Der lang erwartete Stern am Multiplayerhimmel macht wieder auf sich aufmerksam. Drei neue Screenshots sowie ein Interview mit Todd Hollenshead von id Software wurden veröffentlicht. Laut Hollenshead wird Quake 4 storymäßig am zweiten Teil der Serie anknüpfen, der Multiplayerteil wird jedoch Teil 3 ähneln. Im Interview wird noch gesagt, dass in Quake 4 keine Fahrzeuge vorkommen werden. Zum Releasetermin wurde nur gesagt: Our date is always "when it's done."

Q: We saw the scene where you become "Stroggified," and some scenes earlier that were long, extended, scripted sequences, which is something we really haven't seen a lot of in previous id Software games. You think we'll see a lot of those types of sequences, or are those pretty special moments that won't happen that often? A: No, there's a lot of story telling that goes on throughout Quake 4. We do like the single-player style of basically making it a story-driven experience as you play through the single-player component. We felt that worked really well with Doom 3, and we wanted to do that for Quake 4. Part of the critical aspect of what universe we set Quake 4 in was that we felt like Quake II was the best single-player game of all the Quakes. We really had this, well, it was more than an idea, it was the beginning of a game design that was done after Quake II as to what was going to be the next project at id. That's sort of been sitting in our safe deposit box I guess, if you will. Prior to the time when we started working with Raven on Quake 4, the path we chose to go down was to make Quake III, which was multiplayer focused and not really married to any certain Quake universe. id developed Doom 3 in-house, and Raven kind of used that as the basis for the single-player stuff. Contrastingly, on the multiplayer side, we felt that the Quake III style with some Team Arena elements was the ultimate iteration of Quake multiplayer and so that formed the starting point of what the multiplayer was like. We feel that we've combined the best single-player experience with what was the best multiplayer of all the Quakes and put those together to make the best Quake yet.

Q: Are you looking to put any hooks in to make the game ready for the tournament community and go back to Quake 4 as the new tournament game right out of the box? A: It depends on what you're talking about in terms of tournament capacity. There's the tournament support software, whether it's a LAN or Internet play, how you're doing ladders and those sorts of things. We won't have that support out of the box. We'll incorporate that afterwards. But we really have it modeled as a skill-based game, so when you play Quake 4 multiplayer, it's not a luck shot that determines anything, it's really the people who are the most skillful players who are going to win. With Quake II, for example, we gave you the benefit of slowing the pace down a little bit, the ability to armor up, and a lot of times it took multiple shots to bring anybody down, so you could almost always have the hope for success against even more skillful players because if somebody softened them up, you might be able to take them out with the rail gun while you're hiding behind a box, or what have you. We've gotten back much more to the style of Quake III where it's pure multiplayer with a focus on moving and shooting and really skill-based. I think it will be very much appropriate for people who like to play the tournament style games because it's really a game of skill as opposed to much of an element of chance involved.

Mehr dazu im Interview.