2022-11-30: What I Love Most About Quake
A love letter to a game that changed my life.
I think what really draws me to Quake is that it's very open to interpretation. Quake has two "deficiencies" that makes its world uniquely so: one, a lack of a really comprehensive story, and two, a lack of thematic cohesion. Take, for example, the two doors shown above. They both appear to be constructed identically — but one has a red pentagram painted on it.
Why?
The pentagram looks like a relatively recent addition, and the door looks quite old. What does this imply? Could it be part of some recently performed ritual? Is it, perhaps, a sign that the monsters inhabiting this area have only recently arrived and begun to redecorate? If so, what does that imply? Are these structures realms we traverse through older than Shub-Niggurath's armies? Older than it? Who created them?
Why?
Quake, whether intentionally or not, really makes you feel like you have stumbled into something far greater than yourself, on a scale far grander than you could possibly imagine. The manual mentions that Quake's homeworld lacks natural light, so most creatures have no sense of vision - and yet, the ogres, knights, and scrags have eyes. Are they not indigenous to Shub-Niggurath's world, possibly aliens taken from yet another time and place and conscripted into its trans-dimensional invasion force?
The worlds through which you traverse add to this feeling. For the most part, they certainly don't feel as if they're constructed by or for humans... But at the same time, most of the enemies seem out of place in them too. Fiends, Shamblers, Vores, and their ilk have no need for light - and yet, even The Elder World is adorned with artificial light that someone went out of their way to put there. For who? Have The Black Goat's armies retrofitted these places for the benefit of their eyeballed conscripts? Is this perhaps their homeworld?
Many player mods evoke this same feeling. Notably, Warp Spasm excels in invoking a feeling of utterly alien, inhuman hostility, and incomprehensible architectural intent. The worlds exist on a scale that leaves even the enormous Quoth monsters feeling out of place at times. You and everything you do, each foe you slay, each realm you conquer, is utterly meaningless. The multiverse is infinite. The Great Old Ones close in upon creation from the outer spheres, barely even aware of your actions.
At the end of Quake, you battle Shub-Niggurath. She appears as a fleshy stump, three sharp tentacles protruding from her mass. Many people have pointed out that this interpretation of her physical form is very unlike how it is described in Lovecraft's work. It does, however, resemble common depictions of members of her Thousand-Young, her endless offspring.
Food for thought.