Quake as a video game has a fascinating and compelling history. It first started life as Id Software's ambitious attempt at developing a fantasy action title, featuring a sprawling, grandiose world, with branching quests and interactive environments. After spending far too long in development, and needing to hit the deadline long before it was even close to completion, the team were forced to retroactively revert the game into a more standard First Person Shooter, with a plot mostly cribbing from their previous game, Doom.
This strange origin gives Quake a very unique identity. A bizarre mismatch of rusty industrial corridors and blocky body armour spliced with bottomless nightmare realms of gothic architecture, dark knights and eldritch creatures. Its story, ostensibly about a marine known as Ranger preventing a demonic incursion into Earth from the elder god Shub-Niggurath, is presented as vague, ambiguous and contradictory. As the game goes on it becomes less and less clear where industrial Earth ends and the nightmare realm begins.
Wrapping it all together is an all time great soundtrack by Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails. With Quake, what you have, in the end, is more of a surreal dream-logic experience over anything resembling a standard narrative. At times it feels more like you are playing through an interactive music video rather than being told a story.
Despite the game being a cobbled together half-idea, it was a smash hit at its 1996 launch, in part due to the tried-and-tested shareware release that had worked so well for Doom, and in part due to the game landing at the exact moment for online deathmatch to take off.
It is no surprise then that the game would be granted multiple expansions, though these would not be delivered by Id Software themselves, but instead handed off to a rotating roster of lesser studios (which was the style at the time.)
1997 would see the release of Scourge of Armagon by Hipnotic Entertainment. A game that would add in new weapons and enemies, and attempt to weave more of a story around where Quake left off. However, with Quake's base storyline being so vague and unspecific, and with no real narrative threads to grab on to, Hipnotic would have to kind of make things up as they went along, further confusing the story of Quake, and only adding to that strange, dream-logic that the game already had. 1997 would also see another expansion, Dissolution of Eternity, released by Rogue Entertainment, introducing time travel to the whole mix which only confuses the story of Quake further.
The plot of Quake, if it could really be said to have such a thing, would then sit dormant for over twenty years, where Machine Games would contribute to the release of the 2021 remaster and bundle it with two further expansions, 2016's Dimensions of the Past and 2021's Dimension of the Machine. Taking inspiration from two decades worth of a fervent modding scene, Machine Games would only lean further into the surrealism of the series, fully embracing the dream-logic and ambiguous reality that the earlier instalments had cultivated, and using advances in tech and trickery to send the player into sprawling non-euclidean nightmare realms above and beyond where Quake had gone before.
Finally, in 2026, Machine Games would release one further expansion for Quake's 30th anniversary. Dawn of the Machine.
But before we talk about that, we, like Ranger, are going to have to go back in time.
Just as Quake's origins were convoluted and unorthodox, so too were that of Quake 2. Originally planned to be its own title, utterly unconnected from Quake beyond using the same engine, it was decided during development to market the game as a sequel, partly because a lot of the gameplay felt so similar, and partly to capitalise on the popularity of the first game.
However, unlike Quake 1, Quake 2 was not a surrealist adventure through ambiguous nightmare realms. It was instead quite the opposite. A very literalist war-story narrative about space marines fighting alien cyborgs. Nothing is open to interpretation in Quake 2. You embark on a mission to battle trough a war-torn planet and fight the nefarious Strogg, are given orders and updates, and eventually win the day. What you experience through the eyes of your marine is to be taken as gospel and without any room for doubt.
Quake 2's 1997 release would leave a heavy mark on the identity of the First Person Shooter, as well as overshadow any of its predecessors expansions. Quake 2, along with the contemporary release of Duke Nukem 3D, finally cemented the idea of an FPS as a singular narrative, with a beginning, middle and end presented through animation and voice acting over text boxes or supplementary materials. The days of Quake's surreal mood piece were long gone.
Quake 2 would likewise see a series of expansions palmed off to other studios, though thanks to the game's more clear identity and world, these manage to continue the plot with similar, literalist stories about the war against the Strogg.
Despite its impact at the time, Quake 2 didn't really sit in the public consciousness in much the same way Quake did, probably due in no small part to the release of Half-Life overshadowing it as the real heir-apparent to the throne of FPS storytelling. Indeed, this is probably why the next game in the series was not a traditional single-player sequel at all.
1999 would see the release of Quake 3 Arena. A multiplayer focussed title that catapulted from the popularity of the online deathmatch that Quake had helped to inspire. Outside of the game's multiplayer component, however, there is little to really remark upon Quake 3, except in one regard. While it's storyline of cosmic gladiatorial battles was threadbare, it did at least introduce the suggestion that the events of Quake and Quake 2 both take place in the same universe, though it is unclear how seriously were are to take the universe of Quake 3, given that it also suggests that the Doom games take place in the same universe too, raising more questions than it answers.
Outside of the multiplayer community, Quake as a single-player property wouldn't return until 2005, with the release of Quake 4 by Ritual Entertainment. Remembered more nowadays as a misguided attempt to do a soft remake of Quake 2 with the contemporary sensibilities of military shooters like Modern Warfare and the Halo games, Quake 4 did at least make a further attempt at tying the events of Quake and Quake 2 together through a couple of cryptic lines of dialogue.
Ultimately Quake 4 bombed, leaving Ritual's planned story expansions at a dead end. However, the suggestion that it was possibly building towards a shared narrative with Quake stuck in people's minds, leading to a great deal of debate in the years that followed, and indeed, after mostly existing within the multiplayer realm (with Quake Champions further complicating matters by bringing the Wolfenstein games into the equation,) this concept would eventually be touched upon again with Machine Game's aforementioned Quake expansions.
While Dimension of the Machine is mostly a return to the surrealist dream-logic of classic quake, with its physics defying nether-realms and horizon-spanning gothic cities, it nonetheless does drop a few cryptic text logs of additional lore, with some vague hints that the Strogg of Quake 2 and 4 may have some greater connection to Shub-Niggurath's realm of Quake.
Given the success of the Quake remaster, it made perfect sense for Machine Games to give Quake 2 the same treatment, and followed up on the plot crumbs from Dimension of the Machine in a whole new expansion for Quake 2 called Call of the Machine.
Call of the Machine feels like a natural extension to what Dimension of the Machine was trying to do, both mechanically and visually, again using the technological increases of the intervening years to create grander and more detailed environments that Quake 2 wouldn't have been able to do at launch. Indeed, this also means that Machine Games decided to translate some of the ambiguous dream-logic over from Quake, delivering a more vague and surrealist story than Quake 2 was used to, and, ultimately, ending the expansion with an explicit connection to the events of Quake.
The thing about Call of the Machine, though, is that, as a story, it only kind of works. Quake 2 was never intended to be a surrealist fable about things mankind was never meant to know. It was intended to be a straight up space-war story about hardened marines battling cyborgs. There are no elder gods or nightmare realms in Quake 2 or 4, and these elements feel a clumsy fit in Call of the Machine. While an absolute blast to play, Call of the Machine's incorporation of Shub-Niggurath and the realm of Quake feels a little off, and left me not quite sure what to think of the expansion when all was said and done.
My personal take is that this crossover between continuities is something best left as a few cryptic lines to be debated upon in forums and message boards, and not something the games themselves should have explicitly confirmed. Given that the next entry in the series would make no further mention of the Strogg, it seems Machine Games may have agreed.
And so, finally, we get to Dawn of the Machine. Machine Games' third and, for now, final expansion for the original Quake. Despite what the name implies, the expansion has no real connection to either Dimension of the Machine or Call of the Machine, and instead frames itself as our protagonist Ranger's last ditch attempt to escape Quake's never ending nightmare realms. Once again we are back to the surrealist dream-logic where the story just serves as a scene-setter to take us on another adventure around impossible environments.
As far as the visuals and level design goes, this is Machine Games at their absolute peak. The worlds we travel are as ambitious as they are gorgeous, proving there are still new things to be done with a 30 year old engine. The maps are abound with striking and unique visuals, secrets are everywhere, and just when you think you've reached the confines of the zone it will expand out into larger and more complex labyrinths.
What is far more interesting of note, however, is the alterations made to some of the gameplay mechanics. At the beginning of Dawn of the Machine, our health pool is significantly reduced, and upgrade items hidden throughout the campaign must be discovered in order to restore, and later exceed, our maximum health. Upgrades are likewise applied to our ammo pool. In order to find these upgrades, we must not only be on the look out for secret areas, but must also return to previously visited zones, once we have retrieved a series of runes that serve to unlock formerly inaccessible areas.
In some ways this is a subtle change, but it does alter the experience in some fairly significant ways. The early parts of the game must be played much more cautiously, as a single bad sidestep into an Ogre's grenade is capable of killing you outright, and hunting for secrets now goes from an optional to critical side-task. After you've found the lion's share of these upgrades, you become more of a powerhouse, being able to tank more hits with your souped-up heath pool and let loose with lashings of ammo.
Likewise, the expansion introduces a handful of new enemies to fight. While most of these are altered versions of existing enemy types, and fit seamlessly into the world of Quake, one new enemy sticks out like a sore thumb. The nefarious Orb serves as an attempt to add a Cacodemon-type enemy into the game, but their implementation feels clumsy. In part because they serve as such a threat to the player that they become a priority target, dispatched immediately before we can ever really digest their presence, but also in part due to their visual design that has a degree of graphical fidelity just a little too sharp and detailed to go side-by-side with the others.
Now these are all relatively minor complaints, and Dawn of the Machine is otherwise a damn good ride and gets my highest recommendation. However, while Dawn of the Machine feels like a fine little experiment, I can't help but feel these gameplay alterations are foreshadowing Quake's limitations. It has now been thirty years of official expansions and fan-mods, and the changes Dawn of the Machine makes to the gameplay almost feels like an admission that Quake has been pushed about as far as it can go.
It begs the question, how much more Quake can you really make? Has the game finally run its course?
Now this isn't to say that there isn't anything else you can do with Quake. The modding community has been thriving for years and as we all know from Arcane Dimensions to the Quake Brutalist Jam, the Quake mod scene has never been in a better and more creative space. I'm more looking at Quake in an official capacity. Quake as an ever expanding singular piece of art. In another ten years time will Machine Games, or some other custodian of the franchise, release another expansion? If so will it further seek to iterate and distort Quake's classic gameplay loop as Dawn of the Machine did?
Maybe this all sounds indignant to say about what is essentially a free expansion, and I suppose it is, but these thoughts have been rattling around in my head for about a week now and I guess I just had to commit them to text.
So I'll leave you with this. Upon reaching Dawn of the Machine's final boss, it is left available to the player to go back to the level select zone and travel back through the chapters to find further secrets, and, eventually, a final, final secret boss. This is, once again, Shub-Niggurath, from the end of the base game. Quake's infamously indestructible enemy that can only be killed by using the environment to telefrag her.
Here though, at long last, Shub is fought as a traditional boss fight. She spams the player with projectiles, while they in turn riddle her with bullets, shells and lightning bolts, rewarding the player with the kind of grand showdown many wished for all those years ago.
Upon finally destroying Shub, the player is rewarded with one last wall of text. A final reward for the final challenge. The last word for both Ranger, and us. And what does this wall of text impart? More lore connecting the game to Quake 2? The final fate of our protagonist Ranger? The ultimate defeat of the realms of Quake?
No. It simply congratulates the player for their skill, and confirms they have beaten the game.
My interpretation was a little more terminal.
"And when Ranger saw the breadth of his domain, he wept, for there were no more worlds of Quake left to conquer."
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Jack Harvey 2026. Images used under fair use.
