Absent Bosses from QUAKE 1

[golden_boy]

Those inkub0 cited are gods, actually. From the Cthulhu myth. A human simply curb-stomping a deity like Shub-Niggurath is an idea that doesn't sit well with me.

Or using a tiny spiked ball and a teleporter. I don't think so, my idea of Shub-Niggurath is a lot bigger than the tentacle blob in Quake anyway.

That looks more like one of the Thousand Young. Only 999 left to go...

Everyone realizes that Shub and Chthon from the original Quake are tiny, right? Chthon is maybe 8 meters tall or thereabouts. That's pretty small if you ask me. I imagine Lovecraftian gods to be gigantic.

[Phenom]

I imagine Lovecraftian gods to be gigantic.

Same here!

[inkub0]

yes, they are gigantic, but, it'impossible to create a map with a monster bigger than the map itself

[MH]

I always thought that the neat thing about the Quake bosses was that they didn't require brute force to defeat. It made for a nice change of pace and change of gameplay, unlike - say - Quake II (duck behind a pillar, switch weapons, duck back out, unload all your ammo into it, repeat to fade: bo-ring!) Of course that's not to everybody's taste, and - also of course - once you've figured out the way to kill them, the boss loses it's reason to exist.

[R00k]

True, if though killing a BOSS is simply playing 1 on 1 against a powerfull ai-bot then re-playability is possible. I think it's silly to get all that way to the boss level after collecting all the weapons etc only to run around tripping switches to enable a trap to kill the boss :/

[osjclatchford]

Must admit, over time, house of chthon has just become a grab the rune and push the buttons map that most of us could do blindfolded.
Its kind of an anti-climax to episode one now but that's probably because we've all played to too much, right?

However, that said, I had a mod back in the day that allowed you to defeat ch'thon with either the RL or lightning gun (never understood why the latter option; I mean, you'd have to cheat to get the LG!) but I cant find it now, if anyone else has it (or a link to it) i'd be eternaly grateful, (when playing in hard mode) Its fun to unload a load of rockets as you use the pylons. so sometimes you'll use just rockets, sometimes just pylons, sometimes a mix of the two.

I'd love to get this mod again and from the looks of it some of you would apreciate it too, I'll try to dig out my old cd's floppy's and Hd's to see If i've got it anywhere but hopefully someone else might have/remember it or make a new one for us!

It just added so much more variety to the map and gave it more of a 'battle' feeling;
You're not just relying on the pylons, you're using them to assist you in defeating ch'thon.

brawn + brains = dead ch'thon!

[golden_boy]

There could be three or more variants of a boss fight, and they would occur randomly. I don't think this would be too hard to do. There are truly randomized monster spawns in RMQ already. Changing the actual layout of the boss arena (adding walls, platforms, buttons randomly) is also possible.

I suspect a higher number of bosses in the game that are all different will already be an improvement, though. So is the principle of recurring boss appearances, where a boss monster is faced more than once until finally defeated.

Would that be better?

[mankrip]

Must admit, over time, house of chthon has just become a grab the rune and push the buttons map that most of us could do blindfolded.
(...)

However, that said, I had a mod back in the day that allowed you to defeat ch'thon with either the RL or lightning gun (...) Its fun to unload a load of rockets as you use the pylons. so sometimes you'll use just rockets, sometimes just pylons, sometimes a mix of the two.

(...)

It just added so much more variety to the map and gave it more of a 'battle' feeling;
You're not just relying on the pylons, you're using them to assist you in defeating ch'thon.

brawn + brains = dead ch'thon!

Good points. Another way to make the weapons useful would be to make them affect the bosses without killing them. This way we could have the best of both worlds, an intense gunfight against immortal beings that can only be killed indirectly.

For example, Chthon could be a lot more vicious, throwing lots of lava balls unless the player shoots him to either stop him for a bit, slow him down or make him dizzy, while at the same time the player would have to keep running to push the buttons.

[Phenom]

For example, Chthon could be a lot more vicious, throwing lots of lava balls unless the player shoots him to either stop him for a bit, slow him down or make him dizzy, while at the same time the player would have to keep running to push the buttons.

Or give the lava balls 50% of the vore's homing balls accuracy and double/triple their damage and speed!

[R00k]

Well, all to often games are pooped on at the end. Take HL2, the end was just a little too easy. I guess it's more of a finale cut-scene instead of a all out ending. If a player has made it all the way to the end of the game, that sets that player apart from over 60% of the players who played it. Therefore, imho the final level should almost take as long to finish as the entire game previously. The idea of the game is to accomplish a task/goal. The idea of the final boss is an "all or nothing" task to stop the player from completing that goal. Creatively making it damn nearimpossible sounds kinda fun to me. Using the StarWars "drop a missile in an air duct to blow up the deathstar" method, is NOT how to finish a game!

[Phenom]

Using the StarWars "drop a missile in an air duct to blow up the deathstar" method, is NOT how to finish a game!

I agree with this concept but I don't see how it fits in with current Quake 1 bosses? Unless you're referring to possible future bosses where the goal is to shoot the moving button target 1,000 game units away?

Maybe the goal shouldn't be to "kill a realm boss" but to survive and not be killed from the realm boss until you can reach the source(Chubby Shubby) and find a way in all the mayhem to destroy the source, Which eventually will lead to Quake, whoever or whatever He/She/it or them may be.

Quake 1 is a sequel-less game
Quake is the ruler of Quake 1's realms.

[MrSafin]

I may have understood it wrong from the Quake manual, but... isn't "Quake" the codename for Earth's enemy, Shub-Niggurath?

[ChronoSeth]

IIRC, that was the original fact, but the mission packs say otherwise.

[LambentHammerBurst]

IMO I think chthon is fine as is. It is easy now after playing that map so many times. Why not add the "lavaman" from the expansions - would make the level ALOT harder if just 2-3 of them were added in behind him.

I do like the concept of making bosses killable by all means. Like in a past mini-mod a friend and I did. We made him killable, however took ALOT of ammo - generally we would both be at 0 and he would still be alive. What this allowed though was on the higher difficulties we could unload alot of ammo into him and then do ONE zap and he was dead. We later reduced his health and made it so rockets/grenades did next to no damage to him and the thunderbolt did 2x to him (I know you don't get it unless you cheat - we added for custom maps).

Shub we did the same however shotguns did basically nothing (1/10th), nails did 1/5th so you had to use Rockets, Grenades and Thunderbolt. Axe did 4x the damage but getting on the platform resulted in basically instant death - you got whipped off and sent into the lava. VERY killable, done it in co-op various times but not overall worth doing it. By the time you killed all the enemies killing you as you attacked her - it didn't make sense to unload all remaining ammo when you could telefrag her.

So if it's done like that - it's good. Make it so you CAN kill him by normal means but basically impossible or very hard due to ammo limits and weapon damage limitations. The way I mentioned above allowed players to mix it up. Deal 50% of the damage with weapons and then you zap Chthon twice or if you have the ammo - destroy Sub with your remaining ammo.

[Ranger]

According to DoE (and SoA) "Quake" is the Dragon from DoE.


But really, I think "Quake" is simply the name of that entire realm/collection of dimensions