The Quake Remaster Is Real, And It's Out Now On Xbox Game Pass

HOOOLY FUUUDGE! It's real! And it's today!? This is insane!

And a "next gen" upgrade coming later?! I can't imagine what that will do.

The textures look pure garbage as always, there's only so much you can do with it, but....

COLORED LIGHTING! My 3dfx is ready! Ziggurat Verti-gogogo!

A cheap, 4 player co-op remaster of a classic. I don't think I could have asked for more.

@FraserG In this version? I don’t see that listed in the US store. It does have a tag for 60 FPS+. Hope it is 120!

Amazing news, so many hours I put into the PC version... Really can't wait to play this later...

Will this take advantage of AGP graphics cards and VooDoo FX?

Damn, the controls feels very off.. major delay on the input.

There is also to much aim acceleration.

No disrespect to these developers that made these great games of the past, that I played when they released.
Let’s focus all resources on new games for this generation.
The whole industry is getting full of remasters etc and it’s becoming dull.
At this rate I might have to start playing the new COD and FIFA 😂😂😂
Stroll on FH5, Far cry 6 and Halo Infinite and Elden ring.

Ugh, why do I have to be out of town all weekend, just when Twelve Minutes released, and Quake remastered? I can't wait until Monday.

@NEStalgia Maybe the "next-gen" upgrade will have the option to use path tracing like Quake 2 RTX.

OOOOOOHHHHHH MMMMMMYYYY GGGOOOOODDDDD!!!

Sorry, that weren't constructive at all, but I was about 12 when I first played Quake, it was my first fps ( I played Doom later), so many good memories of this.

@GamingFan4Lyf
Path tracing is pretty expensive in terms of compute.
The RTX 3080 runs the Quake II RTX @ 30fps when at 4K.
And only achieves 60fps when in 1440p.
Full path tracing like the Nvidia Marbles demo;
RTX 3090 was able to run it at 1440p smoothly @ 30fps only with DLSS enabled.

One of the achievements is to complete the game on Nightmare. Pretty sure the enemies respawn on that mode, so good luck with doing that. Just do a Doom and leg it through the levels lol

Hope they bring Q3 to Xbox used to love playing that. A very welcome suprise this

I remember the moment I bought my STB Riva TNT2 and launched glQuake. What a different world from software Quake.... Oh man, makes me want to see the old planetquake, and the variety of other Quakering sites. That was the internet as it was meant to be!! $199 for a video card! It was excess! It was waste! It was obsession! No normal human would pay that.

@Dezzy70 Most of the remasters are a waste of time. This one is bringing an ancient timeless legend back to playability on modern platforms. (It never really went away on PC...). Plus I'm sure it's setting the stage for Quake V to be announce in a year or two. What else is id doing? Doom has had its run and needs a rest, same with Wolf, Rage kinda fizzled. It's time to bring back the legend. Except PS and Xb gamers have never even played the danged thing....oddly it's the retro Nintendo console fans that have!

What the heck!

We're going back to the future!

Do we all have our FILAs and denim-everything ready? Or with NiN are we going all black studded leather? Who needs me to burn the CD? I'll just keep them in a Trapper Keeper out on the table here because I'm such a straight-edge.

@CrazyJF Same textures, but updated models, lighting, etc. The textures make it look old, and obviously level geometry can't be changed, but the models are higher poly with the same skins stretched over them and the lighting was overhauled. And they added colored lighting, which the original didn't have (it's kind of a punch line because when Q2 launched "colored lighting" was the hype buzzword if you had a 3dfx card.

Still no Skyrim story huh? Been all over other gaming sites..

Man I hope Limited Run sells all 3 of these bad boys on 1 disc for Xbox. Would buy that right up!

@Originut wow. It took 17 posts for a fanboy comment to come out. Shocking.

@Ocat Thank you; I was coming here to see if anyone felt that it feels... well pretty bad. From the aim acceleration which does that stupid GI Joe: Operation Blackout trick of somehow starting off too slow before getting WAY too fast, to the momentum on your dude when moving to the strict jumping trajectory when you take off, the whole thing feels.... not quite like Quake. Which seems crazy. But it isn't even easy to bunny hop or strafe jump in this, and hitting enemies is not good.

All the content here rules, but it needs to play smoother.

I really hope they patch this baby up sooner rather than later to make sure it plays as fast & fluidly as, well, every other version of the game ever released on PC or consoles. I sincerely recall even the N64 version having smoother aim (so long as you use Turok-style controls and put free-aim on the analog stick).

Good news especially for those who only play in consoles! But kind of a letdown for me overall. Will still play the Steam version until enough single player mods are available on Xbox version of the game.

@chicken_chaser I realize that, but the Series X is capable. 60fps might be off the table, but when Digital Foundry was invited to Microsoft HQ to see the Series X in action, one of the demos was the path-traced version of Minecraft...running 30fps.

So Quake if id Software was interested in giving it a go, it is totally possible, just not 4K/60. I mean I don't even think the original release of Quake even ran 30fps, so even 1440p/30fps would be a boost in framerate and resolution!

@CrazyJF A remaster is cleaning up existing assets and reusing them. A remake is building them from the ground up.

Think of it this way, on a remaster of, say, a Beatle song, they clean up the original recording. They don't bring in new people to re-record.

A remake would be like Rockband or Guitar Hero song, where they're re-recorded with different people.

Does anyone know if this has gyro controls? It does on Switch so... I might buy it there instead if this version doesn't support that feature.

@Vinsanity Yeah I concur too. I haven't played quake in 15 years. But I picked it up and it was like a bike, remembering every trick and secret and speed strafing everywhere. I forgot how fast this game is. So THAT'S why Splatoon is the first arena shooter i liked since q1, they're both insanely fast.

But.

The aiming is bad. I managed ok and learned to compensate, but then I got to the scrags. That's fing infuriating. And then trying to jump to the secret area over the exit ramps in e1m1, it was annoying with keyboard and mouse in the day, bit the jumps are nigh impossible with this.

@everynowandben very very unfortunately Xbox controllers have no gyros. That's the one disappointment I have with Series controllers, they still failed to add gyros.

So good... this brings back so many memories for a middle aged gamer like myself!!

Hey @FraserG can you talk more about this? Limited Run Games making physical copy of Quake remastered for PS & Switch but NO XBOX despite their partnership announcement with Xbox some time ago and the game being one of Xbox 1st-party games now. I couldn't care less of Limited Run Games not making physical copy of 3rd-party games but for Quake .... really? No Xbox???

https://twitter.com/LimitedRunGames/status/1428424081221820416?s=19

@GamingFan4Lyf
What can be a better trade off is, Id adding and optimizing RT reflections and GI in this Remaster and giving it a 1080p@60fps mode.
Fast paced fragging and Quake rocket jumping with smooth lighting and reflections. Win-win.

Good for the fans, but I never cared much for Quake myself. Quake was a milestone technical achievement for 3D games, but it was ugly AF and the levels all looked the same 😅

Unlike games like Doom and Duke3D which used 2D sprite enemies, Quake's characters were 3D with a very low polygon count. A great step towards 3D games of the future, but not much to look at.

@Prizm Visually it was definitely a step over Doom which was always extremely pixelated, and of course sprite based billboards. The textures were certainly repetitious and flat, but such was the hardware of the time. (The remaster fixes the enemy polys, They don't look amazing but they're a lot higher poly count now.

The level design is what set it apart though. It was all interwoven nested labyringths with neat gimmicks that we haven't really seen in other games before or since. The maps became pretty memorable based on their layout more than their appearance. And, of course, there were 4 different map themes (high tech, runic, medieval, eldritch.) So it actually did have a lot of variety in design, but, of course, the same wall textures on every other wall across every map of the same theme kept it a bit repetitive to look at.

It defined an era though. It was really the big start of the mod scene, map editing, and of course Q1 laid the foundation as the engine for nearly every game of its era including Half-Life. It's as seminal a work as Pac-Man, DK Arcade, SMB, and Mario 64. Even if it may not be much to look at.

The pace of play kind of negated the appearance though. It plays FAST like, really really fast. I forgot how fast until I picked it up again. Sadly the aiming and jumping on the controller/remaster is terrible, at least to my mouselook muscle memory.

@NEStalgia - "The pace of play kind of negated the appearance though. It plays FAST like, really really fast."

I do miss the run 'n gun speed of early FPS games (Rise of the Triad, Doom, etc, early Serious Sam).

I haven't played Quake for 20 years, so maybe I'll try it again... on PC. Trying to play these games seriously with a controller is like playing one-handed. It's the wrong tool for the job.

@Prizm lol, I hear you on the controller. I can't tell if the game just has bad aiming or if it's just the old muscle memory from mouse but aiming it's impossible. I can almost hold my own but I keep dying in the first episode in normal and hitting air.

Might get the switch version for the gyros...

@NEStalgia It'd be nice if they left it in the code or whatever so gyro would work if you have an adapter to use a compatible controller. Looks like the PS version also has gyro control.. Personally I think I might go that route to get best of both worlds.

@everynowandben I wonder if the os could even use gyro data? I think steam builds support into their app and it's not part of windows.

I just bought the switch version for the gyros, and because 1997 me thinks quake on a game boy is super rad. Honestly it still doesn't control right to me. Something is off about it. I'm not even sure it's the aiming itself that's annoying... Something with the movement feels off, like Ranger is on ice skates. I tried gloom keep and tried strafing the upper tier to shoot the fiends below and just keep sliding off the ledges with a tiny tap of the stick. Sure, I'm 25 years out of practice and used mouse before but doom eternal feels more familiar than this atm. Maybe wasd was just the trick.

I'm surprised there isn't mouse support on Xbox.