Quake and Quake 2 are, famously, very different shooters. The original is a dark gothic fantasy with a side of HP Lovecraft, while the latter leans hard into industrial sci-fi. I’ve always thought of them as entirely separate stories, but Quake 2’s latest official episodes—the Machine Games-developed Call of The Machine—explicitly connects the two, with the episode’s primary antagonist summoning several Shamblers from the first game to attack the player.
This overlap serves as the primary inspiration for Call of the Void, a fanmade Quake 2 episode that takes place after Call of The Machine. This episode throws together Quake 1 and 2’s menagerie in much more literal fashion, splicing the roster of both games to create an army of monstrous hybrids.
The episode consists of five “huge” new maps that mix “new and old scenarios from both franchises”. Whether this means the maps are inspired by or directly based upon levels from the first two Quake games is unclear. What is clear, weirdly for a Quake game, is the plot. The mod’s premise sees your character allying with the race of gods that Quake 1 bosses Chton and Shub-Niggurath descended from, after the Strogg took their remains and, well, Stroggified them (along with all of their minions). It is gloriously stupid and I am 100% here for it.
Naturally, the primary draw here is those hybrid monsters. There are 18 of them in all, plus two new bosses and 11 Prototype hybrids. The mod’s creators, Rest in Pixels, break down its bestiary in a post over on ModDB, so I won’t spoil too many of the surprises here. But a few examples include Quake 1’s zombies spliced with Quake 2 wretched marine prisoners, a Quake 2 parasite with the head of Quake 1’s dogs, and a Quake 1 Shambler merged with the Quake 2’s rocket-toting Maidens—the latter of which is truly the stuff of nightmares.
Curiously, this isn’t the first hybrid FPS conversion on the modders’ resume. One of the team, Drugod, was involved in the creation of Bloom, a similar rework that squashes together Doom and Blood in a new 8 map campaign. Bloom has an even larger amalgamated horde than Call of the Void, with more than 50 compound enemies battling alongside 30 original foes from both series.
You can download Call of The Void here. The mod’s designed to be fully compatible with Quake 2 Remastered, and along with the new levels and enemies, comes with a custom soundtrack that seems pretty darned great for an accompaniment to a free mod.