“We had a supercomputer that was literally the size of a refrigerator to process the lighting for the maps-it was so cool!“ Tim enthuses. The follow-up to Quake was further differentiated from the original game thanks to enhancements that id’s lead coder John Carmack made to his Quake engine that allowed it to render brighter and far more colourful-looking levels. Adrian Carmack did amazing concept work on the Strogg creatures, and then Paul added personality to the animations.” He had worked on the Wing Commander series, and so he brought experience of story-based sci-fi action games. Paul Steed came up with our cinematic intro, which was really cool. We had better design, and we were focused. But the Quake II team rallied behind one art style, one art direction and story. “Quake was kind of a mess,” Tim concedes, “although it was awesome. With a sci-fi universe there was the opportunity to have super-cool weapons and we could have new types of creatures, so it really gave a nice palette to create a wonderful game.”Īs well as favouring an alternate genre, Quake II would also differ from its predecessor by having a cohesive backstory, which instructed and informed the design of the project’s full-motion video introduction and the look and animation of its biomechanical alien opponents. “And it was refreshing for us to do something new but kind of familiar. “We were a bunch of sci-fi nuts!” Tim reasons. That’s why you were by yourself, because the human forces had sent individual pods out since everything else was too big and would get hit by the big guns.”īut while id strived to instil Quake II with the key tenants of Quake’s core gameplay, rather than reworking the sequel as a dark fantasy it decided to retain the project’s decidedly sci-fi -themed narrative. So in Quake II, your job would be to knock out the big guns before the big dropships could come in. Kevin had this great idea where he said: ‘Guns Of Navarone.’ That was the inspiration for Quake II, and it made sense because in the movie the Allies had to knock out the big guns that the Germans had before they could assault. “Kevin Cloud stepped up to lead the project and refocus us on something that was more story-based and set in a different universe. “Romero was let go, and we took a different approach to the next Quake game,” he tells us. But after helping id to make the FPS mainstream with instant classics such as Wolfenstein 3D, Doom and Quake, John parted ways with the small firm, and its remaining developers made the decision to take their next project in a new direction, as Quake II level designer Tim Willits remembers. Few western developers had higher profiles during the '90s than id Software cofounder John Romero, and fewer still had a rockstar image to go with their fame.

Quake 2 weapons of destruction