Played around in the Quake II remaster for a bit, just to see if it'd help me change my tune. I'm not familiar enough with the base game to be conscious of every way it differs, but I feel like I'm able to appreciate it a bit more if I come at it from a perspective of "id Software trying new things in order to evolve beyond the formula of Quake/Doom/Wolf3D"
I like a lot of Quake's level design, but if you haven't gone through the levels before, they can feel very confusing and leave you running around looking for keys. Despite largely bunnyhopping aimlessly through Quake II's levels, I feel like they're a lot better at funneling me towards the place I need to be, while not feeling too stifling. The remaster will give you directions to your next objective if you ask for them (in the form of little arrows overlaid onto the world) but to be honest, I haven't felt the slightest need to use it yet. Being able to backtrack between multiple maps also feels like an attempt to break out of the old 'level by level' format, even if not every unit really makes the most of it.
You can also feel them really working hard to find more interesting ways to gate the levels and facilitate their traversal than just the usual door/key/button combos. There are a few parts where you'll smash down a door with a crane, or blow it up, or hitch a ride on some piece of machinery, or destroy a fuse to halt a spinning fan—the sort of thing you'd do in Half-Life or SiN, but a little more crude. It's not a cerebral game, but it dresses up its obstacles a little more creatively than 'blue key in blue door'. It wants to create context for what you do—you didn't 'beat the level', you 'destroyed a supply train'. The veneer is thin, and easily ignored, but it's a step towards the more fleshed out, narratively interesting FPS experiences that would follow.
The inventory system feels like a direct answer to Quake's powerup system, and specifically the main constraint of Quake's powerup system: everything you pick up activates on the spot. In some ways, this gives the level designer more control -- you can restrict the use of a powerup to a specific encounter, or use it to hint to the player that something nasty is up ahead. On the other hand, it makes it difficult to reward the player with secret powerups, since you need them to be discovered before the player has already exhausted the area's supply of enemies. Quake II's inventory might take away a bit of that bespoke encounter design, but it feels more rewarding on the whole to find a quad damage, knowing you can use it elsewhere if the immediate circumstances aren't ideal.
My issues with the game are more or less unchanged—barring one or two aspects of the combat that the remaster did actually improve—but I definitely see a lot more in it than what I once did. Maybe I'll even finish it this time.
