No better way to kickstart an edition of the legendary QuakeCon than with a Quake release, even if it is not an official one. That’s exactly what we got, as a hacker has just leaked Quake 4 The Awakening, the expansion that we ended up never getting. Even developers are hyped.
https://bsky.app/profile/selaco.bsky.social/post/3mshi2nkrp227
After the relatively lukewarm reception of Quake 4, the powers that be decided to cancel the release of its expansion, and the thing was thought lost. A few months ago, we saw the release of 10 minutes of footage, which actually amounted to just around three minutes of gameplay .
It was a beacon of hope to all the people who’d gotten disappointed by its cancellation, but still nothing you could play. Things have changed now, as the whole build for the nearly finished thing is now online.
And the funniest part of it all? Leaker Jmarshall isn’t even a super hacker—as far as I know, at least—rather a video games industry veteran developer who bought a used disk drive that happened to contain the build.
Has Quake 4’s time finally come?
Quake 4 came out in 2005, and, even though I had a blast with it back in the day, I understand why it’s clearly the least popular game in Id’s popular series. Despite awesome graphics sporting the outstanding tech first seen in Doom 3, and a nice campaign that introduced vehicles to the Quake fold, the Raven Software-developed entry failed to deliver the full extent of Doom’s horror, the frantic action of the Quake series, or a campaign as interesting as Half-Life 2‘s. Simply put, it didn’t do anything better than every other game, a problem for a game that came out in such a strong era of FPS games. Still, many people have great memories of some of the best moments in the game, like the completely unforgettable “stroggification” scene,
Some people simply want more Quake, regardless of what form it takes. It should come as no surprise that fans and even veteran game developers alike are so hyped to finally try out the long-lost expansion—before the copyright gremlins make it disappear again.
