This free Quake mod is also a prequel to hack 'n' slash Slave Zero X, which is a prequel to a 1999 mech game
Available now with Bethesda's stamp of approval
What's the most 90s way you can market your retro-styled prequel to a 90s mech shooter? Other than an Acclaim-style stunt where you offer people £500 to tattoo their baby's face with the game logo, I'd say perhaps releasing a Quake mod. So here's Episode Enyo, a prequel to upcoming "biopunk" hack 'n' slasher Slave Zero X, now available as a Bethesda-approved free add-on inside Quake.
Long before Fortnite became the marketing platform of choice for pop culture products, it was weirdly common to promote stuff by making free mods, skins, and maps for first-person shooters. We saw everything from the cereal box Doom mod Chex Quest (apparently popular enough to earn an HD remake in 2020) to a Dr. Dre and Eminem level for Quake 3, complete with skins of the rappers. I'm delighted to see this rather than a Fortnite skin.
Made by Ironwood Software, Episode Enyo is a prequel to Slave Zero X, which is itself a prequel to Slave Zero, a third-person mech shooter which Brendy enthusiastically described as "a okay game". The six-level campaign has us play as one of X's antagonists, the assassin Enyo.
Episode Enyo's a pretty fun one. Many weapons and enemies are noticeably based on Quake classics, with new models and some behaviour tweaks keeping them familiar but refreshed. I particularly appreciate the revolver replacing Quake's starter shotgun. Levels have some neat tricks too, with scripted sequences snazzier than you'd find in classic Quake. Too many encounters are based on surprises and traps for my liking—too many enemies lurking in nooks you only notice after you walk past and they start blasting, too many monster closets, too many teleporting in—but I cannot deny that it is era-appropriate. It'll not put it on replay but I had a good time.
It took me honestly too long to realise that occasional kewl, cruel voice samples like "Beloved by the bullet" were kill quips from my murderer and not part of the soundtrack. I enjoyed blasting baddies while bopping to banging beats while an edgy lady heaped scorn upon me. This delusion worked for the tone, and I must confess that's a fair chunk of the music I was listening to in the early noughties anyway.
You can download Episode Enyo for free inside Bethesda's modern version of Quake, on PC and on consoles. If you'd rather play within another version of Quake (I still use QuakeSpasm, though fancier alternatives exist), you can download the mod separately from Itch.io, Nexus Mods), or ModDB.
If you're curious, Bethesda have an interview with the some of the devs. I was delighted to learn that Slave Zero X's 3D backgrounds were actually built inside open-source Quake map editor TrenchBroom, so the two already had common ground.
Slave Zero X is due to launch on the 21st of February on Steam and GOG. It's also headed to Xbox, PlayStation, and Switch.