Quake was a title that entered my life through the back door. In my youth, I was a big fan of Duke Nukem 3D and Hexen, having both of them ‘magically’ pre-installed on my PC, preferring them to many other FPS games, until I managed to get my hands on Quake 2. From then on, that second chapter of the series was a point of no return in my gaming career.
And, although having the chance to try such a gem at launch can be considered a blessing from a gaming perspective, it was because of this that my interest in giving the previous chapter, not yet played and apparently inferior in every aspect (graphics, level design…), a chance remained compromised for a long time, until I decided to revisit the entire series, including expansions. I was aware of the lack of connections between the two chapters, but I was quite surprised to catch some strange references that somehow linked the two iterations, including the symbols on the crates. And so I began to fantasize about a possible narrative line that, even in light of the revelations from the most recent expansions of Quake 2 by Nightdive Studios and MachineGames, could connect everything up to the conception of a hypothetical sixth chapter, the protagonist of the wettest dreams of fans after the showcase of the next Indiana Jones video game.
So here is what I consider my very personal headcanon of the chapters released so far and a possible narrative direction for what could be a new chapter in the saga.
QUAKE Before 1997
Dr. Gilman works for the secret base that hosts the Slipgate prototypes, a technology that would allow teleportation. In the same base, there are also military personnel such as Flores, Rice, and an unnamed Vietnam veteran.
The continuous experiments conducted on the Slipgate for some undefined reason cause a strange mental conditioning of the military personnel, who begin to dream of particular worlds and monstrosities.
Gilman continues his dark experiments, coming into contact with entities on the other side of the teleportation, until his disappearance is reported in some logs. The involved military personnel speak of an ascension ritual of Gilman himself, now becoming a sort of deity, and a human sacrifice necessary for the completion of the ritual. This human sacrifice will later be discovered to be the unnamed veteran, who will be called to rescue the base, unaware of the plan hatched behind his back.
QUAKE After 1997
Ranger is a Vietnam veteran, married with a wife and two children, now employed in special operations who receives a night call about an emergency from the secret base. The Slipgate has indeed allowed an unknown alien entity, codenamed Quake, to subjugate the minds of other soldiers and scientists present at the base as the first act of a total invasion using a real army of creatures.
Ranger goes to the base and realizes that all the scientists and soldiers present have already fallen into Quake’s mental trap. So, after fighting his way through the threats of those present, now reduced to zombies, Ranger manages to reach the portal, finding himself in a strange world made of death knights, gothic castles, and strange and hostile creatures.
Although full of obstacles and oddities of all kinds, that world seemed so familiar to Ranger. Armed to the teeth, the protagonist manages to collect four devices, the runes, which finally allow him to reach Quake, the Shub Niggurath, the entity that was generating those monsters. Ranger inexplicably manages to activate a power within himself that allows him to teleport inside the creature, to destroy the monster generator from within and thus conquer the world of Quake, at least apparently. Ranger will not return home and will remain trapped in a loop where space and time have no meaning, fighting or dreaming of fighting the same forces of evil repeatedly.
On Earth, the invasion seems to have been stopped and the Slipgate base is sealed and forgotten over time.
QUAKE II Year 2065
An unexpected attack by a kind of sentient alien race, whose bodies are mostly covered with biomechanical implants, shocks the planet Earth. The hostiles reach Earth through a particular wormhole that they would have managed to open through mysterious technology. Humans manage to resist and immediately plan to cross the wormhole themselves and counterattack directly on enemy soil.
Bitterman, a marine of the forces employed in the operation, manages to penetrate beyond enemy lines and deactivate the defenses that, until then, had been thwarting every kind of attack by the Earth fleet.
During the entire operation conducted on the hostile planet, Bitterman notices two quite shocking factors: the alien race, known as Strogg, has reused the bodies of prisoners and fallen humans to replenish their army through mental conditioning and the replacement of limbs and organs with biomechanical implants. In addition to this, it seems that the Strogg bases are full of symbols and references that had been lost for a long time: these symbols indeed resembled the logo of the Slipgate base that had been closed in the 90s following the interdimensional incident.
The war continues and many are the fallen. However, many will also be the objectives achieved by the human forces, up to the discovery of a spacecraft orbiting the Strogg planet that humans call “The Machine”. The Earth forces discover that to activate the Machine, particular data disks in the hands of the Strogg are needed. Several marines manage in parallel to recover these access keys. One in particular was located inside an archaeological excavation on the same Strogg planet, thanks to which the remains of a complex alien architecture with mysterious depictions of entities similar to those that had plagued the Slipgate military base almost seventy years earlier were found. In particular, it seemed that Shub Niggurath was a sort of deity for the Strogg.
Collected all the access keys, the Machine is activated and a teleport is activated inside the spaceship. The passage leads to an ancient temple where monstrosities loyal to Shub Niggurath try to stop the marine who had just crossed that threshold. These entities served as a link between the Strogg and Shub Niggurath and everything suggested that it was the same deity who had created the Strogg. Destroyed the monstrosities, the Strogg are apparently disconnected from their god, the result would have been a further step towards the total defeat of the Strogg.
QUAKE IV Year 2066
The war on the planet Stroggos is about to end, a new decisive attack by the Earth forces brings the Strogg to their knees. However, something unexpected happens: a member of the Rhino Squad is captured and made Strogg only halfway. It seems indeed that the mental conditioning was not completed, effectively leaving the marine Kane disfigured and enhanced but not hostile to humans. Kane continues to collaborate with humans and play a fundamental role in the final defeat of the Strogg. However, no one knows that strange voices and visions begin to emerge in Kane’s head, a mystery that will remain such for a long time.
QUAKE III Arena + Quake Champions
The Dreamers are those who come into contact with powerful multidimensional beings known as Ancient Gods, or Vadrigar. When this happens, two things can occur: they can be consumed by madness and remain subjugated by visions and dreams of worlds (the so-called Dreamlands) and distant creatures, or they can ascend themselves to the rank of Vadrigar, on par with the other Ancient Gods.
It seems that this mode of ascension is the same adopted by the dark Dr. Gilman back in 1996, who has not been heard from since.
The Vadrigar ultimately govern the Dreamlands, which are sometimes the scene of clashes organized by these superior beings, where death is annulled and the contenders, teleported from every dimension and time into these arenas, continue to kill and resurrect for an unspecified purpose.
It seems that the contenders reach the Dreamlands while in a coma, or dream for prolonged periods, and come from distant dimensions and worlds, unaware of what has really happened to them.
Among these, Ranger, Bitterman, and other key characters of the saga have participated in these divine tournaments, and the ways in which their presence in the Arenas has manifested is still unexplained.
The Vadrigar’s protégé, Xaero, has been fighting in these Arenas for an immemorial time, waiting to be defeated. When this happens, it seems that Xaero also finally manages to ascend. It remains unexplained what this ascension entails and whether it was a pact made with the Vadrigar.
QUAKE VI
Here begins what is my very personal speculation on how the narrative structure of a new iteration of the saga could be conceived.
Year 2085. Ninety years have passed since the Slipgate incident and twenty years since the end of the war on Stroggos.
Humans, having ended the war against the alien race, have begun to raid the resources of the hostile planet and install Earth bases on Stroggos.
One of the alien bases, now disused for decades, emits a powerful impulse captured by the radars in the hands of human scientists, and it is decided to send a team of marines to investigate.
The alien base is completely dark and apparently lifeless. However, the unthinkable happens: the marine team is suddenly attacked by inexplicably still-living Strogg, and the only survivor among the humans is an unnamed member of the team.
The marine remains trapped in the enormous alien base and fights his way through the remaining hostile Strogg forces, finally encountering a boss fight against none other than marine Kane. Kane, the protagonist of Quake 4, had been the Strogg’s backup plan all along, and the only way for him to finally prevail over the humans was to reactivate a Slipgate portal and reconnect with Shub Niggurath to obtain resources and support.
The human marine fights against Kane, managing to defeat him despite his deadly Strogg enhancements. The enemy, in his dying moments, manages to reactivate the portal, connecting Stroggos and the Quake dimension and sucking the human marine into it. He thus finds himself in the ancient gothic castles of the dimension where Ranger had been confined and fights his way through the monstrosities in search of a portal that will allow him to return.
During the marine’s pilgrimage, it is finally discovered that Gilman had ascended as Shub Niggurath, but his plans had been compromised by Ranger’s intervention, whose presence had been intended as a mere sacrificial offering. Ranger destroys Gilman/Shub Niggurath thanks to the four Runes and becomes a Vadrigar himself. Gilman is not completely annihilated though, but being a Vadrigar on par with Ranger, an eternal war is established between two immortals (Ranger and Gilman), resulting in Gilman’s inability to invade Earth. This was the reason why Gilman had secretly planned the creation of the Strogg, covering the Strogg bases with clear references to the old Slipgate base, as a backup plan to invade Earth. The genocide of humans would have allowed Gilman to make an even greater sacrifice to gain more power (with the approval of the other Ancient Gods) and finally complete his ascension, which had been blocked by Ranger’s intervention.
During yet another battle, Ranger, now tired, decides to confer his power to the marine, entrusting him with the task of stopping Gilman/Shub Niggurath.
The battle takes place in the Quake dimension, and the marine prevails (thanks also to the power of the Runes left to him by Ranger).
The other Ancient Gods do not stand by this time and, stepping into the field, apparently annihilate the marine and the Quake dimension, definitively erasing the origin of the evil that had afflicted Earth and the universe since 1996.
At the end of all this, the scientists on Stroggos receive another mysterious signal from the base…
