New and Returning Enemies.

QBJ3 has the complete roster from Q1, all with new visuals and sounds, as well as some new faces. Returning enemies inherit a bunch of changes from Copper, so for simplicities sake, I'm not going to distinguish between changes from that and new changes or we'll be here all week.

Pistol Trenchknight

- Hitscanner

- Deadly Hitscanner

- Monstrously Deadly Hitscanner

- Ouch, my bones

Grunt replacement. Armed with a pistol and a dorky helmet. These are effective over medium distances, though their accuracy does drop off and will usually not hit you if you're moving perpendicular to them. On nightmare these become machine gunners. Once they see you they'll plant their feet and fire quickly until you drop out of site. Absolutely deadly. They are thankfully very fragile, with a low health and easily put into a flinch state by damage.

Like a lot of the humanoid enemies, these fit into the fashy police state vibe. You'll often hear voice lines of 'stop resisting' as they gun you down. Kill on sight.

Shotgun Trenchknight

- High Burst Damage

- Low Health and easily stunned

- Slow Reaction Times

Roughly equivalent to the Pistol Trenchknight, but a close range shotgun version. In general this makes them a little less dangerous. They have a lot of burst potential, but unlike the Pistoleers they need to close in on you to fire, where their low health and sluggish reaction times mean they rarely get to do so.

Plasma Trenchknight

-

Enforcer replacement. Once they see you, they'll plant their feet and fire accurate but slow moving plasma bolts as long as they can see you. They're a little tankier than the other regular humanoids, but a close range shotgun blast is enough to finish them. These are a really great common enemy to use that aren't quite as deadly as the Pistol Trenchknight. Their slow moving bolts put pressure on the player without being an instant threat. On their own the bolts are easily dodgeable, but play well with other enemies and obstacles mixed in as distractions

Trenchhound

- Fast

- Weak

- Not one of them will be seeing the light of heaven

Reskinned Quake dogs (Quogs if you will). They close reasonably quickly on the player, but have very low health.

Grenadier

- If they ever had sex, the gas mask would stay on.

- Can deal either direct damage with their grenade launcher, or create short lived hazards as their shots bounce around

- Has never had sex.

Ogre replacement. Ogres in Q1 were quite limited by only being able to fire their grenades at a single angle. Here they have some z-awareness and can adjust their angle enough to be a bigger threat, but not so much to be pinpoint accurate. Its a good compromise that leaves the ogre able to put on distant pressure, demanding the player be aware of where there grenades are landing to avoid the delayed explosion, without being completely oppressive

Visually these strongly fit into the fashy aesthetic of many of the humanoid enemies,

Knight

-Knight facts

Knight Reskin

Champion

-Champion

Hell Knight Reskin.

Servitor

-Servitor

Scrag/Wizard replacement. Otherwise unchanged. Similar to the Plasma Trenchknight, but flying and so usually more capable of closing on the player.

Spawn

-Death incarnate

-If you put more than 1 of these in a map, you legally owe me 5 quid

Spawn Replacement. After a brief wakeup period when they see you, they start rapidly jumping around trying to melee the player, and explode when killed. They're mostly used in episode 4 of the base game and honestly, fuck episode 4. I think this has a larger hitbox than the original, it feels a little easier to hit. Visually its a painful mess of flapping flesh and teeth, pierced by shards of rebar and concrete.

Golem

-Golem

Zombie reskin. More of a blocker than a huge threat, though their ranged attack can deal some reasonable chip damage. Must be gibbed with explosives and can be gibbed while lying down, unlike base Quake. Like several of the enemies on the eldritch side, the golems have the motif of their bodies being painfully pierced and twisted (or purhaps supported?) by shards of concrete and rebar

Amalgam

- TEETH

- Eats a length of rebar for breakfast each and every day.

- *Fires shotgun in the air* TEETH, TEETH, TEETH

An exquisitely awful convergence of concrete, teeth and rebar. One of the handful of truly new enemies and its a real banger. Base Quake doesn't really have any passive enemies; foes that work not through direct attacks, but by interacting with the environment or buffing other enemies. The Amalgam then, floats towards the player, being menacing and spewing large glowing caltrops that linger for a while on the floor and damage the player on contact.

Amalgams lightly (albeit temporarily) reshape the spaces they move through, demanding the player be a little more aware of where they're stepping while they fight and platform. The closest analogue is probably the ogre, whose grenades linger and bounce around briefly if they miss the player, but this pushes a slightly longer term hazard. An excellent addition.

Swarmer Shalkin

Low health, low damage, extremely high speed

- Remembers to send the vore a nice card every parent's day.

- Does not, or does not care to remember to send its many many siblings cards on their birthdays.

Very fast, low damage and health. In small numbers these pose little threat, just about any weapon can kill them in a single hit. Their danger comes when they either surround you in large numbers and box you in and/or are mixed in with other more dangerous threats.

Blister Shalkin

- Extremely low health, extremely high burst damage and speed.

- Phones the vore once a week, they worry about their children and whether they're eating enough Rovers.

Fast explosive enemies. They can close on the player very quickly and do high damage, destroying themselves in the process. Extremely easy to be very mean with these as a mapper. Visually they live up to their name; being based on the Swarmer, but with a giant painful looking blister on their upper torso. They also make a godforsaken noise that means you'll always know where they are (not that that will help!)

Shalrath (i.e. Vore)

-Single parent to a whole brood of Swarmer Shalkin

Its the vore you know and love. Mercifully, killing the parent will now cause its currently flying vore balls to loosen their tracking significantly rather than keeping the constant near instant 90 degree turns they could make in the original.

Fleshworm

-Legend has it these eat the crocodiles that grow in sewers.

Horrible leech-like fish replacements. More an annoyance than a huge threat most of the time.

Fiend

-Everyone and their mother puts these right behind a door as a surprise, its the laziest, oldest trick in the book. It gets me every time and I also do this, its a good trick.

Fast moving with a high damage leap attack. These are better at leaping than their base game counterparts, who would often end up in a loop of bumping their heads on ceilings while trying to leap. These are a little more dangerous then and are a very effective pressure enemy. Their high speed and damage demands your attention and gives other enemies plenty of space to move in and attack.

Shambler

- Possibly a good hugger?

- TEETH

The shambler we all know and love is still here. Visually it looks like its been shaved (shut up, shamblers have fur, you know its true) and like one of those horrifying sphinx cats. I don't know what to do with that other than to say I've seen a lot of horniness for the new (and old) shambler ass.

Final thoughts

The changes to the roster are pretty good overall. The various minor tweaks (espcially to the ogre) make them a little harder overall, but in return makes for an experience able to more effectively challenge the player in a bunch of different ways.

The new skins and effects are largely excellent. The mod attempts and partly succeeds in smoothing over the mish mash of enemy types the original Quake had. Now there's a pretty strong line between the human shaped monsters, invoking totalitarian police states, and the still pretty Eldritch monsters of the rest of the roster. The human end of things feels paticularly inspired by American fascist movements of the moment. Calls of "Stop resisting" as they shoot at you or 'player was struck during a pistol trenchknight-involved shooting and later died from their injuries,' calling on the spectre of collabarationist reporting when the police shoot people. It all feels pretty on the nose, even as a non-American. Outside of those specific digs though, it keeps the Quake quality of giving a sense of something without exactly defining what it is. Something with a strong tone that's still flexible enough to fit into a lot of different scenarios a mapper might come up with.