Bethesda releases remaster Quake II, including new levels and retro game

Without prior announcement, Bethesda has released an enhanced version of Quake II for PlayStation 4 and 5, Xbox Series X and S, Xbox One, Xbox Game Pass, Nintendo Switch and PC. The game costs 10 euros on all platforms and is a free update for owners of the Quake II re-release.

The Quake II remaster, actually more of an ‘enhanced edition’, includes a variety of modern tweaks and improvements, including support for up to 4k resolution and wider screen aspect ratios, new enemy AI, and support for anti-aliasing and depth of field effects. Developer MachineGames also says that improvements have been made to the cinematics, lighting effects, animations and gore.

The Quake II remaster supports four- and eight-player local split-screen multiplayer on last-gen and current-gen Xbox consoles, respectively. PlayStation consoles and the Nintendo Switch allow up to four players to play simultaneously. Eight-player local multiplayer is supported on PC. Up to sixteen players can compete against each other online, and the game also supports crossplay.

The shooter naturally includes all levels from the original 1997 game, including the two official mission packs, The Reckoning and Ground Zero, for a total of 33 additional campaign levels and 21 deathmatch maps. In addition, MachineGames added 28 new campaign levels and a multiplayer map to the game. The retro version of the game is also included; Bethesda calls this version Quake II 64, or the version that was originally released for the Nintendo 64.

It is not the first time that a new version of Quake has been launched on the market. In 2021, Bethesda already released a similar remaster for the first Quake. Last year, Nvidia released its own Quake II remaster, which was called Quake II RTX because of the addition of ray tracing support. On the other hand, this was mainly a visual adjustment to the game, without updated content or other changes.

Quake II was released in 1997 by developer id Software and publisher Activision. The first-person shooter had to live up to the high expectations of a Quake sequel and was received with critical acclaim. By the way, Quake II was completely separate from the first game.

Updated, 8:37 p.m: The article did not mention that the Quake II remaster is free for customers who previously purchased the re-release of the game. That information has been added to the article. Thanks to TetsuoShima