Back in August, Bethesda released a remastered Quake across basically every modern gaming platform, including Switch. Now, a few months later, this version of the game just received its second large update, adding a new co-op horde mode, additional maps, another campaign, and numerous bug fixes.
Sure, Quake might be 25 years old, but that doesn’t mean it can’t learn a few new tricks. Yesterday, Bethesda released Update 2 for the remastered Quake ports across all platforms. The new update’s biggest addition is a new horde mode built by MachineGames, the devs behind the recent Wolfenstein revivals. Horde can be played alone or with up to three friends, and uses four new maps built specifically for the new mode.
In it, players earn points as they rack up kills and can earn more for killing many enemies in a short amount of time. Every third wave features a boss, and after nine waves, a gold key drops to let players exit the level. Of course, you can stick around and keep fragging monsters to get more points, if you’re up to it.
Also featured in this new update is yet another new expansion, titled Honey. It has players exploring a dark and creepy underground town filled with secrets and enemies, so it basically sounds like Quake. Makes sense, since this new expansion was actually developed years ago by Christian Grawert, who is now the senior level designer at MachineGames. In an interview with Bethesda, Grawert explained that he originally made Honey’s two maps using some custom tools and WorldCraft, but for this modern release he went back and updated the levels using the modern Quake level editor TrenchBroom.
Read More: More Tips Than You Probably Need For The Quake Remaster
Alongside the new content, Update 2 adds some quality-of-life features and makes tweaks and changes to improve the overall Quake experience. Some stand-out stuff includes text chat and push-to-talk voice chat being added to pre-game lobbies, add-ons can now be played offline once downloaded, your crosshair can be tweaked, and you can invite PC players across various platforms, like between Steam and the Epic Games Store.
This isn’t the first time MachineGames has contributed to Quake. In 2016 the studio created a new episode, Dimension of the Past. And when the remastered ports were released earlier this year, it included another new expansion from the studio. Seems like MachineGames is very into Quake, and Bethesda trusts it with the franchise. Makes me wonder what MachineGames is working on as its next big project. On an unrelated note, there sure are a lot of rumors about Quake getting a reboot…
