Quake has two "deficiencies" that makes its world uniquely open to interpretation: one, a lack of a really comprehensive story, and two, a lack of thematic cohesion. Take, for example, the two doors shown above. They both appear to be constructed identically - but one has a red pentagram painted on it.
Why?
The pentagram looks like a relatively recent addition, and the door looks quite old. What does this imply? Could it be part of some recently performed ritual? Is it, perhaps, a sign that the monsters inhabiting this area have only recently arrived and begun to redecorate? If so, what does that imply? Are these structures realms we traverse through older than Shub-Niggurath's armies? Older than it? Who created them? Why?
Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II feels more lived-in than any game I have played before or since. And most of it is due to it's limitations -- the scale of levels are hinted at, levels are many corridors with long vistas, but nothing actually behind them. But it looks like you could get there, and sometimes it even sells this by having you erupt into the same vista, from a different angle, somewhere else in the map so it looks like you've traversed half way around the city in the time you've been fighting through tunnels and alleyways. The texture quality helps too -- everything looks bad, so you can get away with a lot, little looks out of place, and everything looks grungy.
but when you look at the actual maps where players can go, they look like quake maps, or doom wads that now allow you to have multiple layers.
it's a game with a lot of verticality to make use of the narrow spaces they carve out that aren't vistas, and I think it went under the radar of a lot of gaming history for that. but it's up there with HL, Quake, Doom, and System Shock for how it suggested the impossible while pushing the possible, and changed the vibe of shooters going forward
