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Quake 1 has very weak Weapon Design and Animations

slunk432 · 10 Sep 2026 at 10:04 · permalink

I love Quake but the Weapon Design and Animations always bored me to Death. Example the Shotguns you see literally nothing exciting here. Doom 1+2 Shotguns have awesome reload Animations and Quake? Just nothing. Nailgun also looks strange as f\*ck. Why?

Havrik3434 · 10 Sep 2026 at 10:04 · permalink

This is just what happens when you create a game so ahead of it's time. Polygon budgets were tight, and that's probably the most they could get away with.

IceXz1 · 10 Sep 2026 at 10:05 · permalink

weak b8, m8

dantebarbaroja · 10 Sep 2026 at 10:05 · permalink

Agreed. Quake arsenal has always been terrible compared with Doom or Quake 2

totalfps · 10 Sep 2026 at 10:05 · permalink

The shotgun is the big one for me. So unsatisfying compared to doom or Duke 3d. Other guns I can live with.

maltonik · 10 Sep 2026 at 10:06 · permalink

The enemies animations I find them awesome compared to quake2

batonowski · 10 Sep 2026 at 10:06 · permalink

I disagree with the nail gun model (and the weapon design (interms of models) in general) but yeah I agree with everything else. I think its weird that the shoguns have no animations, specially after seeing how weird it is in DooM 64. The animations could be a little better in general as well, since most firing animations have a very simple firing animation with the only exception imo being the Axe which is pretty useless but eh, at least the animation is aight.

batonowski · 10 Sep 2026 at 10:07 · permalink

True, they are great compared to the weapon animations in quake.

slyr1x · 10 Sep 2026 at 10:07 · permalink

The reason for this is that the guns in Doom were 2D Sprites, so making the shotgun pump, or super shotgun reload was done with relatively normal 2D animation techniques.

Animating a 3D model is an entirely different process, that requires a very different skill set, so early 3D games kind of cheated when it came to some things. Quake there reloading or pumping the shotgun on screen. You look at GoldenEye 64 instead of having a reloading animation you just lower the weapon off screen and the Reload is implied to have happened.

It took a few years until games like Half-Life 1 had proper reloading animations for 3D weapons.

LenaElsa · 10 Sep 2026 at 10:07 · permalink

They work well enough within their limitation for being among the very earliest polygonal games. I think the Q1 weapon visuals have actually aged very gracefully compared to almost every other polygonal FPS from the 90s. They feel clearly defined and most of the edge detailing is still in the actual geometry, whereas most others would rely purely on the texture detailing as a crutch for very lowpoly models which looks especially jarring nowadays when rendered in HD (the automag in Unreal is one of the first thing that comes to mind for me which just looks like an ugly rectangle with a blurry texture stretched all over it). Even Quake 2 suffered significantly from this.

Moss · 10 Sep 2026 at 10:08 · permalink

The Nailgun is one of my favorite designs in general. I like that the weapons in Quake stray from just being generic guns and instead have more bulky and mechanical designs.

I would agree animations are pretty lacking, it's one thing Quake 2 did better.

vanekmatras · 10 Sep 2026 at 10:08 · permalink

Disagree. The super nail gun looks cool and sounds amazing.

The super shotgun may not have a reload animation like Doom 2’s SSG, but that is because it is a pump action double barrel like in Quake 2 and Turok 2. It also sounds awesome with that deep “ooomph”.

roxydzey · 10 Sep 2026 at 10:08 · permalink

the shotguns are a letdown compared to Doom, but I really enjoy the look and sound of both nailguns, and the sounds of the other weapons are great too.

the axe is awful, Quake didn't have good melee until Q3's gauntlet, whose mechanics are pretty brilliant

pascal777508 · 10 Sep 2026 at 10:09 · permalink

yawn

juanomad · 10 Sep 2026 at 10:09 · permalink

cool, the rest of us figured out immediately that the shotgun was just the pistol and moved on.

also, the chaingun in doom is my least favorite weapon, while i love the super nailgun