r/quake

Sorry, I dont know how to screen record on my pc

Bit of a crazy one that still doesn’t feel real. I’m a writer and my first book has been published today. It’s all about action horror games and features interviews with a bunch of iconic names - including the first chapter, with John!

John’s enthusiasm and honesty really sets the tone for some pretty personal stories throughout the rest of the book, which features chapters with Ken Levine, Marc Laidlaw, Maggie Robertson and many others.

It’s a dream come true for me. To round it off, John agreed to write the foreword, in which he says some immensely nice things about my work.

I figured people here might get a kick out of an in-depth, sit down chat with the great man himself. Oh, and the book features a killer jacket designed by comic book artist Ray Dillon.

‘Beyond Fear: Inside Action Horror Games’ is available online and across most countries right now, with pre-orders also happening in the US. I’d love for the community to check it out! Thank you and feel free to drop me any questions🤘

EDIT - I’ve had a few requests for links to order, so please see below 😊 Huge thank you to anyone who picks it up!

US pre-orders:
Amazon
(Also available from Barnes & Noble etc)

UK orders (available now):
Amazon
(Also available from Waterstones, Foyles, Blackwells etc)

Title, just wow
I initially played on PC so I might spend some time achievement grabbing but just wow! Had to do a Nightmare run (which was almost the death of me ngl, crazy hard but so fun)
And (spoilers) >!the whole killing the dog, bloody nightmare difficulty from the hidden head!< (spoilers) SO GOOD

I mean, sort of similar theme: a fat body sack mounted onto mechanical legs with cybernetics on the head and a weapon implanted into the right arm. Obviously the playstyles of both of them are not the same (one is a melee unit and the other shoots and creates energetic shields), but hey, just a thought into the air

No, not the room with "The Queen".

I was noclipping trying to find the last remaining enemy (it was an unkillable zombie stuck in the floor) when I found this room. If you choose to confess you get teleported near the pit at the start, if you do not you get teleported in the pit.

I haven't seen it mentioned anywhere, is it maybe unused content?

For anyone who wants to see it, it's below the main level.

Hello my fellow Quake enthusiasts. Very happy to finally have a physical big box of the limited run series release. This is Cheese, my cat. He’s a good boy. Sometimes.

Walking down the stairs towards this door. Move towards it, door changes to a locked one, room textures all flipped as well. Go back up the stairs, door reappears.

🩸 I had no idea how deeply Nine Inch Nails were involved with Quake.🩸

I always assumed Trent basically supplied the music, but the more I’ve looked into it, the more ridiculous the scope of their involvement.

NIN weren’t didn't just provide a soundtrack. Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails were credited for the game’s sound effects as well as the music, effectively bringing their entire approach to texture, sampling, distortion, ambience and production into the game.

They were creating the music, sound effects and atmospheric material as one cohesive sonic world rather than treating the soundtrack as something separate from the game.

I feel like this is one of the many reasons Quake was so revolutionary and set a precedent for what game audio could be. It doesn’t sound like a 1996 game soundtrack in the conventional sense. It feels more like an environmental soundscape.

Chris Vrenna (Quake co-creator and former Nine Inch Nails member) has talked about how they deliberately experimented with drones, distorted sounds, bizarre samples and sound-design techniques to create a continuous atmosphere that could sit underneath gameplay without getting in the way of the actual gameplay sounds. The music had to ebb and flow, remain subtle, and create tension without becoming intrusive.

What I find mental is that they were already starting to get ideas about this as far back as 1993, while NIN were living in Los Angeles and working on The Downward Spiral.

Apparently a lot of the same techniques they were using on NIN records sampling strange sounds, mangling them, processing guitars through synths and effects, etc. ended up feeding directly into the Quake sound world.

The amount of work NIN were doing between 1993 and the end of the '90s is just 🤯

• 1994 — The Downward Spiral
• 1994 — The Crow — NIN contribute “Dead Souls”
• 1994 — Natural Born Killers — Trent Reznor produces/curates the soundtrack, including NIN’s “Burn”
• 1994 — Portrait of an American Family — Reznor/NIN produce and contribute to Marilyn Manson
• 1995 — Further Down the Spiral — the remix album
• 1995 — Marilyn Manson’s Smells Like Children — Reznor produces
• 1995 — David Bowie — Reznor remixes “The Hearts Filthy Lesson”
• 1995–96 — Quake development/audio work — NIN work on the music and sound effects
• June 1996 — Quake released
• 1996 — Marilyn Manson’s Antichrist Superstar — Reznor heavily involved in production
• 1996 — Lost Highway soundtrack work — Reznor contributes original material and curates/produces the soundtrack
• November 1996 — Lost Highway soundtrack released
• February 1997 — Lost Highway film released — includes NIN’s “The Perfect Drug”
• 1997 — David Bowie — Reznor/NIN collaborate on “I’m Afraid of Americans”
• 1997 — Closure — NIN live/documentary release
• 1999 — The Fragile

Looking at that timeline,
it reminds me of what Gary Numan said on his What’s in My Bag? with Amoeba Music:
“Phenomenal work ethic makes hard working people look lazy.
Can seem to do pretty much anything.”

After the announcement of the Dawn of the Machine, I finally got around to playing the first Quake. Until now, I'd only played Quake III and Quake 4 when I was younger. Having a blast so far (literally)