"Welcome to the Arena, where high-ranking warriors are transformed into spineless mush. Abandoning every ounce of common sense and any trace of doubt, you lunge onto a stage of harrowing landscapes and veiled abysses. Your new environment rejects you with lava pits and atmospheric hazards as legions of foes surround you, testing the gut reaction that brought you here in the first place. Your new mantra: Fight or be finished."
Quake III Arena is a multiplayer-focused first-person shooter released on December 2, 1999. It differs from the other games in the Quake series (not counting Quake Live) in that it sacrifices a single-player mode to focus on multiplayer. Its single player segment is almost identical to multiplayer fights, although other players are replaced by bots.
Notable features of Quake III include the minimalist design, lacking rarely used items and features, the extensive customization of player settings such as field of view, texture detail and enemy model, and advanced movement features such as strafe-jumping that give more speed with greater skill in contrast to the digital, all or nothing design of many computer games.
Note: Unlike its predecessors, Q3A does not have a plot-based single-player campaign. Instead, it simulates the multiplayer experience with computer controlled players known as bots (see Bots below).
As the player goes on fighting through the arenas, a voice known as Vadrigar starts speaking to the player. At first, Vadrigar is very pleased with the player's progress, but as the game goes on he becomes more and more irritated with the player's winning streak. About half way through, Vadrigar teleports himself into the arena once the player has eliminated the other contestants. The player then defeats Vadrigar, But he says that he will now try even harder to kill the player. The fights become more and more difficult until the player is teleported to the map "The Final Resting Place" where a more evolved and more dangerous Vadriagar awaits the player atop a large platform that is shielded. The player must then destroy the 3 generators causing Vadrigar's shield. He will then attack the player, until he has been dealt enough damage. He will then teleport back to the platform, and the player must kill him from there. After he has taken enough damage, Vadrigar will try in vain to reactivate his shield generators, but when they do activate, they malfunction and spawn the shield inside Vadrigar's body, Thereby vaporizing him. The player's Character model can then be seen standing atop Vadrigars platform, as the new Lord of the Arenas. (Note: This is Quake 3 Redemption's story)
In Quake III Arena the player progresses through tiers of maps, combating different bot characters that increase in difficulty, from Crash (at Tier 0) to Xaero (at Tier 7/Z). The difficulty of the bots can be customized before the beginning of the battle, and the player can choose from five bot AI skills, from I Can Win (the easiest) to Nightmare (the hardest). While deathmatch maps are designed for up to 16 players, tournament maps are designed for duels between 2 players and in the single-player game could be considered as boss battles.
The weapons are balanced by role, with each weapon having advantages in certain situations such as at long-range or fired around a corner; the BFG10k is an exception to this as a super-weapon. Weapon balance was achieved by examining earlier games in the series, Quake and Quake 2 as well as extensive play testing with well-known players such as Thresh. In the first Quake the Rocket Launcher was so effective that it dominated entire matches while the Rocket Launcher in Quake II so weak that it was sometimes ignored. The Rocket Launcher in Quake III is effective but not overpowering, allowing it to be countered in many situations. Weapons appear as level items, spawning at regular intervals in set locations on the map. If a player dies all their weapons are lost and they receive the spawn weapons for the current map, usually the Gauntlet and Machine Gun. Players also drop the weapon they were using when killed, which other players can then pick up.
Quake III Arena was specifically designed for multiplayer, the game allows players whose computers are connected by a network or to the Internet, to play against each other in real time. It uses a client-server architecture that requires all players' clients to connect to a server. Q3A's focus on multiplayer gameplay spawned a lively community, similar to Quakeworld, that is active to this day.
In Quake 3, there are five difficulty levels instead of the normal four. All of them can be selected when starting any Singleplayer map. The skill of the bots in each map depends on the selected difficulty level. Easier difficulties slow down the bots' reaction and turning speed, and they will be handicapped at health and damage, whereas harder difficulties will make the bots even faster and more powerful than human players, presenting a true challenge. The difficulty levels are:
"I Can Win" (bots will get handicapped at 50%), "Bring It On" (bots will get handicapped at 70%), "Hurt Me Plenty" (bots will get handicapped at 90%), "Hardcore", and "Nightmare!" (both are no handicaps).
"This is the classic form of Deathmatch. It's every man, woman, and sinister alien being for him/her/itself as the players frag everything that moves to get the most points."
— Quake 3 Manual
Free for All (FFA) – Classic deathmatch, where each player competes against the rest for the highest score.
"Players fight each other one-on-one, while future foes watch as spectators. The watchers wait their turns to be the challenger who wrests control of arena from the most recent victor."
— Quake 3 Manual
Tournament (1v1) – A deathmatch between two players, usually ending after a set time.
"Slip into the other team's home base, grab its flag, and run home to score. What could be simpler? Now do it while dodging heavy artillery fire and you've got an idea of how this fast moving team game feels. Score the most and win!"
— Quake 3 Manual
Capture the Flag (CTF) – Team-based, played on symmetrical maps where teams have to recover the enemy flag from the opponents' base while retaining their own.
The maps in Quake 3 are a range of space and demonic places and thus, the music respects this and has different types to suit each type of map. This is in contrast to Quake and Quake 2 which have a single type of music. Quake 3's music is a collaboration of Sonic Mayhem and Front Line Assembly. Sonic Mayhem has released an album containing their portion of the soundtrack, giving previously untitled tracks names, as well as bonus tracks not found in the game.
In Quake 3 Arena to activate cheats, player should load a map with developer mode. To achieve that player can simply open up the console (~ or " as default button) and type:
/devmap [mapname]
[mapname] can be a deathmatch map like q3dm17 or a tourney map like q3tourney2. Player can enter any map he or she desires. Within that command new map will be loaded with a new message on the loading screen "Cheats are enabled". When a map loaded with devmap command, all players in the same map can cheat. Bots never use cheats.
/god - God mode, player cannot be killed except extraordinary situations like using Kamikaze or falling into void.
/give all - Receive all weapons and fill armor
/give [item name] - gives a single item to player item name can be vary any item, weapon or power-up can be given to player.
Following its release and due to its high popularity, the game has been ported to various other platforms. The most notable being the SEGA Dreamcast port which even allowed for playing against users of the PC version over the Internet which was not heard of before in a home console based video game.
The Dreamcast version was released in 2000 and featured online play, mouse and keyboard support as well as the ability to play against PC users over the Internet. It is often considered one of the best PC to console ports of its time due to its smooth frame rate and online play. There are still communities that play this version online on the remaining dedicated servers running patch version 1.16n and the required map pack.
A year later the game was ported to the then-new PlayStation 2. Due to the lack of a modem or broadband adapter at the time, this version doesn't support any type of online play. Instead, it features a 4 player split screen option, new maps, weapons and items and an improved single player campaign. In addition to these changes the game can also be played in 16:9 widescreen and is compatible with the Blaze HDTV disc to enable HD resolutions of up to 1080i (although this mode is not recommended as it reduces the viewable area considerably).
Quake III Arena was recently ported over to the Xbox Live as an Arcade title (named Quake Arena Arcade), the game features slightly updated visuals and other additions such as new maps and game types. The game currently costs 1200 Mircosoft points on the Xbox Live Marketplace.
The first Quake III screenshot, revealed on SIGGRAPH 1998
Continuity with prior games in the Quake series and even Doom is maintained by the inclusion of player models related to those earlier games as well as biographical information included on characters such as Bitterman who is named after the protagonist from Quake 2 or Ranger who appears like the protagonist from Quake and/or Grunts, in the manual, a familiar mixture of Gothic and technological map architecture and specific equipment; for example, the Quad Damage power-up, the infamous Rocket Launcher and the BFG super-weapon.
Added by TeriffiedToxic
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