Ok, no doubt any hardcore Quake II fan has seen the screenshots from Quake IV that PCZone had, and if you're like me, you're thinking to yourself 'Um.. that doesn't look much like Stroggos, it's like they took Doom 3 levels that added new models'. Now granted, the game is still in early development but if they continue with this 'boring generic metal corridor' theme for Quake IV, I will kill people.. this is the planet Stroggos not the UAC facility on Mars, Cerebon and surrounding enviroments look NOTHING like Doom III, so what the Hell are they doing?
Quake II had this unique alien world of rusty metal, red flags, barren rocks and flashing red screens populated with creatures made from dead humans and other species, the sky was a dark brooding red informing the player that this place is anything but friendly and you're going to get fucked-up pretty bad unless you keep your alert on at all times. While incorperating that into the Doom III engine might well be quite a challenge (especially taking the old enviromental feel of Stroggos and making it look like a game of 2005) but so what? We want Stroggos, not generic metal corridor world #2.
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And what the Hell is with the sky? Last time I checked the enviroment was dark orange, not turd colour.
Anyway, without further ado I am presenting you with the things I want to see in Quake IV:
Enviroment
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Look at the picture above and now compare that with the picture from Quake IV below
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Yeah I know, early days and everything, but you can see that the background looks more like Doom III than Quake.
New unit screen
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Everytime you completed a unit in Quake II, you got this green screen indicating to command where you are, where you're going next and what your nest mission is. I want this back in Quake IV, it's a simple little thing to pull off and this time wont be in a movie format (at 10mb a piece).
Lava
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Stroggos has lava, therefore it is a Godgiven law to include lava in Quake IV, it MUST be done!
Doors
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I want the cool trianglular doors and the other types back, of course more detailed and complete with added bump-mapping eyecandy and the other types too.
You.. and the others
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This time, you're able to work with a team in certain missions/sections, could work a bit like Call Of Duty, where they do their thing, wait for you and then carry on with their tasks, a full scale war is now going on, Cerebon has been neutralised, but the planet is vast and the enemy still exists, this is a job for more than one man!
The bestiary
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Should consist of updated originals and completely new species, incidentally.. just like what Doom III did, they need top-class AI and I'm wanting the damage system back 100 fold, individual body multilation; blow off limbs, leave huge wounds in their rusty armour. Also it would be cool to have them have short animations before they die (a bit like SOF in fact), this should all be perfectly possible with Raven's knowledge of skeletal destruction.
The sky
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The sky is orange damnit, not the colour of sick or whatever you want to call it in the screen up the page, I want detailed skyboxes with animated clouds and surrounding buldings, just like the original Q2 ones only far far more detailed. Again, this should be a law!
The objective system
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When you completed/got a new objective you had a small F1 icon appear down below, then when you pressed F1 you got your objectives bar, this should be incorperated but with more depth and it would work relatively the same way.
Make it feel more alive
Lots of enviromental scripts, such as crashing ships, fellow soldiers getting killed by an enemy tank, a soldier falling to his death after a last speech to the player, strogg holding a marine by the neck.. etc Basically now that Cerebon has been invaded by the human forces, things have got much more chaotic and the war is well and truly in force.
Cut scenes
At the end of a unit (or whenever they will fit in) there should be cut scenes to push the story along, but they must not get in the way of the action too much, so that a good 90% of game-time is during the actual missions, but they would serve to show the player what is going on around them regardless of wether they are in the area or not.
And last but not least, the box needs to look similar to this:
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So there we go, that's what I want to see, of course there's more 'NEW' things that we'll want incorperating perhaps but I can't really think of anything at the moment. Note to Raven, we don't want a Doom III clone, this is Stroggos damnit!!
Thanks for reading, feel free to comment and add your own demands.