I'd say documentaries like Noclip are a great way to get in touch with a game and it's history. I love learning about the dev process and the people behind a game.
Then you’ll LOVE the FIVE DOCUMENTARIES I’ve made where I interview developers and reveal never-publicly seen development assets 👀👀 ruclips.net/video/URWpEI2gEdc/видео.html
Great video! I really appreciate you drawing attention to the human experience of being a developer. The creators of Conkers Bad Fur Day recorded a playthrough with commentary and I wish more creators would consider doing it same as any film director would. I gained such a greater appreciation for the work that went into crafting one of my favourite games and got some insight into how games are actually made.
Video games are definitely an under appreciated art. So much creativity and work goes into developing them from writing the narrative to the creation of models and levels. Music is one of my favorite aspects of media. I like exploring soundtracks and seeing the variety of tracks used for levels, combat, menus, etc. Simple sketches and drawings and notes and then input into the digital world where animators give them life. No wonder it takes years for some games to be completed from the ground up.
I'm currently learning game dev and it has increased my love for games. Getting a simple character controller implemented is hard enough. It blows my mind when I play a game called Metro Exodus. The effort , talent and creativity that it must have taken is hard to imagine.
This essay put a tear in my eye. Quake II is a game that has meant everything to me for so much of my life and thinking about how the devs might not have even been able to dream that anyone would care such a short time down the line hit me in the gut. Reminds me of my own artistic endeavors, few and far between as they are.
Oh rest assured, there are some of us who do appreciate fine art. This re-release was a blessing for me, someone who has been a Quake 2 fan since I was 6 years old, back in 2000. You can fell the love put into this remaster, with all the id vault stuff, which I slowly read everything before jumping into gameplay.
Thanks you Dead Domain for your hard work and passion towards all you. I enjoy all of your videos and hope this small encouragement can help with your future endeavors! Your friend, JB
This remaster also made me appreciate Quake II way more, it went from a game that I considered fairly average to one I love going through. However, I feel like that goes beyond just the extra context being present in the vault, as that context was actually used in the making of the remaster. The biggest change is the new enemy AI, where enemies get new attacks, animations and are generally smarter. This change wasn't done for nothing, it was done using leftover code and animations from when id software had to rewrite the QuakeC code into native C code to get a more stable codebase, with the unfortunate side effect of having to simplify the AI as development was very far along at this point and they didn't have time to finish the fully featured AI. The completion of this AI in the remaster completely changed the game for me, as I found myself being more mindful of what enemies I'm fighting, with what, and where, as well as feeling much more personality from them like people feel DOOM and Quake I did better. Some of the enhanced AI was used in the Ground Zero expansion, but Nightdive basically extended it to leave no assets unused. Asides from this, something that throws people off often is the extra exterior area in the first level. This also wasn't done for fun by Nightdive, it was part of the map earlier in development back in 1997 before being cut for performance reasons. You'll notice that changes done to the maps are the same in nature, restoration of what id software couldn't get done for release, although usually on a smaller scale than that area. They even restored the disruptor weapon which was nearly finished for the old expansion as well, even having spawn points set, but got cut really late in development. I have played Quake II multiple times and never before have I been as mindful of the design as I am now, I can now appreciate both what could have been before and how it changed before release as well. I agree with people that these features should be optional, but I am glad we are seeing them finalized and polished so we could get closer id software's vision, which they promoted heavily back in the day, as you can see SO MANY mentions to the new AI the game would feature and was mostly absent on release.
I played quake 2 somewhere around college, and yeah, especially since most fps stories were very little more than a premise, it stood out. It was a lot clearer about where you were going and why. And the enemy detail (a whole lot of visible pain in the cybernetics) and environmental storytelling was far more clear. In a lot of ways it was a bit closer to what Half Life would define.
Thinking it's like the original Half Life is exactly what I thought when I played the remaster the first time and saw how the levels are interconnected with just a loading screen between. (I've never played Q2 until the remaster)
Haven't worked on game dev, but I have published a couple novels (that I'm always surprised when someone reads 😅), so I can relate to all the "hidden" work that goes in along the way from raw ideas to final piece. Always cool to hear someone say they appreciate having access to that stuff to give them better context for understanding 🙂
I love how much you pulled from this game. This is a genre that is tremendously important to me and it's lovely to see someone take the time to appreciate the art involved.
Your passion as a lover of games really shines in this vid. And THANK YOU for bringing this to my attention, I loved quake2, can't wait to dive deep into this new version.
So, a funny story. Years and years ago, I was got to play Ratchet and Clank 1. And played it so much that I got to unlock the concept art. And I was OBSESSED with the design work that went into the game. Those grainy low res JPGs on a equally grainy cathode ray TV inspired me as a kid, eventually, a hop skip and a jump later, I ended up working in the graphics industry. And while not as fantastically or as romantisied as the game art industry, I share a similar feeling with what you talk about in the video. I have spent I have spent anything from hours to months on projects. Some that got made into real things as published designs, some that never left the notebook, and some that linger in my in-tray at work. But I love to see people that about these lost moments in art and creation. These creative processes are part of a greater tapestry that are just as creatively important as the final output!
Great video :) The fact each and every game can't get this level of love in a rerelease is kinda frustrating. Games can't have Criterion-like curation & preservation efforts done for them bc of how weirdly tight-lipped the culture in gamedev is. No other media industry keeps secrets like they do. And no one throws out the baby with the bathwater like them either. I'm glad you highlighted how little the creative process gets documented for most games.
A criterion-style release is exactly what I’d love. Something between what Limited Run does and what Nightdive has consistently achieved. Just wish there was more interest in that kind of thing
Fun fact, there's even more beta levels in the game files that aren't normally accessible, you have to use the console to load them. By the looks of them, they're from a *super* early point in development, some of them are incomplete, roughly textured blockouts. My favourite example is city2_4; it's an early version of the final game's lower and upper temple levels in one, but a lot of the map as we know it just isn't there, so it ends up feeling pretty darn smol c:
It's so cool you picked Q2 to talk about, because just the other day I was talking about how it was special to me, not just for the atmosphere and how it all engaged my young imagination, but because it was one of the first games that I had access to where I could PLEY GORL
I was the ripe age of 13 when this game came out. It was my world. Eventually my disc got scratched. And my grandma bought me another copy. Ha. I met so many friends through the online community. I even made a few levels of my own.
I was 36 (no longer ripe, and far past my "use by" date) when the demo came out. It was the first game I'd even considered playing since my Sega Genesis days. Funny thing, id would usually remove the disk check when they did their first major patch so it was no longer needed. Don't tell your grandma ;-).
One of my favourite things in games is when they put in unlockable concept art, renders and just small snippets from production. I've spent ages browsing through these even in games that I didn't particularly like (low brow stuff like BloodRayne 2 comes to mind) simply because it was cool to get a glimpse of what was going behind the curtain during development. Seeing these in Quake 2 Enhanced was such a huge joy. Especially all the 3D models.
Started playing this game at 4 years old, gonna be 30 in a few months and still playing. I love Q2, it’s always going to have a special place in my heart next to the original RE 1&2. I had my friend play Q2 for the first time with me a week ago and he had a ball. Every time I brought him to secret areas to get some guns early, I’d hear him yell “ooooooohhhhh hell yeah! Get out of my way, I have to try this!” He loved the soundtrack.
This is a beautiful video. As someone who has only recently discovered your channel, I may have to go through your library as I'm sure there are more similar fare. 🥰 I do have to say, though, the beginning resonated with me most when pondering why games (if they're considered "art") don't have a museum. I turn 43 next month, and I constantly lament the death of "arcades," and how most "arcades" you run into now are just a jumble of fairgounds and boardwalk games (like Skeeball and Stacker) that award tickets for plushie and candy prizes. When I lament the death of "arcades," I think like you are, which is about a beautiful room full of plinky plunky noises and a cadre of flashy screens full of little mini-fantasies all costing a quarter each. My first thought was, as impossible as it would be...why can't we have a place to go for the most random assortment of old games. We go to museums to LOOK at art, because art is mostly there to LOOK at and observe. GAMES are meant to be played and experienced. The answer, unfortunately, is obvious, as there would be problems with licensing, profit cuts, marketing, blah blah blah. Maybe the solution is for the publishers and/or owners of the IPs to make their own slivers of gaming history. Like, imagine a brick and mortar "Bethesda History Arcade" where you could put a quarter (or $1, inflation, et al) into a machine and play Elder Scrolls: Arena or Fallout 2 for 30 minutes. A "BioWare History Arcade" where you could play KOTOR for 30 minutes. A "Valve History Arcade" where you could play Half-Life for 30 minutes. Just spitballing. I love that the devs made a beautiful love letter to Quake 2 here. I wonder what the next step in that type of endeavor would be, if not every remake comes out as passionately as this one.
great video! I learned some gaming history and I was asked a great question. why aren't there any gaming museums? there's some old dnd stuff, but those are mostly held by private collectors. I'd say Gary con is sort of a gaming museum with many old-school and niche ttrpg systems as well as basic and advanced dnd. even some 4th. this channel has a lot of potential for growth. the writing skills, production quality, and relevance are all here. all that's left is for youtube to bring new viewers. I look forward to seeing how this channel grows in the future
The answer to the whole museum question is quite simple. Modern copyright. It is basically in the way for anything such as that to become a reality with how it is draconianly reinforced with pretty much all attempts at any new strides being shot down by obsessive copyright ghouls. It is also why your book analogue goes aground as there is a lot of books and literature that is locked away or even lost thanks to copyright. Things that are never reprinted or otherwise made available.
As a 45 year old who still loves gaming, Quake 2 remaster is an absolute thing of beauty! It's really brought back to me how fantastic games of yesteryear really were in many cases far more fun! I would love to see a totally new quake made with the technology available to developers today....much like the newer doom releases.
I never thought if it that way but I agree. As an art form we owe it to ourselves and future generations to preserve games and ensure they’re accessible to people. It’s art we really never have to lose as it’s digital. We only lose it if we don’t care to preserve it
just finished quake 2 for the first time after falling in love with Quake 1 and replaying it 4 times the past couple of months and GODDAMN this series is amazing! wish I was alive then just to experience its release and the hype with it
Seeing this video appear was like some divine intersection between my current obsessions. I was watching a 2003 e3 demo of half life 2 and thinking about the guy presenting it, and all that work that was shortly leaked after. Then I was playing Quake 2 earlier really admiring the focused vision of it all, imagining the developers really sweating over the details in A.I. and the enemy models. It's an industry that has grown at an unbelievable pace when you stop to think about it, but it's one that forgets and moves on way too quickly. Blah blah, rant over you've more than earned a new sub!😊
Thank you so much! If you enjoyed this look at appreciation, check out the documentaries I’ve made with developers! ruclips.net/video/Iep-IjCM8ak/видео.html
Similarly, there is a lovely feature in most of the Ratchet and Clank games called the Insomniac Museum. It is a playable level that lets you tinker with things that fell to the cutting room floor. There is art on display in frames. It is a loving feature that you have to collect all of the game's collectables in most cases to even access. I always found the reward worth it.
Sadly, I think they did this for only the PS2 titles excluding Gladiator (Deadlocked) and the first game. I hate to say it, but sadly RaC lost the charm it once had.
Firstly, awesome video! I love these games so much and love hearing takes like this. I grew up playing id games, I vividly remember mom + dad taking turns playing through DOOM when I was a very young boy, and somehow convincing them to let me play as well. I've also been so impressed by the treatment the classic id games have been getting. So much new content, countless hours of works doing remasters and adding new content just to give it all away for free to the people that already owned the game. It really makes it feel like they're doing it for the right reason, for the love of these games, which adds a lot to your art argument as well. Secondly, I keep thinking about your mention of video game museums, and what was mentioned near the end of the video. The reasons you mention really reflect why I've always been obsessed with, and supportive of modding retro consoles. There are so many semi-forgotten classics and oddball obscure games that never got any traction. Getting some of these games can be either unfairly costly, with no money making it's way to the developers, or impossible, to track down physically. I've spent a lot of time modding (and acquiring flashcarts for when needed) every mainstream console from the NES -> Xbox360 so my friends and I can experience so many lost games we would never have seen otherwise. That scene has done a fantastic job of trying to archive every single release for many of these consoles, in a way that is incredible, but also sad. While I don't condone obtaining illegitimate copies of modern games that developers are still profiting from, there is also so much history that has been preserved by a bunch of "pirates", and if they didn't do it, I don't think anyone else would.
Quake II presents itself as a fast paced game designed to make you feel like a bad ass. I find it interesting how the art design could be so straight forward and practical in its inception, but 25 years later audiences reinterpret those same designs in a whole new context, as you mention. I love looking at the pixel-y textures, which in 1997 was just adhering to the constraints of the hardware, and how designers found creative ways to convey, for example, a flying cyborg head. Perhaps modern audiences retrospectively give extra value to these artistic choices, but that is a completely valid way to appreciate artforms in my opinion. Thank you for this video, Quake II really is a gift to all of us
Great video! My ears perked up when you mentioned Condemned 2! That’s still one of my favorite games and that video was my introduction to your channel!
Something I used to do as a kid, when I didn't have access to all the games I ever wanted, I would slow down and just... look. This grass texture, not sure if it's made by the dev team or not, but it looks nice. These walls are also nice. My favourite appreciation however are animations. Just seeing the characters move while doing anything is endlessly entertaining. Recently, Bomb Rush Cyberfunk has released, and it surprised me how much it feels like a triple A game from earlier times. Sometimes, it is nice to just walk slowly in a videogame, to really try and process everything surrounding it.
I always understood Q2 being in the future rather than the medieval settings was because the Quake is some cosmic event that repeats itself the Stroggs as opposed to the baddies in Q2 are created and controlled by some Lovecraftian cosmic power. So i always liked that contrast.
This was amazing. I still have almost 2 gigs of Q2 files. Mods, maps, player models, from Death Matches and clan play. Playing on dial up back in the day until the early AM hours only getting a few hours of sleep before work. As online gaming was just starting to walk right.
As much as it's a legal grey area, emulation has allowed so much of older games that have been passed over to actually gain followings they would have never had, as well as gain appreciation where they were originally passed over.
I grew up on OG DooM, Quake and Quake 2, Heretic, Duke Nukem sidescrollers and 3D, BLOOD, Rise of the Triad, Terminal Velocity, and many more......and I have NEVER forgotten them over my life! I still have some of the sharewares on disc or CD, as well as the full games! Growing up on these games, started my love for lesser realistic looking games that were fast paced shooters, and of course the resurgence of all the newer retro inspired ones these days! Triple a games these days have nothing on the simple retro FPS games and classic fps games from the past! I still find more enjoyment in older games than any newer ones, at 35 years old, it makes me happy that I still play the games I did as a kid that introduced me to the fps genre!
While I’ve always considered video games an art form I hadn’t really given much thought to preservation beyond the games themselves. I’ve always loved it when games included concept art and ways to get a better look at character models. Even with a game like Quake II where most of what I know of this game is from this video it was so fun seeing the drawings of guns and environments. This video has me thinking back to all the different games I’ve played and wondering how much information about the game’s development is actually available. It has me thinking about a lot of things differently, which i consider a mark of a good video, well done! 💜
Very interesting and informative video Dead Domain! I too enjoyed the Quake vault and wish there was a Video Game Museum” of sorts. This is an art form that I love along with Music and I think the two of them together make wonderful combos at times.
This takes me back. Not because I have any connection to Quake II (Never played it. Not my kind of game back then. Not enough Japanese teenagers killing God with the power of friendship.) No, this takes me back because I used to work in game development as well. I spent 5-6 years in the late 2000's making a dozen or so licensed titles few have ever heard of, during the golden age of shovelware. But each and every one of those games had stories behind them. Stories of designers, artists and programmers working insane hours to meet unreasonable deadline, killing ourselves to duct tape together something halfway presentable. We weren't being paid to make great art; we were barely paid at all. Companies exploiting young developers, often straight out of college, underpaying us in exchange for "industry experience". But we weren't killing ourselves for a bullet point on our resume, we were doing it for each other. We didn't want to let our teammates down and together we hoped we could maybe make something worth taking a little bit pride in. We knew exactly what we were doing. Hell, we made Ubisoft "Imagine" titles and games based on Disney Channel sitcoms. The publisher's business plan was ripping off helpless kids and their clueless parents. And yet, even projects as disposable as those still took real sweat to make. Still had real people behind them. Still had real stories that will probably never be told, much less heard. So, thank you. For telling the stories you are able to. It is definitely appreciated.
Thank you for commenting. I love trying to tell the stories behind games like those, so if you’d ever love to tell me some of them, feel free to shoot me an email.
id software games in general are works of art, from a tech stand point to visuals and sound design, the current team over at id (imo at least) still maintains this tradition.
There are actually a number of game museums! But nowhere near enough and the lack of preservation of games in general is depressing, Nightdive tries to do what they can with certain projects, and obviously there are many emulator teams doing what they can, but its a tough fight and a lot of corporations actively oppose teams doing that.
gotta enjoy them while we can because the companies are going out of their way to make games completely incompatible with the concept of a museum. we're about to be even more reliant on piracy for preservation than we already are and companies are never going to change this because the largest player that could make a difference, Nintendo, would love to also make used games illegal if they had to power and has been THE driving force against video game rentals since their inception. companies want total and complete control over their IPs and their own personal Disney Vault that they can occasionally pick out of to remind you tee hee we own this and dont do anything with it. the ultimate irony is that these remasters are only successful due to the nostalgia that is driven from the fact theyve been quietly available due to piracy and emulation in the first place
The gaming industry's continued disinterest in preserving its own history is simply bewildering. It's a shame we have to rely on the dedication and resourcefulness of fans to keep old games from being lost entirely. I love videos games and I hope one day this will change when we see greater efforts being made with Nightdive leading the way and showing how it should be done.
I loved playing quake 2 as a child in the late 90s and this last most since i stumbled upon this remake i have been having a real blast playing coop with my friends. Playing the campaign again made me realise i still somehow know everything about it by heart
Quake 2 introduced me to PC gaming back in the day. I was lucky to experience this game in its prime. I would live and breathe Quake 2 Multiplayer for many many many years. It was some of the best times of my life. I have a very deep love and connection with this game. Very nostalgic for me. I'm so happy to see this game getting a fresh and respectful release in 2023.
I never considered that games could become their own museums! I never did play the Quake games, but I remember being artistically inspired by the Doom level editor that we got. I created fantastical playgrounds that no one would ever use, and these old-school shooters evoke now a sense of such nostalgia for those open possibilities! I'm very pleased to say that I know a number of people involved in ludoarchaeology, the preservation and restoration of gaming history. Some day, there will be museums where you can experience some amount of these otherwise lost-to-time artifacts.
I've loved Quake 2 since I first played it as a kid in 98/99 (been so long idk how old I was exactly). And as an adult, my favorite parts of the Quake II Remaster, as much as I love all of it, is definitely the incorporation of Quake II 64 and the id Vault. I'm vocally hoping around devs that the PSX version of Quake II (which a dev is working on atm) will be added in an official patch, and for Quake 1 Remaster to get an id Vault as well. I doubt the latter will ever happen but damn do I hope for it.
quake 2 is probably more comparable to the creation of a heavy metal album opposed to an art canvas imo. if you look at how development was back then, it was more about what worked at the immediate moment and moving onto the next project as soon as possible, the graphics advancement alone back in the 90s was staggeringly fast. In 11 years, you went from Doom to Doom 3, that's insane progress. the companies that couldn't keep up with that are not around today, there was no indie scene, free 2 play or aaa scene, it was all just one big one so competition was fierce. games like Quake 2 were on the throne of FPS gaming, but then a year later Valve was with Half Life, it wasn't like a game could stay in the limelight and popular for years like they can now. with that mindset, who cares about cataloguing history. It was a time when game studios operated like a battle of the bands free-for-all. and before we knew it, the industry had turned into a million dollar media business overnight and we wondered what we did with those old demo tapes and concert flyers
Thanks for this video! I dont ihink I would have ever tried Quake II without it. Loving it so far and concept art that is there is incredible to see. Keep up the great work!
The Quake 2 Defenders have LOGGED the fuck on. Quake 2 N64 is one of my favorite games from when I was a kid so this re-release was my GOTY before i knew anything else about it.
My favourite part of Sonic Mega Collection (I’m guessing it had a name incorporating the Genesis over there) was all the concept and promotional art. I probably spent more time on all that than on the games themselves. One wee constructive criticism, I noticed a couple moments of somewhat awkward tense. For instance I think “looks at” (in the line about most games not getting these kind of deep look) could be “insights into” and flow a little more naturally. This point is more of a stylistic thing than a simple rewrite but I’d be inclined to say the extra info about the films adds extra layers of interpretation as opposed to interrupting the flow with the rhetorical question. But honestly if I weren’t having writing brain going all the time that could totally be a very effective presentation technique so even though I found it a little jarring, maybe that was the intent and you completely succeeded! Anyway, back on the substance of this essay rather than the delivery, my heart goes out for so many kinds of lost media. Indeed film threw away so much of its history in the 1910s and 20s, and TV did the same in the 50s and 60s. It’s quite eerie living through video gaming having its equivalent moments, where archivists wish more were preserved and it changes the way we handle material going forward. Hopefully it goes well though! I never personally had much love for Q2 partly because of how it diverged from Q1 and Q3 had what I felt was the superior multiplayer. I often felt 2 would’ve been better as a new setting, so the “forced” Quake branding is often what I focus on. So this has definitely given me new appreciation for the second instalment! Thank you very much :)
I love it when the team responsible for a re-release of a game share what went into the development of the original release. Heck, as bad as 343 has been with the The Halo series, The fact that the MCC team dug through as much old unfinished and cut content for the halo games that they could find, and work with modders to make them public for people to put back in the Master Chief collection is insane.
I’ve got an Xbox and what makes me so happy is I’m seeing re-releases of games I played when I was young. Games that absolutely count as art…Myst (sigh)…I also used to pirate copies of SNES games and play classics like Earthbound on my computer. Nintendo killed that, unfortunately. There should absolutely be a market for remasters of classic video games from history. A good game is a good game no matter how old it is. Wrote my comment at the beginning of the video but I love that so much time was spent on the artists that make these games. When I play games, I do it the same way I read books. Which is to say I do it critically. Video games are absolutely an artistic medium and it has it’s own unique conventions and tropes. There were people working on these games that had specific visions and they used the medium to communicate those visions. Not only that, there were whole groups of people some with maybe competing visions and it all blends together to make an experience.
There actually is a physical game museum in Oakland, I've been there! Although it's not nearly as ambitious as what you described. It's like this rented-out storefront that I would describe as an "Archival Arcade". Like they have a bunch of consoles from the Atari 2600 all the way to modern consoles, and you can choose a game from the neighboring shelves to try out for a little while. Or you can ask the guy on the counter if they have a certain game in the back. Sadly, I don't remember it having any information on the development of these games, although I don't even know where they'd put it to be honest. If nothing else, I can say it's a great way to get kids interested in old games they otherwise might not have heard of. Anyway then we got stuck in San Francisco traffic for like 3 hour lmao.
I really havent heard many people say this but with the new remaster and the call of the machine campaign quake 2 connected with me on an aesthetic and gameplay more than maybe any other old school shooter
I still play Quake 1 at least once per month after all these years, all thanks to modders and people adding excellent content. I don't see this happening to Quake 2 yet, without a healthy modding scene it will be forgotten again.
Quake II was helping to guide where the video game industry would go. It's remaster is helping to guide the video game industry in how to remaster as a shrine to what has already been accomplished.
For real I would love to work at a games museum and preserve gaming history. Right now I work at a brick and mortar games store which means I do get to get my mitts on old games and consoles and photograph them and catalogue them but I also see a lot of games go in the bin because they're for the wrong region and there's no buyers and be poorly looked after cause we don't have the space or the time and it's really sad :( I want to spread the love of games and gaming history. Badly.
Anyone remember the days of playing Jailbreak, Catch the chicken, Rocket arena, or Team fortress mods? I think there was like 100 different mods in Q2's during its prime. Then also city1 and tower were the best deathmatch maps before they ever came out with the version 2.10 and a map pack with the 8 deathmatch maps. Otherwise its weird how no one knows about this game anymore because they weren't born yet
I wonder what the nostalgia for games of today is gonna be like in 20 or 30 years. What's going to survive or be rediscovered as classics, and what's the discovery process going to be like for people that want to find out more about the development of their favorites. Like, now most stuff is purely digital, storage is incredibly cheap, AND we have comprehensive source control, we can go through every single step of a games development, and see it every step of the way. Like, I'm making a game at the moment, and is anyone other than me ever going to care about the fact that I can see a version of the game for every single fix and addition that I've made over the past 8 years? If so, the repository will be sitting there, waiting.
Great video, love when YT recommendations actually show me good stuff for once. In the same month Rockstar and TakeTwo sold a port of RedDead for $50, a ton of people got such wonderful remaster work for free if they already owned it on Steam or already have game pass. And even if you have neither, it's really cheap for how much love and care has went into it. My only nitpick is that there's not enough options for someone to have a completely 'purist experience', It's a nitpick as almost all the changes Nightdive made where for the better and arguably restored how ID software wanted the AI to work, and you can still play the original on PC via other launch option or source ports. Really wish there where more studios could do the stuff Nightdive does, like they really are the video game equivalent of the 'boutique' film labels restoring obscure and forgotten films.
@2:12 'why don't we have a better way to appreciate the games that get left behind?' We do, emulation. For an industry that does not care about it's own past, this is the best way. Also, whomst.
A minor detail I like about this remaster is the gibs. Iirc the gibs in the original were just generic blood stained chunks (I recall only recently being able to make out a head of one of those chunks lol) whereas the remaster has actual parts of whatever character you have gibbed all over the place
1) You seem to have described everything my brain felt while I was playing this remaster. I feel like I've played the game as it was meant to be when it was released, with small improvements that make a huge difference. 2) I was a bit sad when I saw that there was the idea of having a face in the hub, like in previous games. This was a big frustration of mine when I played Quake II as a kid, as if they had taken away an essential aesthetic piece from a franchise. I hope modders make good use of these images… hehe 3) I believe that there are video game museums around the world. I know there are in Japan. Here in Brazil I've even come across Revell modeling museums! Anyway, I'm sure that games are art, yes, and I'm annoyed at how this discussion is still seen by many as something controversial.
Who here remembers the CrackWhore? If you know, you know...and if you know, then you're a true Q2 OG. P.S. I wish NightDive and Bethesda would go back and remaster the models of the new weapons in Scourge of Armagon and Dissolution of Eternity...and you know...finish the job.
This game was my childhood, and my first thought was that title was a bit click baity and exaggerated, but you've convinced me :) the remaster of the game is impressive enough, but the level of archivel in this release is absolutely incredible.
Books definitely go out of print, and digitally de-listed. Many books become hard to find and expensive to get physically. All of the other Crow comic books besides the original were just de-listed from Google play books, and I can't find them anywhere else now. Besides that, you are very right about the video games as art and being one of the most inaccessible forms of art for many of the older titles.
I should have clarified that’s the case for most books. The idea, or hope, is that you could still find them on internet archive or a library, even if that’s not always the case
It always pains me how badly a lot of developers have had to break themselves to make the games I've enjoyed. Even worse when those efforts result in a game nobody can play anymore without praying for some sort of fix, source port or fan project. It's worth paying good teams to conserve games.
This video and videos that bring up the same points always hit me very deeply, as like you said books and movies no matter how old are by comparison to video games relatively easy to acess and preserve. Remembrenace is a big topic for me and the ammount of games (especially as a RTS fan) that ive seen and went '' THATS A fantastic idea, the game probably isnt up to par but it would still be nice if it was easy to acess and play'' is a bit on the 1 sided side of thing. Especially games that never got as popular on the same level of C&C or DOOM etc. Denoting how the development went for games like War Inc (strategy game, since theres apperantly a FPS thats unrelated ) the Earth (insert year here ) series and even the likes of Evil Genius one which holds a uniqe position in my game library as ''Game ive played more then twice '' Can be a difficult task sometimes as most people dont bother with posting stuff that happend throughout development in their games, aside from concept art. And even talking outside of games that arent in my top favorite genres, i can get very curious as to what sparked some of these ideas, too bad its never going to be made visible unless the game was a big enough success that it gets mentioned in a interview. That said however i am always amazed at how many games you can find that STILL to this day have active communities albeit small modding the games and making them playable, like Paraworld or Machines Wired for War and it always makes my heart sputter whenever i see this and makes it feel like it might be possible for us to hold off the rot of decay into history long enough for us to MAKE this video game museum to expirience these games of yesteryear that never quite managed to garner the attention that they could have had and the opportunity to become someones favorite game. Anyways i think what im trying to say here is, another wonderfull video and i do appreciate creators that make videos about their favorite games whilist trying to look at the development and human side of making these collaborative projects.
If you enjoyed this, I recommend my documentaries on cult classic and forgotten games where I interview the developers 10+ years later. They’re definitely some of my favorites and cover games from X-Men to Silent Hill. Also thank you for commenting 💕 ruclips.net/video/xiHOt3nD3xQ/видео.htmlsi=0jtsNpQjHDgq63j6
Great video! Watching it I couldn’t help but think two things, and these are neither criticisms or counterpoints, just thoughts: - would any game ever make it to release if devs actually thought about its life 10, 20, 50 years from now? Is it even possible to treat the development itself and its detritus like a conservator would? Or would the years of artifacts produced just dwarf the actual thing and grow in on itself, like a sort of “Synecdoche, New York” situation? - for every Quake, I can’t help but wonder how many mediocre or just bad pieces of art might have been at E3 1997. And if those were all preserved - or dug back up - to the same extent as this, would they be appreciated? Not saying nothing else had merit, or that hours or labor didn’t go into them - but one can spend a lot of time, blood, sweat and tears without it actually being worthwhile (sadly). Does the scarcity of information elevate what little we do know in somewhat “unfair” ways? Also, couldn’t help but think of Campster’s videos on DOOM where he romanticizes and almost waxes poetic about the time, place and team that was id in the 90s only to have The Beginner’s Guide call him out on that sort of behavior in a later video🙂
I finally got around to watching this and I really love everythibg you say. Also reminds me I should really look into this remake/restoration, it sounds truly groundbreaking! Will have to watch a few more times to really fully absorb and process everything, but absolutely stellar work!
Great video. I found it especially interesting in light of the fact that you're bringing a set of fresh eyes to this game, having never played it before. All of the other videos I've seen raving about this game include a hefty dose of nostalgia, so it's refreshing to hear the perspective of someone who is playing this game for the first time now, in 2023, and still finding things to appreciate and love about it. Fwiw, I am also playing the game for the first time, as the initial release occurred while I was still a teen brainwashed by religion into thinking of games like this as "evil." A few years ago I picked up the remaster of Quake on Switch, and found myself with an odd feeling of "missed nostalgia," as if this were something I should have experienced but didn't. I loved gaming as a kid, but games like these just weren't available to me. Now I love them. I am incredibly grateful for the teams that put so much effort into preserving, remastering, and re-releasing these titles, giving me a second chance to enjoy these treasures now. It's like they gave me back a little piece of what I missed growing up - a piece I'm thoroughly enjoying. If a game like Quake (and now, Quake 2) can bring about that type of reflection and those types of emotions in people like me, why wouldn't we call it art? All games tell a story. Multiple stories, really. Preserving those stories is a worthy effort. I'd love to see more of these stories told.
Side note: I actually live in a small, run down town in Iowa that some say is the official "video game capital of the world," mostly because of the role it played in competitive arcade gaming and the birth of competitive esports. There used to be an arcade called "Twin Galaxies" here, which I believe is where the record tracking website gets its name. For all the video game history that took place here, there's almost zero mention of it anywhere in the entire town. Most residents don't even know about it. The arcade with all that history is gone. So much has been lost. It's an odd feeling, as someone who has loved video games since the time when this town was part of video game history, to live here and see so much forgotten. We really need to remember this stuff.
I am so glad you made this video! I honestly have no history with Quake II-- most of my exp. comes from playing Quake 3 on a LAN at school, lol-- but I'm glad to have this game updated and released for modern players. More importantly, I'm glad there are video essayists like you giving much needed attention to these kinds of games. Long forgotten or poorly remembered games are such an important part of gaming history. For every huge and influential title released by big devs, there are countless more released by smaller teams, ones that didn't get the spotlight they deserved. Thank you for your work here. It is greatly appreciated, and I'm glad I subscribed. --Mae
This video made me realize how badly I treated Quake 2 up until the remaster. I tried playing the version straight off Steam years ago, and it ran terribly on modern systems. At the time, I didn't know I needed to download a source port to make the game playable, so I thought everyone claiming it was so great either saw something different or was lying out of their ass. Now that I'm playing it, however, it's one of the best games I've played this year, right next to Yakuza Kiwami and Xenoblade Chronicles 3. I still need to finish the main campaign, but Quake 2 officially has its hooks in me, and I'm gonna play it until there's nothing left for me to see, which makes the idea that I couldn't stand the game just a week ago feel so bizarre and almost cruel.
I would also go so far as to say that the System Shock remake (also by NightDive) is a work of preservation, especially in how faithful it is to the original. It never set out to rewrite the record or drastically change how the game was presented, aside from meaningful aesthetic changes. It's such to the point that walkthroughs written for the *original game* are still usable in the remake, and I really commend that, especially when most modern remakes aren't so. Also, I appreciate your comments about unplayable games. I felt that way for a long time about Raven Software's Wolfenstein (2009). It was delisted when id was acquired by Bethesda, and the only way to play it now is on a 7th gen console or through "less legal" means. Still, when I was hunting through Raven's back catalog after news of their unionization, it was the one game that consistently eluded me, and even for how mediocre it was, it felt like a missing piece, since it gets referenced in Wolfenstein: The New Order. I finally buckled down and got it from an abandonware website, but I feel like I shouldn't have had to, and I can only hope that Microsoft acquiring Activision-Blizzard will put it back up on digital marketplaces for more people to play and enjoy.
Wolfenstein is a great example. I can only hope Bethesda or Microsoft gets the chance to give it the remaster or re-release that series deserves. I’d also love to see similar treatment for Return to Castle Wolfenstein
I'd say documentaries like Noclip are a great way to get in touch with a game and it's history. I love learning about the dev process and the people behind a game.
Then you’ll LOVE the FIVE DOCUMENTARIES I’ve made where I interview developers and reveal never-publicly seen development assets 👀👀
ruclips.net/video/URWpEI2gEdc/видео.html
@@deaddomain you’re right, I did love this video
As someone who has never played OVerwatch I can tell you that I appreciate characters like Tracer and Widowmaker on a very *intimate* level.
👀👀👀
And I appreciate drawing them for your intimate time
Such an lovely and passionate couple
@exodusn2233 you are from random madness right ?
🫣
Great video! I really appreciate you drawing attention to the human experience of being a developer. The creators of Conkers Bad Fur Day recorded a playthrough with commentary and I wish more creators would consider doing it same as any film director would. I gained such a greater appreciation for the work that went into crafting one of my favourite games and got some insight into how games are actually made.
I LOVE developer commentary tracks. I wish they were more standard in the industry.
Video games are definitely an under appreciated art. So much creativity and work goes into developing them from writing the narrative to the creation of models and levels. Music is one of my favorite aspects of media. I like exploring soundtracks and seeing the variety of tracks used for levels, combat, menus, etc. Simple sketches and drawings and notes and then input into the digital world where animators give them life. No wonder it takes years for some games to be completed from the ground up.
My thoughts exactly!
I'm currently learning game dev and it has increased my love for games. Getting a simple character controller implemented is hard enough. It blows my mind when I play a game called Metro Exodus. The effort , talent and creativity that it must have taken is hard to imagine.
This essay put a tear in my eye. Quake II is a game that has meant everything to me for so much of my life and thinking about how the devs might not have even been able to dream that anyone would care such a short time down the line hit me in the gut. Reminds me of my own artistic endeavors, few and far between as they are.
Oh rest assured, there are some of us who do appreciate fine art. This re-release was a blessing for me, someone who has been a Quake 2 fan since I was 6 years old, back in 2000. You can fell the love put into this remaster, with all the id vault stuff, which I slowly read everything before jumping into gameplay.
Thanks you Dead Domain for your hard work and passion towards all you. I enjoy all of your videos and hope this small encouragement can help with your future endeavors! Your friend, JB
Thank you so SO much! I’m honored!
This remaster also made me appreciate Quake II way more, it went from a game that I considered fairly average to one I love going through. However, I feel like that goes beyond just the extra context being present in the vault, as that context was actually used in the making of the remaster.
The biggest change is the new enemy AI, where enemies get new attacks, animations and are generally smarter. This change wasn't done for nothing, it was done using leftover code and animations from when id software had to rewrite the QuakeC code into native C code to get a more stable codebase, with the unfortunate side effect of having to simplify the AI as development was very far along at this point and they didn't have time to finish the fully featured AI. The completion of this AI in the remaster completely changed the game for me, as I found myself being more mindful of what enemies I'm fighting, with what, and where, as well as feeling much more personality from them like people feel DOOM and Quake I did better. Some of the enhanced AI was used in the Ground Zero expansion, but Nightdive basically extended it to leave no assets unused.
Asides from this, something that throws people off often is the extra exterior area in the first level. This also wasn't done for fun by Nightdive, it was part of the map earlier in development back in 1997 before being cut for performance reasons. You'll notice that changes done to the maps are the same in nature, restoration of what id software couldn't get done for release, although usually on a smaller scale than that area. They even restored the disruptor weapon which was nearly finished for the old expansion as well, even having spawn points set, but got cut really late in development.
I have played Quake II multiple times and never before have I been as mindful of the design as I am now, I can now appreciate both what could have been before and how it changed before release as well. I agree with people that these features should be optional, but I am glad we are seeing them finalized and polished so we could get closer id software's vision, which they promoted heavily back in the day, as you can see SO MANY mentions to the new AI the game would feature and was mostly absent on release.
I had no idea about the use of old code and new behaviors! That’s incredible! Thank you for letting me know!
I played quake 2 somewhere around college, and yeah, especially since most fps stories were very little more than a premise, it stood out. It was a lot clearer about where you were going and why. And the enemy detail (a whole lot of visible pain in the cybernetics) and environmental storytelling was far more clear. In a lot of ways it was a bit closer to what Half Life would define.
Thinking it's like the original Half Life is exactly what I thought when I played the remaster the first time and saw how the levels are interconnected with just a loading screen between. (I've never played Q2 until the remaster)
@@narnianninja4964 Yeah! Half Life took it a major step further but Q2 really was going in that direction. WAY more of a sense of world building.
Haven't worked on game dev, but I have published a couple novels (that I'm always surprised when someone reads 😅), so I can relate to all the "hidden" work that goes in along the way from raw ideas to final piece. Always cool to hear someone say they appreciate having access to that stuff to give them better context for understanding 🙂
I love how much you pulled from this game. This is a genre that is tremendously important to me and it's lovely to see someone take the time to appreciate the art involved.
Thank you for watching. I’m glad there are others who value these kind of games as much as I do.
Your passion as a lover of games really shines in this vid. And THANK YOU for bringing this to my attention, I loved quake2, can't wait to dive deep into this new version.
Thank you so much. I try to put my passion into everything I make, I’m glad it comes through 💕
So, a funny story. Years and years ago, I was got to play Ratchet and Clank 1. And played it so much that I got to unlock the concept art. And I was OBSESSED with the design work that went into the game. Those grainy low res JPGs on a equally grainy cathode ray TV inspired me as a kid, eventually, a hop skip and a jump later, I ended up working in the graphics industry. And while not as fantastically or as romantisied as the game art industry, I share a similar feeling with what you talk about in the video.
I have spent I have spent anything from hours to months on projects. Some that got made into real things as published designs, some that never left the notebook, and some that linger in my in-tray at work. But I love to see people that about these lost moments in art and creation. These creative processes are part of a greater tapestry that are just as creatively important as the final output!
Great video :) The fact each and every game can't get this level of love in a rerelease is kinda frustrating. Games can't have Criterion-like curation & preservation efforts done for them bc of how weirdly tight-lipped the culture in gamedev is. No other media industry keeps secrets like they do. And no one throws out the baby with the bathwater like them either. I'm glad you highlighted how little the creative process gets documented for most games.
A criterion-style release is exactly what I’d love. Something between what Limited Run does and what Nightdive has consistently achieved. Just wish there was more interest in that kind of thing
Nightdive is basically the closest we have to that at the moment. They're so good at what they do.
I literally just beat the remasteted campaign when this video came up. Great timing!
I do love good timing!
Fun fact, there's even more beta levels in the game files that aren't normally accessible, you have to use the console to load them. By the looks of them, they're from a *super* early point in development, some of them are incomplete, roughly textured blockouts. My favourite example is city2_4; it's an early version of the final game's lower and upper temple levels in one, but a lot of the map as we know it just isn't there, so it ends up feeling pretty darn smol c:
It's so cool you picked Q2 to talk about, because just the other day I was talking about how it was special to me, not just for the atmosphere and how it all engaged my young imagination, but because it was one of the first games that I had access to where I could PLEY GORL
I was the ripe age of 13 when this game came out. It was my world. Eventually my disc got scratched. And my grandma bought me another copy. Ha.
I met so many friends through the online community. I even made a few levels of my own.
I was 36 (no longer ripe, and far past my "use by" date) when the demo came out. It was the first game I'd even considered playing since my Sega Genesis days.
Funny thing, id would usually remove the disk check when they did their first major patch so it was no longer needed. Don't tell your grandma ;-).
something I love about art is when things get left on the table, what art was made but then deleted in the process of making a complete project
The Museum of Modern Art in NY, has added video games into their collection.
One of my favourite things in games is when they put in unlockable concept art, renders and just small snippets from production. I've spent ages browsing through these even in games that I didn't particularly like (low brow stuff like BloodRayne 2 comes to mind) simply because it was cool to get a glimpse of what was going behind the curtain during development. Seeing these in Quake 2 Enhanced was such a huge joy. Especially all the 3D models.
Started playing this game at 4 years old, gonna be 30 in a few months and still playing. I love Q2, it’s always going to have a special place in my heart next to the original RE 1&2. I had my friend play Q2 for the first time with me a week ago and he had a ball. Every time I brought him to secret areas to get some guns early, I’d hear him yell “ooooooohhhhh hell yeah! Get out of my way, I have to try this!” He loved the soundtrack.
This is a beautiful video. As someone who has only recently discovered your channel, I may have to go through your library as I'm sure there are more similar fare. 🥰
I do have to say, though, the beginning resonated with me most when pondering why games (if they're considered "art") don't have a museum. I turn 43 next month, and I constantly lament the death of "arcades," and how most "arcades" you run into now are just a jumble of fairgounds and boardwalk games (like Skeeball and Stacker) that award tickets for plushie and candy prizes. When I lament the death of "arcades," I think like you are, which is about a beautiful room full of plinky plunky noises and a cadre of flashy screens full of little mini-fantasies all costing a quarter each.
My first thought was, as impossible as it would be...why can't we have a place to go for the most random assortment of old games. We go to museums to LOOK at art, because art is mostly there to LOOK at and observe. GAMES are meant to be played and experienced. The answer, unfortunately, is obvious, as there would be problems with licensing, profit cuts, marketing, blah blah blah.
Maybe the solution is for the publishers and/or owners of the IPs to make their own slivers of gaming history. Like, imagine a brick and mortar "Bethesda History Arcade" where you could put a quarter (or $1, inflation, et al) into a machine and play Elder Scrolls: Arena or Fallout 2 for 30 minutes. A "BioWare History Arcade" where you could play KOTOR for 30 minutes. A "Valve History Arcade" where you could play Half-Life for 30 minutes.
Just spitballing. I love that the devs made a beautiful love letter to Quake 2 here. I wonder what the next step in that type of endeavor would be, if not every remake comes out as passionately as this one.
great video! I learned some gaming history and I was asked a great question. why aren't there any gaming museums? there's some old dnd stuff, but those are mostly held by private collectors. I'd say Gary con is sort of a gaming museum with many old-school and niche ttrpg systems as well as basic and advanced dnd. even some 4th.
this channel has a lot of potential for growth. the writing skills, production quality, and relevance are all here. all that's left is for youtube to bring new viewers. I look forward to seeing how this channel grows in the future
Thank you! I hope you stick around to see what I’ve got planned next!
The answer to the whole museum question is quite simple. Modern copyright. It is basically in the way for anything such as that to become a reality with how it is draconianly reinforced with pretty much all attempts at any new strides being shot down by obsessive copyright ghouls.
It is also why your book analogue goes aground as there is a lot of books and literature that is locked away or even lost thanks to copyright. Things that are never reprinted or otherwise made available.
As a 45 year old who still loves gaming, Quake 2 remaster is an absolute thing of beauty! It's really brought back to me how fantastic games of yesteryear really were in many cases far more fun! I would love to see a totally new quake made with the technology available to developers today....much like the newer doom releases.
I have no proof but it would just make sense for id softwares next game to be a quake reboot
I never thought if it that way but I agree. As an art form we owe it to ourselves and future generations to preserve games and ensure they’re accessible to people. It’s art we really never have to lose as it’s digital. We only lose it if we don’t care to preserve it
Thank you for watching and sharing. I appreciate it. 💕
God this is a fantastic video. Empathic, looking at what's beautiful from artists in the industry. Thank you for making this
Thank you for watching! Glad you enjoyed it!
just finished quake 2 for the first time after falling in love with Quake 1 and replaying it 4 times the past couple of months and GODDAMN this series is amazing!
wish I was alive then just to experience its release and the hype with it
Seeing this video appear was like some divine intersection between my current obsessions.
I was watching a 2003 e3 demo of half life 2 and thinking about the guy presenting it, and all that work that was shortly leaked after. Then I was playing Quake 2 earlier really admiring the focused vision of it all, imagining the developers really sweating over the details in A.I. and the enemy models.
It's an industry that has grown at an unbelievable pace when you stop to think about it, but it's one that forgets and moves on way too quickly. Blah blah, rant over you've more than earned a new sub!😊
Thank you so much! If you enjoyed this look at appreciation, check out the documentaries I’ve made with developers!
ruclips.net/video/Iep-IjCM8ak/видео.html
Similarly, there is a lovely feature in most of the Ratchet and Clank games called the Insomniac Museum. It is a playable level that lets you tinker with things that fell to the cutting room floor. There is art on display in frames. It is a loving feature that you have to collect all of the game's collectables in most cases to even access. I always found the reward worth it.
Sadly, I think they did this for only the PS2 titles excluding Gladiator (Deadlocked) and the first game. I hate to say it, but sadly RaC lost the charm it once had.
@@Q.A.D.D. I know for certain that the Future run had it.
Gotta get my Quake 2 tattoo retouched in honor of the update. Loving all of your content, gorgeous!
Firstly, awesome video! I love these games so much and love hearing takes like this. I grew up playing id games, I vividly remember mom + dad taking turns playing through DOOM when I was a very young boy, and somehow convincing them to let me play as well. I've also been so impressed by the treatment the classic id games have been getting. So much new content, countless hours of works doing remasters and adding new content just to give it all away for free to the people that already owned the game. It really makes it feel like they're doing it for the right reason, for the love of these games, which adds a lot to your art argument as well.
Secondly, I keep thinking about your mention of video game museums, and what was mentioned near the end of the video. The reasons you mention really reflect why I've always been obsessed with, and supportive of modding retro consoles. There are so many semi-forgotten classics and oddball obscure games that never got any traction. Getting some of these games can be either unfairly costly, with no money making it's way to the developers, or impossible, to track down physically. I've spent a lot of time modding (and acquiring flashcarts for when needed) every mainstream console from the NES -> Xbox360 so my friends and I can experience so many lost games we would never have seen otherwise. That scene has done a fantastic job of trying to archive every single release for many of these consoles, in a way that is incredible, but also sad. While I don't condone obtaining illegitimate copies of modern games that developers are still profiting from, there is also so much history that has been preserved by a bunch of "pirates", and if they didn't do it, I don't think anyone else would.
Quake II presents itself as a fast paced game designed to make you feel like a bad ass. I find it interesting how the art design could be so straight forward and practical in its inception, but 25 years later audiences reinterpret those same designs in a whole new context, as you mention. I love looking at the pixel-y textures, which in 1997 was just adhering to the constraints of the hardware, and how designers found creative ways to convey, for example, a flying cyborg head. Perhaps modern audiences retrospectively give extra value to these artistic choices, but that is a completely valid way to appreciate artforms in my opinion. Thank you for this video, Quake II really is a gift to all of us
Great video! My ears perked up when you mentioned Condemned 2! That’s still one of my favorite games and that video was my introduction to your channel!
Awh nice! Thank you for sticking around! 😌
Something I used to do as a kid, when I didn't have access to all the games I ever wanted, I would slow down and just... look.
This grass texture, not sure if it's made by the dev team or not, but it looks nice. These walls are also nice. My favourite appreciation however are animations. Just seeing the characters move while doing anything is endlessly entertaining.
Recently, Bomb Rush Cyberfunk has released, and it surprised me how much it feels like a triple A game from earlier times.
Sometimes, it is nice to just walk slowly in a videogame, to really try and process everything surrounding it.
I always understood Q2 being in the future rather than the medieval settings was because the Quake is some cosmic event that repeats itself the Stroggs as opposed to the baddies in Q2 are created and controlled by some Lovecraftian cosmic power. So i always liked that contrast.
Launchbox is a great way to have that personal museum
This was amazing. I still have almost 2 gigs of Q2 files. Mods, maps, player models, from Death Matches and clan play. Playing on dial up back in the day until the early AM hours only getting a few hours of sleep before work. As online gaming was just starting to walk right.
Oh! We have the National Videogame Museum in my city! Well worth a visit if you end up in England at any point 😁
Beautifully written as always, you're such an eloquent speaker and your passion shines!! Keep doing what you're doing
As much as it's a legal grey area, emulation has allowed so much of older games that have been passed over to actually gain followings they would have never had, as well as gain appreciation where they were originally passed over.
I grew up on OG DooM, Quake and Quake 2, Heretic, Duke Nukem sidescrollers and 3D, BLOOD, Rise of the Triad, Terminal Velocity, and many more......and I have NEVER forgotten them over my life! I still have some of the sharewares on disc or CD, as well as the full games! Growing up on these games, started my love for lesser realistic looking games that were fast paced shooters, and of course the resurgence of all the newer retro inspired ones these days! Triple a games these days have nothing on the simple retro FPS games and classic fps games from the past! I still find more enjoyment in older games than any newer ones, at 35 years old, it makes me happy that I still play the games I did as a kid that introduced me to the fps genre!
While I’ve always considered video games an art form I hadn’t really given much thought to preservation beyond the games themselves. I’ve always loved it when games included concept art and ways to get a better look at character models. Even with a game like Quake II where most of what I know of this game is from this video it was so fun seeing the drawings of guns and environments. This video has me thinking back to all the different games I’ve played and wondering how much information about the game’s development is actually available. It has me thinking about a lot of things differently, which i consider a mark of a good video, well done! 💜
Very interesting and informative video Dead Domain! I too enjoyed the Quake vault and wish there was a Video Game Museum” of sorts. This is an art form that I love along with Music and I think the two of them together make wonderful combos at times.
This takes me back. Not because I have any connection to Quake II (Never played it. Not my kind of game back then. Not enough Japanese teenagers killing God with the power of friendship.)
No, this takes me back because I used to work in game development as well. I spent 5-6 years in the late 2000's making a dozen or so licensed titles few have ever heard of, during the golden age of shovelware. But each and every one of those games had stories behind them. Stories of designers, artists and programmers working insane hours to meet unreasonable deadline, killing ourselves to duct tape together something halfway presentable. We weren't being paid to make great art; we were barely paid at all. Companies exploiting young developers, often straight out of college, underpaying us in exchange for "industry experience". But we weren't killing ourselves for a bullet point on our resume, we were doing it for each other. We didn't want to let our teammates down and together we hoped we could maybe make something worth taking a little bit pride in.
We knew exactly what we were doing. Hell, we made Ubisoft "Imagine" titles and games based on Disney Channel sitcoms. The publisher's business plan was ripping off helpless kids and their clueless parents. And yet, even projects as disposable as those still took real sweat to make. Still had real people behind them. Still had real stories that will probably never be told, much less heard.
So, thank you. For telling the stories you are able to. It is definitely appreciated.
Thank you for commenting. I love trying to tell the stories behind games like those, so if you’d ever love to tell me some of them, feel free to shoot me an email.
this video made me shed a tear. thank u for making this i will start to appreciate quake 2 even more now
Thank you for watching ❤️
id software games in general are works of art, from a tech stand point to visuals and sound design, the current team over at id (imo at least) still maintains this tradition.
I wonder if anybody could scrape off some of the coffee from those coffee stains, and accurately surmise what kind of coffee they were drinking
Coffee dna traces
There are actually a number of game museums! But nowhere near enough and the lack of preservation of games in general is depressing, Nightdive tries to do what they can with certain projects, and obviously there are many emulator teams doing what they can, but its a tough fight and a lot of corporations actively oppose teams doing that.
gotta enjoy them while we can because the companies are going out of their way to make games completely incompatible with the concept of a museum. we're about to be even more reliant on piracy for preservation than we already are and companies are never going to change this because the largest player that could make a difference, Nintendo, would love to also make used games illegal if they had to power and has been THE driving force against video game rentals since their inception. companies want total and complete control over their IPs and their own personal Disney Vault that they can occasionally pick out of to remind you tee hee we own this and dont do anything with it. the ultimate irony is that these remasters are only successful due to the nostalgia that is driven from the fact theyve been quietly available due to piracy and emulation in the first place
Came for the nazi church, stayed for the unique way of looking at games.
Thank you 🥹🥹🥹
The gaming industry's continued disinterest in preserving its own history is simply bewildering. It's a shame we have to rely on the dedication and resourcefulness of fans to keep old games from being lost entirely. I love videos games and I hope one day this will change when we see greater efforts being made with Nightdive leading the way and showing how it should be done.
I loved playing quake 2 as a child in the late 90s and this last most since i stumbled upon this remake i have been having a real blast playing coop with my friends. Playing the campaign again made me realise i still somehow know everything about it by heart
I know exactly what you mean. I’ll still stumble across games from my childhood and be shocked how much I remember everything.
Brilliant! Can’t agree more! This idea is the future
Quake 2 introduced me to PC gaming back in the day. I was lucky to experience this game in its prime. I would live and breathe Quake 2 Multiplayer for many many many years. It was some of the best times of my life. I have a very deep love and connection with this game. Very nostalgic for me. I'm so happy to see this game getting a fresh and respectful release in 2023.
I never considered that games could become their own museums! I never did play the Quake games, but I remember being artistically inspired by the Doom level editor that we got. I created fantastical playgrounds that no one would ever use, and these old-school shooters evoke now a sense of such nostalgia for those open possibilities! I'm very pleased to say that I know a number of people involved in ludoarchaeology, the preservation and restoration of gaming history. Some day, there will be museums where you can experience some amount of these otherwise lost-to-time artifacts.
I've loved Quake 2 since I first played it as a kid in 98/99 (been so long idk how old I was exactly).
And as an adult, my favorite parts of the Quake II Remaster, as much as I love all of it, is definitely the incorporation of Quake II 64 and the id Vault. I'm vocally hoping around devs that the PSX version of Quake II (which a dev is working on atm) will be added in an official patch, and for Quake 1 Remaster to get an id Vault as well. I doubt the latter will ever happen but damn do I hope for it.
quake 2 is probably more comparable to the creation of a heavy metal album opposed to an art canvas imo.
if you look at how development was back then, it was more about what worked at the immediate moment and moving onto the next project as soon as possible, the graphics advancement alone back in the 90s was staggeringly fast. In 11 years, you went from Doom to Doom 3, that's insane progress.
the companies that couldn't keep up with that are not around today, there was no indie scene, free 2 play or aaa scene, it was all just one big one so competition was fierce.
games like Quake 2 were on the throne of FPS gaming, but then a year later Valve was with Half Life, it wasn't like a game could stay in the limelight and popular for years like they can now.
with that mindset, who cares about cataloguing history. It was a time when game studios operated like a battle of the bands free-for-all. and before we knew it, the industry had turned into a million dollar media business overnight and we wondered what we did with those old demo tapes and concert flyers
Thanks for this video! I dont ihink I would have ever tried Quake II without it. Loving it so far and concept art that is there is incredible to see. Keep up the great work!
Thank you so much! I’m glad you’re having a good time with it!
The Quake 2 Defenders have LOGGED the fuck on. Quake 2 N64 is one of my favorite games from when I was a kid so this re-release was my GOTY before i knew anything else about it.
My favourite part of Sonic Mega Collection (I’m guessing it had a name incorporating the Genesis over there) was all the concept and promotional art. I probably spent more time on all that than on the games themselves.
One wee constructive criticism, I noticed a couple moments of somewhat awkward tense. For instance I think “looks at” (in the line about most games not getting these kind of deep look) could be “insights into” and flow a little more naturally.
This point is more of a stylistic thing than a simple rewrite but I’d be inclined to say the extra info about the films adds extra layers of interpretation as opposed to interrupting the flow with the rhetorical question. But honestly if I weren’t having writing brain going all the time that could totally be a very effective presentation technique so even though I found it a little jarring, maybe that was the intent and you completely succeeded!
Anyway, back on the substance of this essay rather than the delivery, my heart goes out for so many kinds of lost media. Indeed film threw away so much of its history in the 1910s and 20s, and TV did the same in the 50s and 60s. It’s quite eerie living through video gaming having its equivalent moments, where archivists wish more were preserved and it changes the way we handle material going forward. Hopefully it goes well though!
I never personally had much love for Q2 partly because of how it diverged from Q1 and Q3 had what I felt was the superior multiplayer. I often felt 2 would’ve been better as a new setting, so the “forced” Quake branding is often what I focus on. So this has definitely given me new appreciation for the second instalment!
Thank you very much :)
I love it when the team responsible for a re-release of a game share what went into the development of the original release.
Heck, as bad as 343 has been with the The Halo series, The fact that the MCC team dug through as much old unfinished and cut content for the halo games that they could find, and work with modders to make them public for people to put back in the Master Chief collection is insane.
I’ve got an Xbox and what makes me so happy is I’m seeing re-releases of games I played when I was young. Games that absolutely count as art…Myst (sigh)…I also used to pirate copies of SNES games and play classics like Earthbound on my computer. Nintendo killed that, unfortunately. There should absolutely be a market for remasters of classic video games from history. A good game is a good game no matter how old it is.
Wrote my comment at the beginning of the video but I love that so much time was spent on the artists that make these games. When I play games, I do it the same way I read books. Which is to say I do it critically. Video games are absolutely an artistic medium and it has it’s own unique conventions and tropes. There were people working on these games that had specific visions and they used the medium to communicate those visions. Not only that, there were whole groups of people some with maybe competing visions and it all blends together to make an experience.
There actually is a physical game museum in Oakland, I've been there! Although it's not nearly as ambitious as what you described. It's like this rented-out storefront that I would describe as an "Archival Arcade". Like they have a bunch of consoles from the Atari 2600 all the way to modern consoles, and you can choose a game from the neighboring shelves to try out for a little while. Or you can ask the guy on the counter if they have a certain game in the back. Sadly, I don't remember it having any information on the development of these games, although I don't even know where they'd put it to be honest. If nothing else, I can say it's a great way to get kids interested in old games they otherwise might not have heard of.
Anyway then we got stuck in San Francisco traffic for like 3 hour lmao.
Quake 2 is exactly the kind of release I hope Goldeneye eventually receives. Not holding my breath, but…
luckily for me there's a National Video Game Museum nearby
stroggo looks a nice place to vacation
I really havent heard many people say this but with the new remaster and the call of the machine campaign quake 2 connected with me on an aesthetic and gameplay more than maybe any other old school shooter
I still play Quake 1 at least once per month after all these years, all thanks to modders and people adding excellent content. I don't see this happening to Quake 2 yet, without a healthy modding scene it will be forgotten again.
Quake II was helping to guide where the video game industry would go. It's remaster is helping to guide the video game industry in how to remaster as a shrine to what has already been accomplished.
I hope so 🙏
For real I would love to work at a games museum and preserve gaming history. Right now I work at a brick and mortar games store which means I do get to get my mitts on old games and consoles and photograph them and catalogue them but I also see a lot of games go in the bin because they're for the wrong region and there's no buyers and be poorly looked after cause we don't have the space or the time and it's really sad :( I want to spread the love of games and gaming history. Badly.
Same here! There are some groups doing amazing work out there like Frank Cifaldis Game History Org, but there’s so much to be done.
Ohhh.. thats where I know the background. I loved paradise killer
Video made me cry. 10/10, thank you
Thank you for watching. ❤️
Anyone remember the days of playing Jailbreak, Catch the chicken, Rocket arena, or Team fortress mods? I think there was like 100 different mods in Q2's during its prime. Then also city1 and tower were the best deathmatch maps before they ever came out with the version 2.10 and a map pack with the 8 deathmatch maps. Otherwise its weird how no one knows about this game anymore because they weren't born yet
What i really need is a new Quake in the Lovecraftian twisted style of Quake 1.
ABSOLUTELY YES
I wonder what the nostalgia for games of today is gonna be like in 20 or 30 years. What's going to survive or be rediscovered as classics, and what's the discovery process going to be like for people that want to find out more about the development of their favorites. Like, now most stuff is purely digital, storage is incredibly cheap, AND we have comprehensive source control, we can go through every single step of a games development, and see it every step of the way. Like, I'm making a game at the moment, and is anyone other than me ever going to care about the fact that I can see a version of the game for every single fix and addition that I've made over the past 8 years? If so, the repository will be sitting there, waiting.
I never thought about how long it takes to make a video game from concept to playable game.
Great video, love when YT recommendations actually show me good stuff for once.
In the same month Rockstar and TakeTwo sold a port of RedDead for $50, a ton of people got such wonderful remaster work for free if they already owned it on Steam or already have game pass. And even if you have neither, it's really cheap for how much love and care has went into it. My only nitpick is that there's not enough options for someone to have a completely 'purist experience', It's a nitpick as almost all the changes Nightdive made where for the better and arguably restored how ID software wanted the AI to work, and you can still play the original on PC via other launch option or source ports.
Really wish there where more studios could do the stuff Nightdive does, like they really are the video game equivalent of the 'boutique' film labels restoring obscure and forgotten films.
I already own the original Quake 2 and Quake 2 64 and now you got me convinced to pick this one up!
It’s a great release! Hope you enjoy it:)
@2:12 'why don't we have a better way to appreciate the games that get left behind?'
We do, emulation.
For an industry that does not care about it's own past, this is the best way.
Also, whomst.
Fantastic video, and a great perspective. Thanks for making it and filling my morning with joy & gibs.
Thank you for watching 🙏❤️
A minor detail I like about this remaster is the gibs. Iirc the gibs in the original were just generic blood stained chunks (I recall only recently being able to make out a head of one of those chunks lol) whereas the remaster has actual parts of whatever character you have gibbed all over the place
I always loved the art style of Quake2 -even more than Quake1
Really cool to see this release!
1) You seem to have described everything my brain felt while I was playing this remaster. I feel like I've played the game as it was meant to be when it was released, with small improvements that make a huge difference.
2) I was a bit sad when I saw that there was the idea of having a face in the hub, like in previous games. This was a big frustration of mine when I played Quake II as a kid, as if they had taken away an essential aesthetic piece from a franchise. I hope modders make good use of these images… hehe
3) I believe that there are video game museums around the world. I know there are in Japan. Here in Brazil I've even come across Revell modeling museums! Anyway, I'm sure that games are art, yes, and I'm annoyed at how this discussion is still seen by many as something controversial.
Amazing video I really enjoyed watching thank you for sharing this !!
This reminds me of the game crimes podcast and streaming show! Love it.
Who here remembers the CrackWhore? If you know, you know...and if you know, then you're a true Q2 OG.
P.S. I wish NightDive and Bethesda would go back and remaster the models of the new weapons in Scourge of Armagon and Dissolution of Eternity...and you know...finish the job.
Quake 2 remastered was my GOTY 2023. Seriously underpriced for what it offers.
This game was my childhood, and my first thought was that title was a bit click baity and exaggerated, but you've convinced me :) the remaster of the game is impressive enough, but the level of archivel in this release is absolutely incredible.
Thank you for watching. I’m glad I could win you over ☺️
Books definitely go out of print, and digitally de-listed. Many books become hard to find and expensive to get physically.
All of the other Crow comic books besides the original were just de-listed from Google play books, and I can't find them anywhere else now.
Besides that, you are very right about the video games as art and being one of the most inaccessible forms of art for many of the older titles.
I should have clarified that’s the case for most books. The idea, or hope, is that you could still find them on internet archive or a library, even if that’s not always the case
It always pains me how badly a lot of developers have had to break themselves to make the games I've enjoyed. Even worse when those efforts result in a game nobody can play anymore without praying for some sort of fix, source port or fan project. It's worth paying good teams to conserve games.
This video and videos that bring up the same points always hit me very deeply, as like you said books and movies no matter how old are by comparison to video games relatively easy to acess and preserve. Remembrenace is a big topic for me and the ammount of games (especially as a RTS fan) that ive seen and went '' THATS A fantastic idea, the game probably isnt up to par but it would still be nice if it was easy to acess and play'' is a bit on the 1 sided side of thing.
Especially games that never got as popular on the same level of C&C or DOOM etc. Denoting how the development went for games like War Inc (strategy game, since theres apperantly a FPS thats unrelated ) the Earth (insert year here ) series and even the likes of Evil Genius one which holds a uniqe position in my game library as ''Game ive played more then twice '' Can be a difficult task sometimes as most people dont bother with posting stuff that happend throughout development in their games, aside from concept art.
And even talking outside of games that arent in my top favorite genres, i can get very curious as to what sparked some of these ideas, too bad its never going to be made visible unless the game was a big enough success that it gets mentioned in a interview.
That said however i am always amazed at how many games you can find that STILL to this day have active communities albeit small modding the games and making them playable, like Paraworld or Machines Wired for War and it always makes my heart sputter whenever i see this and makes it feel like it might be possible for us to hold off the rot of decay into history long enough for us to MAKE this video game museum to expirience these games of yesteryear that never quite managed to garner the attention that they could have had and the opportunity to become someones favorite game.
Anyways i think what im trying to say here is, another wonderfull video and i do appreciate creators that make videos about their favorite games whilist trying to look at the development and human side of making these collaborative projects.
If you enjoyed this, I recommend my documentaries on cult classic and forgotten games where I interview the developers 10+ years later. They’re definitely some of my favorites and cover games from X-Men to Silent Hill. Also thank you for commenting 💕
ruclips.net/video/xiHOt3nD3xQ/видео.htmlsi=0jtsNpQjHDgq63j6
Great video! Watching it I couldn’t help but think two things, and these are neither criticisms or counterpoints, just thoughts:
- would any game ever make it to release if devs actually thought about its life 10, 20, 50 years from now? Is it even possible to treat the development itself and its detritus like a conservator would? Or would the years of artifacts produced just dwarf the actual thing and grow in on itself, like a sort of “Synecdoche, New York” situation?
- for every Quake, I can’t help but wonder how many mediocre or just bad pieces of art might have been at E3 1997. And if those were all preserved - or dug back up - to the same extent as this, would they be appreciated? Not saying nothing else had merit, or that hours or labor didn’t go into them - but one can spend a lot of time, blood, sweat and tears without it actually being worthwhile (sadly). Does the scarcity of information elevate what little we do know in somewhat “unfair” ways?
Also, couldn’t help but think of Campster’s videos on DOOM where he romanticizes and almost waxes poetic about the time, place and team that was id in the 90s only to have The Beginner’s Guide call him out on that sort of behavior in a later video🙂
Yippee, a new dead domain video!
Yippee! I'm glad someone is excited for these things!
I finally got around to watching this and I really love everythibg you say. Also reminds me I should really look into this remake/restoration, it sounds truly groundbreaking!
Will have to watch a few more times to really fully absorb and process everything, but absolutely stellar work!
Great video. I found it especially interesting in light of the fact that you're bringing a set of fresh eyes to this game, having never played it before. All of the other videos I've seen raving about this game include a hefty dose of nostalgia, so it's refreshing to hear the perspective of someone who is playing this game for the first time now, in 2023, and still finding things to appreciate and love about it.
Fwiw, I am also playing the game for the first time, as the initial release occurred while I was still a teen brainwashed by religion into thinking of games like this as "evil." A few years ago I picked up the remaster of Quake on Switch, and found myself with an odd feeling of "missed nostalgia," as if this were something I should have experienced but didn't. I loved gaming as a kid, but games like these just weren't available to me. Now I love them. I am incredibly grateful for the teams that put so much effort into preserving, remastering, and re-releasing these titles, giving me a second chance to enjoy these treasures now. It's like they gave me back a little piece of what I missed growing up - a piece I'm thoroughly enjoying.
If a game like Quake (and now, Quake 2) can bring about that type of reflection and those types of emotions in people like me, why wouldn't we call it art? All games tell a story. Multiple stories, really. Preserving those stories is a worthy effort. I'd love to see more of these stories told.
Side note: I actually live in a small, run down town in Iowa that some say is the official "video game capital of the world," mostly because of the role it played in competitive arcade gaming and the birth of competitive esports. There used to be an arcade called "Twin Galaxies" here, which I believe is where the record tracking website gets its name. For all the video game history that took place here, there's almost zero mention of it anywhere in the entire town. Most residents don't even know about it. The arcade with all that history is gone. So much has been lost. It's an odd feeling, as someone who has loved video games since the time when this town was part of video game history, to live here and see so much forgotten. We really need to remember this stuff.
I am so glad you made this video! I honestly have no history with Quake II-- most of my exp. comes from playing Quake 3 on a LAN at school, lol-- but I'm glad to have this game updated and released for modern players. More importantly, I'm glad there are video essayists like you giving much needed attention to these kinds of games. Long forgotten or poorly remembered games are such an important part of gaming history. For every huge and influential title released by big devs, there are countless more released by smaller teams, ones that didn't get the spotlight they deserved. Thank you for your work here. It is greatly appreciated, and I'm glad I subscribed.
--Mae
This video made me realize how badly I treated Quake 2 up until the remaster. I tried playing the version straight off Steam years ago, and it ran terribly on modern systems. At the time, I didn't know I needed to download a source port to make the game playable, so I thought everyone claiming it was so great either saw something different or was lying out of their ass. Now that I'm playing it, however, it's one of the best games I've played this year, right next to Yakuza Kiwami and Xenoblade Chronicles 3. I still need to finish the main campaign, but Quake 2 officially has its hooks in me, and I'm gonna play it until there's nothing left for me to see, which makes the idea that I couldn't stand the game just a week ago feel so bizarre and almost cruel.
I love a good story of revisiting a game and connecting with it. Same thing happened with me and Dishonored, now it’s an all-time favorite of mine.
Looking forward to watching this video!
I would also go so far as to say that the System Shock remake (also by NightDive) is a work of preservation, especially in how faithful it is to the original. It never set out to rewrite the record or drastically change how the game was presented, aside from meaningful aesthetic changes. It's such to the point that walkthroughs written for the *original game* are still usable in the remake, and I really commend that, especially when most modern remakes aren't so.
Also, I appreciate your comments about unplayable games. I felt that way for a long time about Raven Software's Wolfenstein (2009). It was delisted when id was acquired by Bethesda, and the only way to play it now is on a 7th gen console or through "less legal" means. Still, when I was hunting through Raven's back catalog after news of their unionization, it was the one game that consistently eluded me, and even for how mediocre it was, it felt like a missing piece, since it gets referenced in Wolfenstein: The New Order. I finally buckled down and got it from an abandonware website, but I feel like I shouldn't have had to, and I can only hope that Microsoft acquiring Activision-Blizzard will put it back up on digital marketplaces for more people to play and enjoy.
Wolfenstein is a great example. I can only hope Bethesda or Microsoft gets the chance to give it the remaster or re-release that series deserves. I’d also love to see similar treatment for Return to Castle Wolfenstein