Episode 1 of The New Eurogamer Podcast, featuring Quake legend Sujoy Roy, is now available to all. This took a little longer than expected due to faffing with RSS feeds, but you should now be able to find it in all the places you podcast. If you can't, please let me know below.

Also, yes, the Eurogamer Podcast is back! But it's slightly different to what we've done before, with a new host - me! - and a new direction. I've decided to move to an interview format instead of a chat show because that's what interests me most. I like sitting people down and hearing about their lives. Some of my best work on the site, in all the many years I've worked here, has come from doing it, so that's what I'm going to be doing here.

My first guest is Sujoy Roy, a name you might remember if you were a part of the Quake scene in the 90s. It's the scene Eurogamer originally grew out of, by the way, so it's a fitting place for a new series to begin.

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Ah, Quake. Id Software's hugely popular PC first-person shooter came out in the US on 22nd June 1996, courtesy of publisher GT Interactive. And now, as Quake approaches a quarter of a century of existence, owner Bethesda is giving away the game that started it all free to anyone who signs in to its launcher from now until the end of the QuakeCon at Home event.

Yes, the Bethesda launcher is yet another launcher for your PC, but this is Quake. QuakeCon at Home ends at 3am UK time on Monday 10th August.

In a Quake retrospective published in 2011, Jim Rossignol discussed the influence of Id's game.

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Quake 2 is over two decades old and yet the id Software classic is one of my favourite games of this year, radically re-invented from a visual perspective thanks to the ray traced remastering from Nvidia's Lightspeed Studios (based on original work by Christophe Schied). It's one of the most impressive examples of hardware-accelerated RT and thanks to the new 1.2 patch released a few days ago, a phenomenal game now looks a whole lot better.

One might think that Nvidia would simply move on from the Quake 2 project and concentrate efforts on the ray traced upgrades for other titles that are being worked on behind the scenes, but the improvements to the 1.2 upgrade are quite profound - and the most noticeable change comes from upgraded art assets. While the original Quake 2 RTX launch used physically-based variants of Quake 2 XP textures, not all of them appeared to receive the same level of love and attention. A key focus for the 1.2 upgrade has been to re-assess many material properties and get them looking just right.

Metal and how it interacts with lighting has changed immensely. The original release had metalwork that appeared to lack much in the way of specular properties, so even with the hyper-realistic path traced lighting, the material looked more like stone than metal. It's all change in 1.2, with art changes that dramatically change and improve many scenes. There are micro-level improvements too. For example, the original remaster's shotgun shells in ammo boxes use matte materials that show little differentiation between the box material and the shells themselves. Version 1.2 now sees individual cartridges exhibit metallic sheen and emphasise the coloured metals on the jacket.

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Welcome to another week of Five of the Best, a series where we celebrate the overlooked parts of video games, like hands! And potions! And dinosaurs! And shops! They're the kinds of things etched unwittingly into memory, like an essential ingredient of a favourite dish you could never put a finger on. And I want to spark discussion, so please share memories as they flash into your mind. Today, another five. The topic...

Health pick-ups! Oh how very specific - but I need to be. I'm not talking about health systems but the things you pick up to heal yourself. Used to be all games did it this way, but then Halo came along with its recharging health and all of a sudden everyone wanted the same. Now that feels like the norm.

But there are old-fashioned health systems out there (and they'll probably take offence at being called old-fashioned, so I'm sorry, I don't mean it in a bad way!). I still see Overwatch health packs when I close my eyes at night, and potions, which I've written a whole Five of the Best on, are a dime a dozen in RPGs. They're still out there, still crucial to how we get through games.

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id Software wizard John Carmack has recounted the experience of creating Quake, the seminal first-person shooter that turns 15 today.

"My defining memory of the game was fairly early in development, when I no-clipped up into a ceiling corner and looked down as a Shambler walked through the world with its feet firmly planted on the ground," Carmack, who is knee deep in Rage development, said on the Bethblog.

"This looked like nothing I had ever seen before; it really did seem like I had a window into another world. Of course, as soon as he had to turn, the feet started to slide around because we didn’t have pivot points and individual joint modifications back then, but it was still pretty magical.

"It seems silly now, but at the time we were very concerned that people wouldn't be able to deal with free look mouse control, and we had lots of options to restrict pitch changes and auto-centre when you started moving."

Carmack goes on to describe the game's online play as "almost an accident". He has kind words for its 3D graphics and modding, however.

"The most important thing about Quake for me was that I met my wife when she organized the first all-female Quake tournament. She still thinks Quake was the seminal achievement of id, and she glowers at me whenever I bemoan how random the design was."

At E3 Carmack outlined his vision of the next Quake game - what would perhaps be Quake V - in an interview with Eurogamer.

"Nothing is scheduled here, people are not building this," Carmack said. "We went from the Quake 2 and the Quake 4 Strogg universe. We are at least tossing around the possibilities of going back to the bizarre, mixed up Cthulhu-ish Quake 1 world and rebooting that direction.

"We think that would be a more interesting direction than doing more Strogg stuff after Quake 4.

"We certainly have strong factions internally that want to go do this.

"But we could do something pretty grand like that, that still tweaks the memory right in all of those ways, but is actually cohesive and plays with all of the strengths of the level we're at right now."

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id Software's John Carmack has outlined his vision for the next game in the Quake series.

While confirming that the next Quake is not in development, Carmack told Eurogamer there are "strong factions" within the US developer that want to create another game in the seminal first-person shooter series.

And discussions are pointing towards going back to the first game's quirky roots.

"Nothing is scheduled here, people are not building this," Carmack said.

"We went from the Quake 2 and the Quake 4 Strogg universe. We are at least tossing around the possibilities of going back to the bizarre, mixed up Cthulhu-ish Quake 1 world and rebooting that direction.

"We think that would be a more interesting direction than doing more Strogg stuff after Quake 4.

"We certainly have strong factions internally that want to go do this.

"But we could do something pretty grand like that, that still tweaks the memory right in all of those ways, but is actually cohesive and plays with all of the strengths of the level we're at right now."

Quake began life on PC in 1996. It involved a marine travelling through alternate dimensions to prevent an alien invasion. Quake 2 followed a year later, introducing the alien planet Stroggos. 2005's Quake 4 continued the story.

The first Quake is credited with pioneering online FPS gaming, but Carmack believes it benefits from rose-tinted nostalgia goggles.

"The way I think about some of those things, and I actually get into arguments with my wife about this, who loved the original Quake game, I looked at the original Quake as this random thing, because we really didn't have our act together very well.

"But because it was so seminal about the 3D world and the internet gaming, it's imprinted on so many people. It made such an impact in so many ways. Memory cuts us a lot of slack."

Adding his thoughts into the mix, id CEO Todd Hollenshead said: "People shouldn't worry that we're ever going to orphan or abandon Quake. We are huge fans of the game internally."

id Software's next game is Rage, due out on PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 this October. Doom 4 follows. After that, who knows?

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