Quake III Arena (1999)

Lore & Background

The game's story is brief: 'the greatest warriors of all time fight for the amusement of a race called the Vadrigar in the Arena Eternal.' The introduction video shows the abduction of a warrior, Sarge, while making a last stand. Continuity with prior games in the Quake series and Doom is maintained by the inclusion of player models and biographical information.

Reader's Guide

In Quake III Arena, the player progresses through tiers of maps, combating different bot characters that increase in difficulty, from Crash (at Tier 0) to Xaero (at Tier 7). Weapons appear as level items, spawning at regular intervals in set locations on the map. If a player dies, all weapons are lost and they receive the spawn weapons for the current map, usually the gauntlet and machine gun. Players also drop the weapon they were using when killed, which other players can then pick up. Gameplay modes include Free for All, Team Deathmatch, Tournament (1v1), and Capture the Flag.

Did You Know?

• The game was developed by nine people in 18 months.
• id co-founder John Carmack has stated that Quake III Arena is his favorite game he has worked on.
• The complete source code for Quake III Arena was released under the GNU General Public License v2.0 or later on August 19, 2005.
• Bot chat lines were written by R. A. Salvatore, Seven Swords, and Steve Winter.