I didn't actually know that. That's extremely cool and I wish other Quake games carried on in that vein as opposed to the rather generic cyberpunk inspirations.

stories ?
what stories ?

the "stories"from both are nothing more then here is a gun go shoot shit
thats it

originally ID wantes something more mythological for quake but ended up with what we got

There's a Doom/Wolfenstein retcon, but I'm unaware of anything similar for Doom/Quake.

http://doomwiki.org/wiki/Doom%27s_protagonist#Doom_II_RPG

i'd like to ask you (this is not intended to be offensive), if you could define the term "game design". also why does a consistent story belong to game design, i don't get it.

Nuff said. ;)

Well that's a very simple question which is rather difficult to answer. First of all, well... Game Design I guess. It's a definition, of sorts. But game design itself is hardly a strictly defined term with hard boundaries on what is and what is not a part of design process. My point was more along the lines that Carmack is a tech guru - he tricked the game's engine to do feats which were never seen before in videogames and from what I understood, that's what concerned him the most as opposed to any other aspect of creating a game. And personally, I don't consider coding an efficient game engine to be a part of designing a game, it's more of a process of realization of said design.

As for the second part of your question, story is, of course, a big part of game design. Theme, game mechanics, environments - all of these things should be strictly intertwined and when they're not, player will inevitably notice. Like if you're playing a first person shooter as a pacifist who troughout the entire game acts as if he never killed anyone, people will notice for a very simple example.

now that you say it, it makes sense. most games will need some kind of consistent connection between theme, game mechanics, environments, which is mostly realised by the story. i think i forgot that graphical design is not game design.

Quake is truly unique in having a storyline with even less thought put into it than Doom's. It's a haphazard conglomeration of elements that id created and rather than ditch anything, they just chucked it into one game and hoped that it would work. Which it kinda did, for the most part. So long as you don't even glance at the story.

Pfft. These days the whole Lovecraft schtick is getting so overused itself it's quickly becoming borderline generic as well. At least I'm getting mighty sick of the "You're a gaming nerd? You must love Lovecraftian themes then!" Ugh!

From the intro to Quake II -

"Contact with the colony on Mars will be re-established, and has nothing to do with the impending arrival of the mysterious aliens."

could be just an easter egg

quake 2 and 4 are the only quake's that have any sort of ( piss poor) story

True, true. Could be an indication of a story that's more fleshed out than at first glance, then again, it might just be a "hey let's throw a Doom reference in here fer the fanbois".

My theory: Ranger is Doomguy's father. :P