfortunately, the rapid increase in performance requirements brought on by Quake-style graphics would ultimately bring about the ubiquity of Everything Fades.
  • Everything Trying to Kill You: Except for the health packs, there is nothing but monsters and booby traps as far as the eye can see.
  • Exploding Barrels
  • Eyeless Face: Many of the enemies.
  • Faceless Goons: The Enforcers from the Earth base levels.
  • Forged by the Gods: The Mjölnir hammer in Scourge Of Armagon.
  • Freemium: The first episode was available as shareware, but the latter three had to be purchased.
  • Frickin' Laser Beams: The Enforcers fire them.
  • Game Breaking Bug: The thunderbolt explodes if discharged into the water. However, an early version (1.01) had a small window where a player would enter a non-respawning zombie state if he wasn't gibbed by the explosion (e.g. 6 cells with 100 health). In a multi-player game, you needed to disconnect from the server. While it was fixed in version 1.06, the expansion packs (1.07 and 1.08) re-implemented the bug.
  • Game Mod: Trope Codifier in the FPS Genre. Doom was designed with a few features that allowed user made levels, but Quake was probably the first major game purpose built for modding, especially with its "Quake C" scripting language. In fact, many modern games owe their roots to mods developed for Quake. Several of the mods (Capture the Flag, Rocket Arena) have also became standard modes in subsequent games. Team Fortress became its own game series.
  • Gatling Good: The Super Nailgun's barrels spin just like a Gatling's. Its rate of fire isn't any faster than the Nailgun's, but it fires 2 nails at a time.
  • Giant Mook: Shamblers. Death Knights and Ogres are also quite intimidating.
  • Giant Spider: The Vores are a cross between this and some sort of demon.
  • Grenade Launcher: The Trope Codifier for the "bouncy grenade" type.
  • Guilt-Free Extermination War: The entire premise of the game.
  • Have a Nice Death: By way of death messages:

"Deathbringer rode Fluffy's rocket."

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