Quake II - Welcome to the Machine

Quake II - Welcome to the Machine is the title of the video in which Civvie reviews Quake II. It is not on any season playlist, nor is it considered a Pro Video.
== Synopsis ==
== Video ==
== Transcript ==
In 1996 after Id Software dropped Quake
and John Romero,
they were looking to go in another direction
with their next project,
Which wasn't always gonna be called Quake II
There were other ideas for the title
like "WOR" with an "O",
but everybody just decided to call it Quake II,
Despite the fact that it has nothing to do with the first game.
As explained by Tim Willits,
Id co-owner and designer for, uhh-
25 years now
The first Quake game was kind of a mess to develop
and so everyone decided to have a clearer vision
of what the game should be.
Sc-fi! Space marines!
Remember, this was 1997 and the
"big, tough space marine" trope
hadn't been worn quite as thin:
one man fighting against an army of horrible villains.
An inspiration cited by the devs was
The Guns of Navarone,
a movie about a unit of commandos in WWII
sent to destroy artillery so that the British Navy
could rescue trapped soldiers from the Germans
I haven't seen it; the movie is older than my parents.
He says, after referencing The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
in a video about DOS trash.
So the story of Quake II,
don't get too excited, there's still barely story in this game
takes its cues from WWII
and not HP Lovecraft
and from the beginning it was gonna be a more
focused, polished, impressive game than its predecessor,
which is funny because Quake II is probably remembered less fondly.
Quake 1 had a certain spirit; an atmosphere,
certainly helped by Trent Reznor's soundtrack
Trent Reznor was asked to come back and refused after seeing the game itself,
saying something i've seen reported as the charitable
"This game has no atmosphere."
Quake 2 was a turning point for Id Software, I think,
where the scrappy little company that made deeply influential games
became a real company,
With like, responsible employees.
Nice, dedicated people who lacked the cult of personality that would surround others.
Not to mention Tom Hall and John Romero were off at Ion Storm,
Sandy Peterson moved on to Ensemble Studios
Perfected human analogue and Jace Hall asphyxiator, John Carmack
"I would be going to strangle from the rear."
"That was the weirdest sensation I've ever had in my whole life, did you get that on camera?"
"That was awesome dude" "It's a good thing you didn't wet your pants"
Carmack did the thing where he made a new engine,
or, more of an avancement of the previous one that made it a bit more colourful.
But he didn't do skeletal animations,
what the fuck was he thinking there?
Anyway, Adrian Carmack and American McGee were still around
But this was a different Id Software.
Maybe there time had come and gone when it came to truly revolutionising things
A year later would bring Half-Life, and also Unreal,
which was built as a "Quake killer" when it started,
and I think it succeeded. I find it's a better Quake II than Quake II is.
I'm not as familiar with Quake 2; I haven't played it as much as Quake, or Doom, or Doom 3,
or probably even Wolfenstein 3D.
But I was genuinely curious what playing on the hardest skill would be like.
Vanilla Quake 2 doesn't let you select the hardest skill,
skill 3, also known as hard+.
Thankfully Yamagi Quake II, the port I'm using, calls it nightmare and lets you select it.
This, I feel, helps the game significantly
Because I would often get bored around Ammo Depot and drop the game entirely.
I've beaten it before, hell, Quake 2 was the first game I ever deathmatched online in.
The deathmatch is superb.
I'll remember where the railgun in The Edge is until I'm dead.
Hard+ it is,
because it can't possibly be as degrading as being constantly gibbed
by someone named Slimshady99x}{x
Hard+ is like hard,
but the enemies don't flinch, they attack faster and have more health.
Most of the time I didn't even notice, except here:
Yeah, fuck that guy.
Anyway I think it's time to start this less than strange journey into Id's dark age.
That's not to say Quake II isn't a bad game, it isn't.
It's exactly what I would expect from every Id game that came after it,
until Doom 2016, and then Doom Eternal
Listen, Doom Eternal is so slick and intricate I can't imagine the company being able to
make a game as impressive again.
Where Doom 2016 was an evolution of Id's formula,
Doom Eternal was a redefinition of everything we thought could be done with it.
Quake 2 is probably the least that can be done with it:
a technical marvel that is a good action game;
a well-oiled machine fueled by blood and explosions.
And if Quake 2 is the worst game your studio would put out then, man, that's fine,
But RAGE is worse.
Oh, boy when we get to RAGE...
"Our radio tower up on the hill stopped working. We need someone to fix it."
"Eh, probably just out of alignment."
"You get it fixed for me, and I'll give you a shotgun– Good luck.
"This should be an easy job."
"Well, not bad, stranger!"
Oh, can we talk about the soundtrack first?
Because it's BEAUTIFUL.
It's not ambient Trent Reznor nightmare fuel,
It's hard, fast, wonderful metal. The stuff Bobby Prince wanted to do.
Except now they can put it on a CD and play it in-game!
It's soooo good!
It was made by Sonic Mayhem, which is a person who's name is..
I'm not even going to try and pronounce that.
It's one of those soundtracks you can pop into your CD player,
(A thing we used to do)
And listen to it *without* the game!
It absolutely shreds, adds so much to the action.
The basic story of Quake II is that you are Bitterman.
Look at that, a named protagonist!
And your pod crashes onto Stroggos, planet of the Stroggs
A sinister race of aliens that fuses human or alien tissue with metal,
like The Borg but bloodier and more savage.
..and with explosions.
And only one of these monsters has a shield
Your main objective, out of all the other ones that gentle nag you throughout the game,
Is to destroy the BIG GUN.
After you've made your way through military installations, the city, other military installations, the palace,
Quake II doesn't have a lot of variety in it's settings.
It does what it can with them,
In terms of level design it has a kind of Hexen-like hub system that lets you travel back-and-forth between areas
It's not used extensively for anything important, you go to this map,
then complete an objective that opens up an area on the previous map,
go there, and by the time you're done
you might not even know you completed the mission
because everything you need to do is fairly obvious.
Maybe I've played it too much, but the objectives seem to complete themselves
while you're battle the Strogg
It's never confusing, which I guess is a testament to the level designers, seasoned pros by this point.
The first hub starts off as soon as you crash and escape your pod
here you are, armed with only a shitty little blaster,
shooting the common low-level hitscanners.
..for like a minute until you come over here and get the shotgun
It's not a bad shotgun, I always liked the look of it, even if it felt a little weak.
the game teaches you that there's breakable glass now.
You can crouch, there's going to be a robot voice telling you..
"COMPUTER UPDATED"
..every time your mission status changes
You know immediately that this isn't Quake 1
And if you were lucky enough to have one of those fancy 3D accelerator cards at the time,
It wasn't gonna look like Quake 1 either!
even in software mode the new lighting and particle effects were pretty impressive.
Quake 2 RTX is kinda trash, though
it runs badly and ruins the atmosphere Trent Reznor said that this game doesn't have.
Default settings make everything really bright
and when you turn that down you still have to deal with texture bugs
and WHAT THE FUCK DID THEY DO TO MY RAILGUN? :<
It's all very shiny and suffers from adding HD textures to a game that wasn't designed for them
..at least it doesn't cost anything
Another new thing is an Inventory system
The first inventory item you'll pick up is a silencer..
the game has *useful* powerups, too.
Quad Damage, Invulnerability, a Toxin Suit.. which is useful in about 3 places throughout the whole game.
A power shield too.. and I think that's it.
..yeah, I save the powerups for when I need them, mostly for cheesing bosses.
It's too bad you don't get nearly the number of Quad Damage powerups as you do in Quake 1
rampages are a lot less frequent,
I had maybe one or two during the whole game, and it seems like a complete non-factor.
Like it was in Doom 2016, where you just pick up a few during the whole campaign.
Quake II does have an atmosphere,
a foreboding sci-fi body horror thing going on.
Space Nazis made of flesh and metal to keep the Guns of Navarone influences
The enemies may not flinch,
but they still do this thing where they continue attacking as they die, which you can avoid by gibbing them.
They all gib.
THEY ALL GIB
.. it's *actually* pretty cool
You're moving along through this base shooting Strogg
who wont give you much trouble 'till the Enforcers
Chaingunners? :< Fun..
Slightly less of a problem when get the Machine Gun in the next level
which has recoil for some reason.
...what game do you think you are Quake 2?
Cut that shit out.
It's still satisfying, because the game gives it to you super early and lets you mow down the lower enemies with it.
But that's not what we're here for, we need to go to the secret level..
once you get through the sewer
[Sewer Count Ding]
Have a swim, go down this elevator
and your objective changes from "Go to a thing loosely related to saving humanity" to
"Find a powerful weapon".
..and oh boy do you ever!
Quake 2's Super Shotgun lives up to the family legacy
It's pump action now, it sounds just as devastating as the Doom 2 Super Shotgun
This should clarify that all the weapons in this game are not a problem
I mean, they don't have any muzzle flashes for some goddamn reason, but whatever I guess.
You'll pick up throwable grenades, too
which I don't really use. I like to save them until I get the Grenade Launcher.
In Hard+ mode you'll meet the two most dangerous enemies in the game in the first hub.
Ugghh, this one always weirded me out
it'll suck your health dry with..
Euughh..
And the Gunner, who really only becomes a huge problem on Hard+ because he attacks faster
and I don't know if he's going to spam me with machine gun fire or grenades.
Early game you might benefit from crouching under the grenades if you're close enough,
I really prefer getting the Rocket Launcher or Railgun to deal with him.
Before that you have the Super Shotgun..
I'd like to point out that none of this is "bad design", it checks all the boxes.
Your enemies all make distinct sounds and movements that provide proper feedback to the player
You walk into a room, you hear something, you know what's coming
"Trespasser!"
Oh yeah, the Berserker's are like kittens they're mostly harmless
Their attack windup takes so long that it's your own fault if you get hit
You meet a few other monsters in the first hub, the fliers, the barracuda sharks,
easily dealt with with the Super Shotgun.
I don't think any of the monsters besides the Gunner or the Parasite actually annoy me,
they're not too difficult to deal with.
The enemies have some really cool idle animations too.
..be really hard to see them in-game with all the shooting, though.
[Pleasured Moan]
0.o
What's your name, scumbag?!
"Trespasser!"
Did your parents have any children that lived!?
Oh shit, wait.. that is a dead guy
You know what? Never mind.
You remember when I said I usually stop playing this game around Ammo Depot because I get bored?
Well second hub starts with Ammo Depot,
and I'm trying to remember why
You get the Chaingun around here and that's fun
even if it chews through your ammo.
Maybe *because* it chews through your ammo.
I don't remember an FPS game before this that let you spit so much lead at an enemy at once.
It's kind of amazing even if it is impractical.
But sometimes, just everyone now and then you run into a room
and gib everything in it by firing 200 bullets in about 5 seconds.
It's pretty satisfying!
It's always around here that the game starts to lose me
but why?
is it that I've already dealt with it's most difficult challenges?
The game doesn't think so.
For some reason the game thinks that these Tanks are a problem,
even though I can spam the chaingun at them and avoid any rockets or energy blasts
The first boss'd be better served with the Tank name.
I mean, look at it!
Talking about single segments of Quake 2 isn't really that exciting
where in other games you'll have specific levels and areas where you can consider high points,
Quake 2 feels like it maintains a certain consistency all the way through
It's never bad, but also very little stands out.
So let's talk about the rest of the guns because they're great.
The Grenade Launcher, I think it it feels better than Quake or Quake 3's grenade launcher.
The Rocket Launcher? Not quite as good as Quake 1's
but it's fine.
The Hyperblaster has a wind-up for some goddamn reason..
but I find it's a good replacement for the Machine Gun anyway.
It's your standard rapid fire energy weapon.
The Railgun? Perfection.
Shadow Warrior may have had one first but Quake 2 had it best
Quake 3 added a sound queue to help the player know when it was ready to fire again
which is cool, otherwise it seems like railguns may have peaked with the Quake series.
And the BFG10K, you all know what it is and what it does.
The first real attempt to upgrade the classic BFG to make it not based on hacked-together Doom engine nonsense.
It's a big green ball that now also shoots lasers to nearby targets as it passes by
so now you've got what I call "The ID Arsenal",
the formula that ID games would more or less follow
until like Doom 2016, give or take a super shotgun or a railgun here and there.
Pistol
Shotgun
Super Shotgun
Light automatic weapon
Heavy automatic weapon
Rocket Launcher
Rapid fire energy pew-pew gun
(Quake 3 has two of those)
Railgun
BFG
..it's the way it goes, it's like a brand, an ID brand.
I guess that's what sticks with me most and why Quake 2 sometimes leaves a sour taste in my mouth
ID became a brand.
And while there was a little wiggle room when it came to the formula
Doom 3 is scary, Rage has 3 side quests..
it feels like there wasn't any room for anything game-changing anymore
if it wasn't the technology.
And that technology lead to games taking longer and longer to make
Doom 3 took four years, Rage took seven!
ID Software is, and will probably forever be tech wizards.
I wanted to go into this like other Pro videos
here are the enemies, here are the weapons, here's how these work together..
but you already know!
There's a few secret levels to find, Sudden Death is actually pretty unique
if you can jump up past this waterfall in Receiving Center you'll be taken straight to Sudden Death,
to collect as many powerups and weapons as you can in the small amount of time it gives you.
The third secret level, much closer to the end, is a low-gravity space station full of flying enemies.
..it sure is that!
I didn't hate playing Quake 2 again, but if you were to ask me what parts I specifically remember
I couldn't tell you much.
There was a mine full of Mutants.. three bosses they never caused me much trouble
and it would be hard for me to really differentiate between them.
Tank thing, flying thing, and the final boss had a BFG and two forms.
I played through Quake 2, took me about 6 hours minus the time I spent taking notes
which going over them again couldn't have been very long..
"Hyperblaster is Chaingun but accurate"
"Good long range weapons are not available early-game"
"Soundtrack is A+"
"Unware strogg are easier to kill"
"Make sure to pronounce 'Strogg' (Str-ah-g) as 'Strogg' (Str-oe-g) because someone will bitch about it in the comments"
"Fuck the torture chambers"
This level always gives me trouble
hardest map in the game as far as I'm concerned
even when you meet the Iron Maidens.
They can be deal with quickly, a couple rockets or a couple railgun shots,
But these menacing hallways even include a mini sewer section..
with a Parasite in it. As-if they predicted that 23 years later some asshole would come along
and use it for a dumb gag I can't escape.
If I stop doing it the joke falls apart
because it relies on me being petty enough to count every single one every time.
[Sewer Count Ding]
I guess things liven-up when you get towards the big gun
and that map with the air strike is cool!
I have to disable the supply train that the Strogg are using
I don't know what's on that train, or why it's important, it doesnt matter.
The mission objectives of Quake 2 are effective at portraying a certain scope of the human operations on Stroggos.
You are a one man army, no-one else can get to the surface until we destroy the big gun.
And to do that we have to complete all of these secondary objectives
I'm not entirely sure how this war started in the first place,
there's a little bit in the intro that explains that we were attacked.
The intro has what sounds like news reports explaining that the Strogg attacked major cities
and that our brave heroes were taking the fight to them.
[Largely Unintelligible News Chatter]
Not a bad setup, make those alien bastards pay!
The kind of righteous bloodshed that's expressed in a paragraph in the Doom and Quake manuals
as an excuse to kill everything that moves.
These cutscenes are a new feature of Quake 2
..and I don't think they help it.
A radio voice gives you objectives and between units a computer screen with a similarly robotic voice
shows you a map and tells you what you'll being doing later.
"Initiate scan"
"Acquiring...acquired"
"Personnel located, now exiting base area.."
"Proceed to bunker area, destroy Strogg logistical train"
I'm sorry, the what?
"...Strogg logistical train"
The 'Str-ah-g'?
"As these brave soldiers took the fight to the 'Str-oag's home planet.."
The 'Str-oag'?
"Shut down 'Str-ah-g' processing plant"
...I can't win, I give up.
Calling this game "story-driven" is like calling Jurassic Park "science-driven."
This is still the flea circus.
Adding further context to it only raises more questions
Yeah, I'm working on it!
But that's what the whole fucking game is about! It's about the BIG GUN!
[Glitched, repeating] "Computer updated"
It just feels like another sewer..
another maze of pipes, ramps and metal..
Oh..
Oh, god..
Oh god, please no...
Don't do the Dopefish dirty like this!
Not like this! :(
Towards the end as you're headed into the Palace you find the Tank Commanders,
Who are upgraded versions of the tanks from earlier
Who are obviously big bastards who take a lot of your ammo to deal with.
The Tank Commanders are like the elite guards of the Strogg,
And then it's at the end of this palace level where this happens..
I'm having an interaction with another character
that isn't just a staticky voice on the other end of the radio saying vague army man things at me?
You'd think getting here would be difficult..
And it is! Occasionally..
Especially if you have one of those source ports
where the crosshair's are big, blocky, ugly things that hurt my eyes.
...fucking disgusting.
But this game isn't made to be a dick to you
It doesn't have Spawns or Arch-viles
Nothing blinds you, or outmaneuvers you, or really challenges you that much..
Not even the Strogg leader!
I'm invulnerable for half of the fight, and for the other half I can just run circles around him.
I guess it's better than any of the boss fights in Quake 1, because it's a *boss* fight.
and most of the Doom ones now that I think about it.
This bit at the end with the animation, the torso trying to re-attach to the legs
Is cool and memorable!
and I feel like the rest of the game rarely lives up to this.
The player is guided through Quake 2 without much resistance.
the game just wants you to dive in and have fun, and dying isn't very fun!
One of the things I noticed when playing a little of the first Quake 2 expansion by Xatrix
was that it was significantly more difficult than the main campaign.
This is true of most expansion packs, but the important part is *why*.
You're thrown into a sewer level pretty early..
[Sewer Counter Ding]
And something that vanilla Quake II never really prepared you for
was an abundance of rudely placed hitscanners.
ID Software is made up of professionals
Who make very deliberate design choices..
Xatrix, who up to this point had worked on Redneck Rampage,
didn't care about the players feelings..
For fuck's sake!
These introductory enemies, whatever they are,
leap around like the Mutants and take a solid three to five shells to bring down!
ID Software, at least in Quake 2, wanted to keep the power fantasy
but like a lot of developers, lost the idea that the fantasy only works if you overcome something.
not if you feel like you're operating the machine properly.
The other thing that sticks out in my mind of Quake II probably more than anything else
Is the secret developer's room.
It is a cool Easter Egg, and I really like it.
but there's more here..
What was happening at ID Software during this?
Besides the public bitchyness towards Ion Storm and Romero, and Daikatana..
The story to this, of course, is hinted at in Masters of Doom
down to the easter egg room designed by Tim Willits himself.
Carmack had dissapeared, locking himself away in coding
and within a year artist Adrian Carmack, no relation, would want out of ID Software
felling that the company was just making the same game over and over again
American McGee and Adrian Carmack would be gone soon enough,
McGee getting the same treatment Romero and Tom Hall got for the most part
And when you hit Carmack's button..
No, no...
John, John what are you doing?
No! Let me out!
Make it stop!
Make it stop.. make it stop..
Yeah, I know there's a self-destruct happening and the station is about to explode
but that doesn't matter, it's the end of the game and Bitterman survives.
Quake 2 runs and plays like one of Carmack's Ferrari's,
impressive, pretty, and powerful.
But there's only so much a car can offer you if you've got a tiny penis.
== Trivia ==
== Behind the Scenes ==
Category:Uncategorized Videos
Category:Quake
Category:Id Software