TECH

Quake celebrates 30 years with a free expansion and the revival of a cancelled DLC

Quake's 30th anniversary is here, and to celebrate MachineGames has released a new Dawn of the Machine expansion, which includes a full 19-map campaign with an original soundtrack and new Deathmatch map. Dawn of the Machine is meant to serve as a celebration of Quake's history, even with small details like diegetic difficulty selection still being present at the beginning of the game. New enemy variants and a linear structure drive Dawn of the Machine, though, which breaks from MachineGames' past hub-based expansion design.

Compared to the original Quake, Dawn of the Machine also flaunts some Quake 2 graphical features, namely colored light maps, which the original Quake did not have. Each level has a brand-new skybox, and impressions so far indicate that Dawn of the Machine's environments are just as intensely moody.

Available today as a free update for Quake on PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 4, Dawn of the Machine features a full 19-map campaign accompanied by a brand-new soundtrack and Deathmatch map. 

Dawn of the Machine is a celebration of Quake’s history and influence on the developers at MachineGames and id Software. Following the team’s work on Indiana Jones and the Great Circle: The Order of Giants DLC, Lead Level Designer Andrew Yoder at MachineGames approached the studio’s Game Director Jerk Gusfafsson about an expansion for Quake. Gustafsson, Yoder and the rest of the team that worked on similar projects – dubbed internally as Quake Club – set forth three major goals for what would become Dawn of the Machine.

First and foremost, of course, was celebrating Quake’s 30th anniversary. “We wanted to create something that felt authentic to the spirit of the original game: Horror! Action! Madness!” says Yoder. As such, players will face deadly twists on familiar entries from Quake bestiary such as the Rocket Ogre, Demo Dog, and Blood Shambler, rising to the challenge with new weapon variants like ricochet-blasting Laser Cannon and the lightning-infused Super Axe for classic, fast-paced Quake carnage.

The second goal the team pursued was giving veteran Quake players a new experience. Previous Quake episodes released by MachineGames alongside id Software, such as Call of the Machine and Dimension of the Machine, featured a traditional hub structure which reset the player’s progression between major areas. Instead, Dawn of the Machine has players battle through a continuous episode with continuous progression, which according to Yoder provided the team with “a challenge, requiring much more coordination and iteration to create.”

To set the stage for its design, Dawn of the Machine has players back in the boots of Quake’s battle-hardened protagonist Ranger as he escapes an illusory dimension where time folds back onto itself. As the looping cycle of time progresses, so too will players as they discover ways to break the loop, uncover upgrades to their health and ammunition supplies and eventually take down The Nightmare Machine, the source of Ranger’s planar prison. “Nothing you see can be trusted,” says Yoder, “but there is a path to break through the illusion, defeat the schemes of the outer gods and escape.”

To access Dawn of the Machine, you will need to be on the current release of Quake, aka the 2021 Nightdive Studios version of the 1996 id Software classic. The game is currently on sale on Steam for 60% off, making it only $3.99, or $11.18 to get the entire Quake series before August 13th. The current Doom + Doom II release, which features a free extra episode with MachineGames-developed content as well, is also just $3.99 right now.

Besides the Nightdive Studios Quake port on Steam and PC Game Pass, the console ports of Quake will also be receiving Dawn of the Machine as a free update. Nobody who owns the current release is being left out of the festivities, thanks to the efforts of id Software, MachineGames, and Nightdive alike. Even the Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One console versions will have access to the 19 new maps, and campaigns like Dawn of the Machine can also be played in cross-platform co-op.

 

mundophone