Dev Diary #4 - Putting the Quake in Enemy Territory

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Splash Damage Senior Game Designer Edward 'Bongoboy' Stern talks about creating a backstory for the Quake universe.

I'm Edward 'Bongoboy' Stern and I'm one of the developers toiling diligently on Enemy Territory: Quake Wars (ETQW). The Boss of Me, Paul 'Locki' Wedgwood, has already written about what the Quake universe backstory brings to the Enemy Territory gameplay. In this diary entry, I'd like fill in some detail about the, uh, Quakiness of Enemy Territory, how we got there, what that helps us do, and what that'll let you do, should you choose to buy the game (*fixed stare, subtle hand movements in peripheral vision, subliminal hissing "yesssssss").

Backstory War, What's It Good For?

As Locki pointed out previously, we knew that the Quake universe backstory (hereafter known as "QuakeStory") would give us lots of good stuff. The clash of the Strogg with Earth is an immediately arresting notion - straight away you just want to know what happened, where and how. Strogg on Earth! A Global Defence Force (GDF) desperately resisting them! You felt that? That's the immersion, right there. Sooon you shall be oursssss.

The QuakeStory isn't just a page of blurb to help fill out the game manual. It inspired cool immersive stuff like unique map plots and compelling objectives (more later) and best of all it gives us two very different teams, and thus the asymmetricked-out gameplay we craved: team-unique player classes, abilities, items, weapons, vehicles and deployables. In this diary I'd like to give a bit more detail about how we wrangled the QuakeStory, and what it'll do for you in the game. Let's start off with our glorious Plan A. Read more…

Read the entire new dev diary here.