A Glimpse of What Might Have Been: Cancelled Quake 5 Screenshots Revealed
The Quake series is a classic favorite among many players, a titan of video game history. Fans have hoped in vain for years for a new one, but all those wait years are now behind us. A new Quake *was*, as it happens, in the works, and we've just seen a glimpse of what might have been.
Developer Tao Le, who formerly worked at the fabled id Software, just released some screenshots from a game called Quake 5. The doomed project was supposedly in development nearly any time during or near the 2010s. That's about when id Software was also busy working on DOOM 4 for some period before it got canceled.
So what do we learn from these revealed images. Mostly, they show us a few of the game worlds. Observe that these are not fully realized, completed levels. They are rather similar to early ideas or computer sketches, and they give us an unrefined glance at the art style of the game. Even at this unfinished stage, you can glimpse some of the terrifying creatures that players might have fought had the game been completed.
A Storied Franchise
For those who may not have known, the original Quake, the game with which this iconic series began, first burst onto the screen way back in 1996. The most recent that we've got was Quake 4, which was released in 2005. That something about this series is to its credit can be told by the fact that in 2025, the Quake franchise was inducted into the Video Game Hall of Fame at the National Museum of Games, together with other such classics as Tamagotchi, GoldenEye 007, and Defender.
While these cancelled Quake 5 shots do make one wonder "what if," they also make for a great piece of gaming trivia, a glimpse behind the scenes at a game that somehow or other never made it to market.
