The Awakening, the Quake 4 expansion that was cancelled and never released, is now online. Destructoid reports that a near-finished build of the expansion has been published, arriving to coincide with this year’s QuakeCon — not as an official release, but as the resolution of a rumour that has run for roughly twenty years.
The expansion was shelved after Quake 4 met a lukewarm reception, and the build was assumed lost. That assumption softened a few months ago, when around ten minutes of footage surfaced — material that amounted to roughly three minutes of actual gameplay. It confirmed the expansion had existed in a playable state without giving anyone a way to play it.
How the build turned up
The route it took is unusual. According to Destructoid, the leaker, who goes by Jmarshall, is not an intruder into anyone’s systems but a veteran game industry developer who bought a second-hand disk drive that happened to contain the build. The whole of the nearly complete expansion is now available rather than a highlight reel of it.
Why Quake 4 was the odd one out
Quake 4 shipped in 2005, developed by Raven Software, and is generally regarded as the least popular entry in id Software’s series. It was technically accomplished, built on the engine technology first seen in Doom 3, and its campaign introduced vehicles to the Quake formula — including the widely remembered stroggification sequence.
Its problem was the company it kept. Arriving in an unusually strong period for first-person shooters, it did not match Doom’s horror, the frantic pace of earlier Quake games, or the campaign construction of Half-Life 2, and reviewers at the time reflected that.
The reaction to the leak has come from players and from developers alike, with the timing against QuakeCon adding to it. How long the build stays up is a separate question: material released this way tends to attract takedown attention, and nothing about the release is sanctioned by the rights holders.
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