Should Quake Be Rebooted?

History always has a tendency of repeating itself. Obviously this is true for many things including fashion, movies and of course, gaming. When it comes to rebooting video game franchises, the reasoning is fairly simple, there is much less risk. Usually rebooting a series means that the franchise was once beloved but has since fallen from grace.

One of the biggest trends in gaming is rebooting a franchise. Sometimes the world evolves and certain games get left behind. Great examples of this include Tomb Raider which saw a fantastic reboot in 2013 by Crystal Dynamics that not only spawned two enjoyable sequels but also rebooted the cinematic universe that died with Angelina Jolie back in 2003.

The Best Gaming Reboots

The point was that the Crystal Dynamic reboot changed the portrayal of Lara Croft from something more than a very curvaceous protagonist into a strong, smart independent woman who still ventures across the world in search of relics for preservation and always finds herself in the middle of world altering tombs.

God of War also comes to mind which evolved Kratos from a single note character into a father who has seen the err of his ways trying to put that life behind him and teach his son a better way to life. God of War 2018 was easily the biggest game of the series both commercially and critically. In just the first year God of War had sold over 10 million copies. With PS5 upgrades and more people purchasing a PS4 since 2019, that number is likely closer to 20 million.

The final one that comes to mind is when Capcom rebooted the Resident Evil franchise with Resident Evil 7: Biohazard in 2017. Despite commercial success of the series even with entires like RE5 and RE6, Capcom was obviously looking at the critical success of these titles and they were on the downslope. RE7 tried to take the series back to its survival horror roots from the likes of RE1 and RE2 by placing you mostly inside one location with the plantation house similar to the Mansion or RCPD station. The Reboot worked as RE7 and the games that followed have not only sold extremely well but have also been very highly rated from fans and critics.

Why do gaming reboots happen?

Games are very expensive to make with modern titles like Cyberpunk 2077 costing well over 300 million to develop when you include marketing to get people informed and excited about your title. Rebooting eliminates some of this risk and some of this cost as people are already a little familiar with the series, and usually you have some core ideas to build around.

The recent remaster of Quake that was available for free if you already owned the game on Steam or available on Game Pass in celebration of QuakeCon 2021 got me thinking about if bring the series into the modern era would work. With rebooting games being more popular than ever, does it make sense to reboot the Quake series that started in 1996 and revolutionized the FPS genre with 3D?

Doom 2016

Doom, despite not starting the first person shooter genre, is known as the godfather due to how it took it to the mainstream in 1993 building on what made Wolfenstein 3D as popular as it was. The massive success of Doom was followed up with a sequel in 1994 with ports and expansions on just about every system that was possible including the family friendly Nintendo 64 in 1997. Even Nintendo couldn’t ignore the success of the gory and violent shooter. After Doom 2 the series went into development hell, with constant rumours and speculation about when the sequel to Doom 2 would be released.

10 years later in 2004, Doom 3 was finally released with a slightly different tone. In the process of trying to evolve Doom, id Software moved the series away from its signature fast paced shooting and transformed it to more of a survival horror shooter with a flashlight. Doom 3 rebooted the series with cutting edge tech and visuals and despite the commercial success of selling over 3.5 million copies, which is great for 2004 but was a far cry from the estimated 20 million copies of Doom that were sold in 1993.

Doom 3 was divisive among fans who felt that the series was unrecognizable from what they had grown up with and being released 10 years after the original, it was likely that a lot the original fans had moved on. First person shooters had also deeply evolved with games like Half Life that was released in 1998 that massively revolutionized the FPS genre.

Everything that is old is new again and Doom went into hibernation until 2016 when id software once again rebooted the series to what the original was known for in the first place. Doom 2016 took the core tenets of what made the series excellent in the first place with loud, fast paced demon slaying being front and center. Doom 2016 modernized the series featuring glory kills, amazing visuals, excellent metal score composed by Mick Gordon and the blistering speed that once again needed to make a return to the genre as every other FPS at the time was plot heavy and slow. Doom 2016 took a look at the gaming landscape and focused on its strengths.

Wolfenstein: The New Order

Not all reboots follow the same formula of circling back to the original and redoing what worked in the first place. An attempt to reboot Wolfenstein was made multiple times since its mainstream success with Wolfenstein 3D in 1992 by id Software. Technically, what most people know as the original Wolfenstein 3D was actually the third game in the series with the first two being developed in 1981 and 1984 by Muse Software.

However the two titles from the 1980’s are largely unknown to 99.9%, so when discussing the reboots of the series we are going from the 1992 FPS as the first. The first attempt came in 2001 with Return to Castle Wolfenstein from Gray Matter Interactive. Once again the series tried to be rebooted in 2009 with Wolfenstein from Raven Software. Both of these entries were very bland WW2 shooters that weren’t trying anything new, felt very uninspired and as a result didn’t resonate with fans.

Then in 2014, MachineGames developed and released Wolfenstein: The New Order to mostly critical acclaim and moderate success. More importantly it developed somewhat of a cult following. The reason that Wolfenstein: The New Order finally was able to truly get the series back off the ground for the first time in 22 years was because it made smart choices and felt like it MachineGames understood and cared about the franchise.

The main changes that MachineGames made to the formula was that The New Order made you care. There is the story that was interested and had weight with an alternate timeline to WW2 with the Axis dropping a nuclear bomb on Manhattan but more importantly, MachineGames made BJ Blazkowicz a character worth caring about.

The reason that Wolfenstein: The New Order succeeded on many different levels was because it did something that the series had never attempted in its storied history. MachineGames was interested in creating a fresh storyline and developing a character worth building a game around. For the first time, BJ Blaskowicz was more than just a one note character or even in the original 1992 FPS, a one dimensional photo.

The reboot of both Wolfenstein: The New Order and Doom (2016) were published by Bethesda and helped position these respective franchises successfully with sequels in both that have done extremely well commercially and critically.

Why Quake? Why Now?

If you look at the history of some of the most successful reboots over the past decade or so then you will see usually one of two things: Microsoft or Bethesda attached to the titles. Bethesda has published reboots with Prey, Doom, Wolfenstein and Microsoft has done so with Battletoads, Killer Instinct and the upcoming Perfect Dark. Considering that both of these developers are now operating under the same roof, it would be safe to expect more reboots.

Quake Reboot Potential

A Quake reboot has three strengths already going for it. First, it is an id property, which is now currently owned by Microsoft and we have seen their adoration for reboots. Second, 25 years later, The Quake series still has a very active community and annual recurring interest from QuakeCon and third, story was never really a main pillar of the series which means there is carte blanche for the reboot.

I thought maybe it was because I was barely a teenager that I didn’t remember the story but it was just because plot wasn’t usually front and centre with games in the 90’s.

Story and continuity was never what Quake was built around. When speaking to NoClip, Tim Willits, one of the main designers of Quake alongside Romero and Carmack said “The quake franchise has always suffered from an identity crisis and were not planning on calling the sequel Quake 2. We had something amazing with Quake but the story was all over the place”

This is actually a great thing for the reboot of Quake because this means that the opportunity to take the franchise is a number of directions is a viable possibility and that the chances of alienating long term fans of the series is quite low. This is because each person who loves quake likely loves the series for different reasons including the Lovecraft design of the original or the arena speed combat of Quake 3 Arena.

Tim Willits said “Doom was insanely influential, but if you look at what Quake did, it was actually the most influential game that id software ever made from the true 3D engine, client-server architecture, explosion of mods, competitive gaming, it really influenced so much of what we play today” Despite the fact that Quake will never revolutionize gaming like it once did, there is still plenty of opportunity to revive the franchise in a meaningful way and bring the series into the modern era.

Rebooting Quake is still a very risky proposition, but one that carries much less risk that starting a brand new IP from scratch. Quake has always been a series that evolved from single player first person shooter to arena shooter to free to play, which means that the series doesn’t have an identity tied to a specific genre. However, nowadays the first person shooter and online multiplayer genres are more cutthroat than ever with great games failing for many different reasons including Titanfall 2 that focused on single player and Evolve that had a focus on asymmetrical combat.

We have seen numerous reboot attempts fail that should have succeeded based on earlier franchise popularity. We have Turok from 2008, and Perfect Dark Zero that launched alongside the Xbox 360 that were both attempts to reboot beloved N64 titles, Thief from 2014 trying to reboot a 1998 PC classic, or more recently with EA trying to reboot NBA Live multiple times in 2014 and 2018.

Even though Quake Champions kept the series going in 2017 with another entry in the online arena genre with cult success, there is room for the series to go mainstream with a full reboot of story and characters just like Wolfenstein: The New Order from MachineGames and Doom (2016) from id. The fact that MachineGames created some new content for the Quake remaster, It wouldn’t be shocking to see Microsoft reboot Quake during the Xbox Series generation.