The strogg can't be that advanced

[Unseen]

Quake 2 got my mind running again, the thing I always liked more about quake2 over 1 was the possibilities behind it. I've actually had nightmares about mass space assimilation absorbing the galaxy and turning it into a mush puddle. Or something similar. the strogg aren't anything that crazy, but it is a very nightmarish vision of what uncontrolled industrialization could do. Maybe ID didn't initially count on quake2 being a huge complex story, but the notion of it is enough to make its own imagination and expand. I mean the idea of industrialization was suppose to make peoples lives better. But there's all kinds of horror stories from the 1800s and onwards about industrialization. Unregulated companies forcing children to work in meat factories, well I won't go more into it you can read up on that yourself. But the thing is, the strogg don't look to advanced to me, they look like industrialization at its most basic pushed to accomplish a goal with little thought of anything other than what they aim to do, destroy other life. But you can't help but think, these guys can't be that advanced, and it raises a question to me.

Could life, on some planet somewhere in space, be completely set and stagnant to the point where all they do is focus on what they do. None of all this enjoy life stuff we occupy ourselves with but more like predatory. Kill, absorb, build, destroy.. And little else. Why make windows when you got dos? Ok comparing the strogg to dos is a little unfair to dos, but what I mean is, focused solely on structure and little on complexities. Sure the strogg got computers but do the computers actually show anything besides odd symbols and lettering? There is falcon iconography but do we even see birds on stroggos? So do the strogg even remember what a falcon even is?

Just something I was thinking about, what if our perception of life, love, romance, religion, beliefs, morality, would mean absolutely nothing to a different species. What if there was no good or evil, or even thought of the individual just a focus on pure primal predatory habits? Maybe I'm thinking to much on this subject but that's really what I like more about quake2 than 1. 1 I really enjoy the music, atmosphere, traps, and gameplay. But 2 its the lore, and the villains. Its pretty much who I think about when I think about evil space guys. Even more so than the empire in starwars or aliens cause what are they? They are just a hive, what the aliens do is probably more merciful than strogg basically torturing you till your banging your head on the ground. Just wonder if quake2 was actually more of a message about mass industrialization and symbolism, how we turn into savage robots who push for absolutes and anything goes. Pushing to win and destroy to the point that, no life is even enjoyable anymore and nothing else remains. Not even the icons of animals we use to revere. They'd have to be extremely rudimentary and focused on only one thing, and that's not assimilation but destruction. A universe conquered not like the borg would, but by non existence itself. Minerals conquering over life itself.

Also if you notice everything about the strogg factories and complexes are unsafe and hazardous not just to the player but to the strogg. Lifts that can easily crush you, elevators with no guard rails, switches that make platforms go down incredibly fast to where you can easily fall 60-70 feet. Yea strogg don't seem to give a crap about safety or regulations. Guess cause they can just scoop up dead strogg and recycle them.

[Gila]

Story: The Guns of Navarone ripoff
Strogg: The Borg ripoff

Symbols and architecture functionality: the game was made by humans, so it's a reflection and manifestation of things those humans saw and/or experienced. As for "skull and wings" logo and red-black-white flags in the first level, check some of the design documents in the "id Vault" section of the Enhanced rerelease. The description literally says (though it's blurred out) "Nazi Germany".

[Unseen]

Why do you wanna simplify it? Borg rip off? The borg are nothing like the strogg if you watch startrek you would understand that the borg value each other and glorify themselves by saying it gives them purpose or meaning. Honestly being a borg looks like it sucks, but they probably pump them full of some kinda chemical or induce some kind of euphoric orgy somehow. The strogg don't look like they do any of that, they basically pulverize you, hardwire you to mechanics, and use you as a patrol slave.

Just cause its a game shooter doesn't mean there isn't imagination there, if fiction makes the player think then its something more.

https://www.ancient-origins.net/unexplained-phenomena/300-million-year-old-screw-or-just-fossilized-sea-creature-002899

Maybe its just a fossil that looks like a screw, or maybe more life than just us on all those billions of planets followed the same idea and structure. Tools, metal, gears, etc. Its not that unbelievable and we did it. Now after thousands of years of stagnation with no extinction event you don't think strogg could be possible?

Not saying it is we better hope its not, but it could be. I get that the inspiration for the game is a big nazi gun, but what the strogg just magically thought up falcons? I mean if you just want something to exist with no explanation or imagination behind it at all fine that's cool...

[Cr0m]

it's not some huge imaginative leap to come up with an idea of cyborgs, or even a cyborg race. those ideas already existed. you can say they aren't a ripoff of the borg all you want, but the concept of the borg being a race that procreates by turning other races into cyborgs is the main idea of this whole concept, and that did exist with the borg, and probably others before that.

you're saying that this game is hugely imaginative but when people point out that these concepts already existed, they just took existing ideas and crammed them into a game (where carmack himself said that the story of these games was as important as the story in a porno), the story was really just an excuse to HAVE a game, to HAVE a bunch of cyborg enemies.

they probably said 'what will we be killing in this one' and someone eventually suggested 'how about cyborgs' and then they had to contrive some situation to explain why, and just took ideas from other places to do that.

imo the story/setup for doom1 was more creative even though everyone always dismissed it. the idea of scientists creating teleporters but they open a portal to hell by accident is actually a cool idea imo. i imagine that idea existed in some scifi story somewhere, too, though.

[randir14]

You probably put more thought into the story than Id ever did.

[Delabane]

I think the Borg were some influence. Remember Quake II was in development in 1996/1997 and the only real Sci-fi back then (on-air) was Star Trek, Space Above and Beyond and Lex.

[Gila]

While I didn't watch Star Trek and I am familiar with it (and Borg) only briefly on very surface level, the people who developed Quake II stated that Strogg are basically Borg. Two biggest Quake II influences were movie The Guns of Navarone and the Borg from Star Trek, which id Software of course were fans of and watched. The Railgun weapon was influenced by movie Eraser.

[Phoenix]

I think Id's basic thinking was that they needed something new to fight. They did Nazis, demons from hell, Lovecraftian horrors, so space cyborgs were a new way to go. As others have said, Guns of Navarone and the Borg were inspirations.

Where Id went their own way with this was going more military-industrial and in a very literal sense. The Borg in Star-Trek are super high-tech. The Strogg are more like "tech enough". It's more raw industrial mixed with 20th century military.

Regarding the hypothetical nature of the Strogg, I think what we're given in the game is "Strogg Lite". Every enemy encountered is pretty much autonomous. If the Strogg actually behaved more akin to their lore in the user manual it would be impossible to beat them because all their minds should be networked. While the individual Strogg units might fight autonomously, there would be some degree of overarching communication going on between them. This means as soon as Bitterman's pod crashed it would have been swarmed and he would have ended up more like Willits on the prison levels. Even if he had managed to exit his pod, as soon as the first guard was alerted, all of them would have been. There would be no need for Strogg to use manual alarm switches on the walls like we see in the game. That's not what we see though.

Quake 4 is what really tries to cement the idea that the Strogg are all connected... however based on how they behave in Quake 2 I have to question that. The Strogg will infight each other. Until the remaster, there was even a bit of hierarchy involved in that. In normal Quake 2, lower ranked units would not retaliate if accidentally hit by fire from a Tank. A Tank, however, would retaliate against another unit accidentally striking the Tank. This would then turn into a (very short lived) infight. The way the Strogg behave in the game appears less like they have some kind of neural link and more like they have some kind of onboard loyalty programming, but they are still relying on verbal communication within their ranks. We see external communication hardware - lasers and dishes - but nothing that directly shows the Strogg are connected to each other. They do not behave like a hive mind.

Now how to reckon the idea of linked communications with their method of selecting a leader? We see a few Warlord-class Strogg in the games. We have the Makron, the Black Widow, and the Moon Base Commander, which happens to be the same model as the Makron, even to the point of utilizing another Jorg unit. We know that leadership is determined by strength, and that despite being a unified society there are internal factions. I believe that would stem from a hierarchical structure rather than a unified collective. You would have the Makron, then specific unit commanders (we see a LOT of Tank Commanders in the palace), down through the various ranks. With a military structure like this, decision making would have to occur at the rank level to command lower units down the chain, so some degree of autonomous thought must be present. This would leave the room necessary for internal conflicts - one warlord feeling another warlord was not strong enough to deserve leadership, or two commanders differing on a strategy. This would lead to the idea of assassinating the Makron as we've seen.

Leaving Quake 4 out of this... Personally I think the Strogg are in a state of stagnation. They have reached a point of technological advancement where there doesn't seem to be a need to advance to keep doing what they are doing. Nobody has been able to defeat them so why innovate? They just keep using resources and searching for new ones to exploit. We see exactly one prototype fighter in Ground Zero, but everything else just consists of exactly what is necessary for keeping the machine running.

[Unseen]

Originally posted by Phoenix:

I think Id's basic thinking was that they needed something new to fight. They did Nazis, demons from hell, Lovecraftian horrors, so space cyborgs were a new way to go. As others have said, Guns of Navarone and the Borg were inspirations.

Where Id went their own way with this was going more military-industrial and in a very literal sense. The Borg in Star-Trek are super high-tech. The Strogg are more like "tech enough". It's more raw industrial mixed with 20th century military.

Regarding the hypothetical nature of the Strogg, I think what we're given in the game is "Strogg Lite". Every enemy encountered is pretty much autonomous. If the Strogg actually behaved more akin to their lore in the user manual it would be impossible to beat them because all their minds should be networked. While the individual Strogg units might fight autonomously, there would be some degree of overarching communication going on between them. This means as soon as Bitterman's pod crashed it would have been swarmed and he would have ended up more like Willits on the prison levels. Even if he had managed to exit his pod, as soon as the first guard was alerted, all of them would have been. There would be no need for Strogg to use manual alarm switches on the walls like we see in the game. That's not what we see though.

Quake 4 is what really tries to cement the idea that the Strogg are all connected... however based on how they behave in Quake 2 I have to question that. The Strogg will infight each other. Until the remaster, there was even a bit of hierarchy involved in that. In normal Quake 2, lower ranked units would not retaliate if accidentally hit by fire from a Tank. A Tank, however, would retaliate against another unit accidentally striking the Tank. This would then turn into a (very short lived) infight. The way the Strogg behave in the game appears less like they have some kind of neural link and more like they have some kind of onboard loyalty programming, but they are still relying on verbal communication within their ranks. We see external communication hardware - lasers and dishes - but nothing that directly shows the Strogg are connected to each other. They do not behave like a hive mind.

Now how to reckon the idea of linked communications with their method of selecting a leader? We see a few Warlord-class Strogg in the games. We have the Makron, the Black Widow, and the Moon Base Commander, which happens to be the same model as the Makron, even to the point of utilizing another Jorg unit. We know that leadership is determined by strength, and that despite being a unified society there are internal factions. I believe that would stem from a hierarchical structure rather than a unified collective. You would have the Makron, then specific unit commanders (we see a LOT of Tank Commanders in the palace), down through the various ranks. With a military structure like this, decision making would have to occur at the rank level to command lower units down the chain, so some degree of autonomous thought must be present. This would leave the room necessary for internal conflicts - one warlord feeling another warlord was not strong enough to deserve leadership, or two commanders differing on a strategy. This would lead to the idea of assassinating the Makron as we've seen.

Leaving Quake 4 out of this... Personally I think the Strogg are in a state of stagnation. They have reached a point of technological advancement where there doesn't seem to be a need to advance to keep doing what they are doing. Nobody has been able to defeat them so why innovate? They just keep using resources and searching for new ones to exploit. We see exactly one prototype fighter in Ground Zero, but everything else just consists of exactly what is necessary for keeping the machine running.

I agree with your analysis. That's basically what I think about them, that they can't really be connected or extremely advanced cause that's not what we see in the game. What we see is an industrial nightmare, and there has to be a source and reasoning behind it. I have not played quake 4 but this remaster has me wanting it. I was planning on getting the first stalker game next. But I think I might post pone that and get quake4 instead cause I'm interested to see how they handle the strogg.

But from what I've seen from youtube videos, quake 4 goes in a more... Surgical direction, while quake2 is just flat out meat soup plastered to tech. Which to me is way more frightening, its like their whole society is using organics to basically glue themselves together. This in itself could be a galactic nightmare.

And the comparison to an old nazi movie is fine as a direct objective plot. But that doesn't explain the actual background lore of the strogg. The falcon symbols, the reason why they invaded etc. Of course any story can get inspiration from a plot mechanic. Isn't star wars just guns of navarone? Big death gun they all gotta take out?

You see we could pretty much say everything is guns of navarone. Goldeneye is guns of navarone orbiting earth. But that's just simplifying a plot goal. All the quake 2 expansions, quake4 etc, didn't just stick to the guns of navarone. And the strogg have a definite feel to them, that makes you think about this concept. Its how someone put it about the borg. Borg would probably whup the stroggs ass cause of cohesion. They'd probably even be offended by the stroggs crude nature. That's what to me is so nightmarish about the strogg that they are basically a mirror image of fascism gone out of control, mixed with industrialism, mixed with... Like I say I can't say assimilation but maybe in a crude sense.
Just imagine the strogg could basically use any organic matter as their glue so to speak, hell they could go and invade a primitive dinosaur planet and fuse trex skulls to robots if they wanted.

[Cr0m]

Originally posted by Delabane:

I think the Borg were some influence. Remember Quake II was in development in 1996/1997 and the only real Sci-fi back then (on-air) was Star Trek, Space Above and Beyond and Lex.

i agree the borg almost had to have factored in, but i don't think TV shows were the only influences for id. they're known to have been pretty big into tabletop RPGs like dungeons and dragons, and other games like that, and take influences from that stuff. that whole area of 'nerd-dom' or whatever you want to call it has sci fi stuff to tap into. some of them may have even been reading sci fi books which have probably had all of these types of concepts going back as early as the 1960s or earlier.

[Captain n00by]

Originally posted by gila:

Story: The Guns of Navarone ripoff
Strogg: The Borg ripoff

Symbols and architecture functionality: the game was made by humans, so it's a reflection and manifestation of things those humans saw and/or experienced. As for "skull and wings" logo and red-black-white flags in the first level, check some of the design documents in the "id Vault" section of the Enhanced rerelease. The description literally says (though it's blurred out) "Nazi Germany".

That's a great movie and the Borg are cool too, so that's a "win-win" in my eyes.

And yeah, the Strogg are kinda "cyborg-space-Nazis".

[Cr0m]

Originally posted by gila:

.......The Railgun weapon was influenced by movie Eraser.

at least that film ended up being good for *something*

[Unseen]

Originally posted by Cr0m:

Originally posted by gila:

.......The Railgun weapon was influenced by movie Eraser.

at least that film ended up being good for *something*

I don't remember anything about the film besides the gun.

[Cr0m]

Originally posted by Unseen:

Originally posted by Cr0m:

at least that film ended up being good for *something*

I don't remember anything about the film besides the gun.

same

[Unseen]

Originally posted by Cr0m:

Originally posted by Unseen:

I don't remember anything about the film besides the gun.

same

I remember vanessa williams in penthouse tho.

[Phoenix]

Actually Shadow Warrior did the railgun first, but people forget that.

I'm actually writing my own lore backstory for the Strogg for use in Generations Arena that starts them off as a peaceful race that ends up turning bad for... reasons. Can't spoil it here, but if you can excuse a small bit of narcissism...

Regarding the bird on the flag, I think that's just the whole German Eagle iconography at work as far as the devs go, but then again I am often used as a metaphor myself so I thought, hmm... Phoenix from the ashes. Maybe something did happen to the Strogg in some ancient forgotten time, and their marriage of flesh and metal allowed them to "rise" from what they were into something stronger and better in their minds, and they adopted that for their symbol. The meaning has since long been forgotten, but they keep the iconography because it's always been there, and they are no longer what they used to be.