Quake Champions and the new Prey were announced back at Bethesda’s E3 2016 Press Briefing. Both have new trailers out with gameplay footage during the annual Quakecon gathering. That has become Bethesda’s second conference of the year in addition to the traditional giant LAN party.
I was initially pretty psyched for a new multiplayer arena-shooter Quake from id even if the characters looked to be individualized with abilities specific to each.
The new Doom was a huge surprise, even though the multiplayer wasn’t that hot. Maybe they would do a better job with Quake Champions which appears to be solely focused on multiplayer? Well, it turns out to be a little less exciting because a third-party is developing the new Quake. Saber Interactive worked on 2014’s abysmally buggy Halo: The Master Chief Collection, though who is to say if that was an issue with Microsoft’s 343 or one of the four other studios that worked on the bundled collection.
id software had a great collaboration with a third-party when Machine Games made Wolfenstein: The New Order in addition to the standalone expansion, Wolfenstein: The Old Blood.
I don’t doubt that Saber could put a good game together if the right situation arose. Maybe they just need to work with the right collaborator in id software? If not, well, we’ve still got ioquake3.
Prey has fewer question marks, it’s clearly not related at all to the 2006 FPS from Human Head. Instead, Arkane is making it. Their Dishonored from 2012 was excellent as a first-person stabbing simulator.
Quake Champions will have some kind of closed-beta, presumably for people that preorder, in 2017. Don’t pre-order games. Prey is out in 2017.
Leave a Reply