TF2’S GRANDADDY: QUAKE
By Sarah Rodriguez
When Team Fortress 2 was
Two of the most famous mods are
released, it was hailed as an
Half-Life and, you guessed it, Team
innovative, beautiful, fun and
Fortress, with those games in turn
funny game. But to understand
leading to The Stanley Parable,
just why TF2 is so entertaining,
Counter-Strike, Half-Life 2, and, of
it’s important to understand its
course, TF2. In fact, Team Fortress
history. And to understand its
2 originally had a more realistic,
history, you should know about a
Quake-style militaristic look before
little game called Quake.
being redesigned.
Imagining a dark, mostly brown
If you were to lay out a family
colored, scary game giving rise
tree of gaming, you might be
to the beautiful and quirky Team
surprised by the games either
Fortress 2 might seem surprising,
inspired by Quake, such as The
but Quake is pretty special, too.
Sims, or built from Quake’s engine
Released in 1996, it’s arguably one
or descendents of that engine,
of the most influential games of
such as Call of Duty, DOTA 2, Star
all time.
Wars: Jedi Knight and American
McGee’s Alice.
Quake ushered in the age of
eSports, pushed gaming in the
With its influence on coding, level
direction of new 3D technology,
design, online play, computer
was the first game to use the PC
hardware and modding, it’s no
client/server architecture that we
wonder that an awesome arena
now see in modern online gaming,
game like TF2 has such a cool
allowed the emergence of LAN
grandad.
parties, pioneered mouse-look and
rocket jumps and gave rise to one
of the most prolific mod scenes in
gaming history.
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