A new “revitalized edition” of Quake seems to be on the cards, as mention of this was found on the QuakeCon 2021 schedule. While it has now been amended by Bethesda, the ‘Let’s talk Quake’ panel’s original description is still visible on the Internet Archive.
The Let’s talk Quake panel takes place on Friday 20th August, the first day of QuakeCon, running from 3:30PM to 4:30PM UK time. The original description read:
“Quake is back, in this special stream John Linneman from Digital Foundry talks to Jerk Gustafsson of Machine Games about the title’s iconic legacy and what it meant to both of them. The pair will also discuss the additional content MachineGames have contributed to this revitalized edition.”
The final line has now been pulled from the live site.
Originally spotted by XboxEra, the website’s Nick Baker previously claimed that a new entry in the series was in development in a collaboration between id Software and MachineGames. The “additional content” alluded to in the stream’s description could then refer to single player and multiplayer modes, as well as a new female protagonist, per Baker’s claims.
This would not be the first time that a Quake game has been revived in recent years, as Quake 2 became a poster child for ray tracing in the early days of Nvidia’s RTX GPU line. While Quake 2 RTX uses all of the original assets from the 1997 first person shooter – the free version is downloaded with the first three levels, but can use the original game files for the full game – it completely ripped out the legacy lighting model, and replaced it with fully ray traced lighting, reflections and more.
Since Microsoft’s acquisition of Bethesda was announced, there’s been some speculation that an equivalent Quake II RTX could make its way to Xbox Series X|S as a bit of a showcase for what the console can do. However, with the original Quake celebrating its 25th anniversary, it seems that this classic game from id Software’s catalogue has been given priority.
We’ll have to wait and see just how heavily MachineGames have chosen to update and amend id Software’s first fully 3D first person shooter.
Source: Internet Archive, XboxEra
