SUMMARY KEYWORDS
film, quake, story, moving, characters, level, machinima, technology, running, rangers, boggling, enabled, break, shown, hancock, quick, diary, massive undertaking, grey, put

SPEAKERS
Ben Grussi

Ben Grussi 00:00
All right, so, introduction. Welcome to the February edition of history. With this one with a slight twist, instead of doing a read along list, we're gonna break it down by engine, this month is going to be Quake, Quake 1 and Quake 2. And Quake 3. Quake 3 obviously is going to be really short. So don't stress about that one quick one and two hold on to your hats because it's going to be pretty long, we hope.

Ben Grussi 00:48
Alright, so starting off, as all lists have to start with his Diary of a Camper, as well as many of you know that The Rangers just by accident stumbled on this film, because they were just looking for something to do, and figuring out a way with their chops their programming skills to develop a little bit of camera technology and figured you know, spend an hour or two just doing a narrative which making fun of John Romero and his camping skills. Very popular because it was new, fresh, and nobody thought you could do something like that. And I'm basically it caught on and thankfully, it changed a lot of our lives, you know, mine, especially because it enabled me to be the official historian. Shocking, isn't it. Um, so moving on to one of their other films, that was quite important because the Diary of a Camper was sort of like the introduction to the film industry's version of the silent film, with the exception of the ambient sounds, obviously, but there was no vocals.

Ben Grussi 02:00
But one of their early films, the Torn Apart series is the second one is actually the one that enabled them to use full voiceover, which allowed people to really act out their voices, and so forth to add a lot more depth and personality to the characters, especially in this particular film with, you know, as the name implies, they're getting ripped to shreds, and they get to scream in agony into our wonderful blissful years.

Ben Grussi 02:28
So then moving on to that we have the unexpected surprise of The ILL Clan also going in the same route as The Rangers where, you know, they're bored, they're playing games, and they're wondering what to do. And that's where they contrived the story of Apartment Huntin' and, you know, put it together and became another foothold in machinima's history. Because it enabled them to have a really funny using their strong chops of comedy, improvising comedy, and able to tell a story and weave. And just to have it just fleshed out and really have some depth to their characters, especially, you know, this story of discrimination against lumberjacks, which, in all their films, they've actually put a thread to, it's quite interesting, but very, very interesting character dynamics with that film in particular.

Ben Grussi 03:23
And then moving on with Hugh Hancock's first film that put himself on the map is the Escheton Darkness Twilight series, which reinforces the quake mythos because it based heavily on HP Lovecraft’s material, Delta Green. And it was definitely another refreshing perspective because it allowed you to deal with subject matter that is very deep, dark and mature. And it deals with subject matter that is not your run of the mill. It's different. It's strange, hence the word for Strange company. But it really made a mark that definitely you know, when people say about Hugh Hancock released the Escheton is usually one of the films that at least for the veterans, they usually can point to that film. And he succeeded, as we'll discuss later with Nightfall, but definitely the spearhead or of the pioneer of machinima definitely was Hugh going into that direction of material.

Ben Grussi 04:30
The next film after that is that Blahbalicious - Wedge and Avatar, did this film. It was very well done. Very fresh and different and doing multiple little skits, sliced and diced and then put together in a cohesive story. And a lot of modded content, with the characters and machinima and so forth. It's actually kind of an interesting Easter egg. For the vets as well, is that one of the comical glitches with the graphic technology is that when they did the original film, the windows in the workout scene, or greyed, out, you couldn't see anything. But when GL Quake came out and introduced reflective mirroring, that's when the camera man gets to be shown up in the scene. So what you thought was visible, invisible, there's now visible so it's kind of interesting if you didn't know that your eyes gonna train on when the cameraman is shown when you get better technology when mirrors actually act like they're supposed to, instead of just being grey blotches.

Ben Grussi 05:40
And the next film after that is one of the very first films that hit the feature film mark, which was Clan Phantasm's Devil's Covenant, that film was very deep and rich, in the voice actors were very well done. The story was very well done. Um, the soundtrack, the just it really felt epic, to the, to its core, and really well done. I'm really glad that it was broken down into five parts, because the technology couldn't handle that much data. You know, it was such a big film that they had to break it down. Because Quake couldn't handle running a demo that long that they had to break it up into pieces, which again shows the massive undertaking that some of these guys do to create these films, because to do a two and a half hour film, especially with the tools that you had, I mean, Keygrip was a very good tool, but, you know, just think of all the assets and everything had to create and actually string it and tie it all together to have it. Work is just mind boggling. But you know, they did it. And it's one of my favourite films of all time, because it just, it just worked.

Ben Grussi 06:59
I'm moving on to the next one. So the other film that leaves a mark as well is Operation Bayshield. That is very notable to the vets, and to the public at large, because it also had a very cohesive story, it was very funny. Um, some of its jokes are very iconic. You know, as soon as you hear the joke, you can kind of know it's from the film and it actually has a couple of game publisher, game developer alumni that are in that film. One of them is one of the people from Ritual Entertainment that made the Sims series. And again, sometimes you get a little surprise here and there about, you know, looking back, who in the game development industry was in making Quake movies, you know, back in the day before they were, you know, hotshot and the game development, as we know, with, with Paul Marino and everybody else that have transitioned to that, after the fact.

Ben Grussi 08:02
The next film is not really film, per se, it's actually taking advantage of the cutscene ability that Quake developed. As people were making films with it, it's Zerstorer, or it's German, I believe for destroyer. And it's part the cutscenes are part of the level pack that was very well done, very polished, very professional. And it just basically told this, this dark story about this character, you know, going through this world, and it's being drawn by this evil force, and the music and just the scripting, to just tell the story. It wasn't player controlled, it was basically, you know, as we'll discuss with the, the Seal, and Neharer, it was just a very strong scripted, you know, sequences that were in inter disperse with the level changes, and so forth, just to continue to prod the story as you move along to your end goal.

Ben Grussi 09:06
And then I'm touching on the Seal of Nehahra, again, one of those grand ambitions, but, you know, it seems almost kind of contradiction where this film is so huge. I mean, if that's just the first part of the story, to imagine that, you know, a team of maybe five or six people and one guy, especially for doing all the voices for four hour film, and then in addition to that, making a level pack that also continues the story even further, is just mind boggling.

Ben Grussi 09:46
And then finally, for Quake one, we have the Quick Done Quick phenomenon. We're basically taking it from the early days of Let's Play. The differences is this is speed running where you're trying to finish a level as soon as possible, physically possible without actually using any cheats, exploits. You're doing it clean, and you're doing it as best you can to prove a strategy that you can get through a level as fast as possible. And the team has done extremely well with multiple iterations of it. They even took it one step further when they did Scourge Done Quick, where they actually made it into a narrative, where for the expansion packs caught the Scourge of Aragon, they made it so the player had to get through it as fast as possible. So the the angle was that the final boss wasn't going to blow up the world. If he did, if he failed, the world would explode if he got him. Yay. But you know, it was a very tightly packed story within just the realm of doing speed running it just, that's one of the ways to do a narrative while giving speed running. So that was the impact at least for Quake one. Now we're going to give you a break and then do Quake 2.