Mods and Maps: Soldier of Fortune, Inc. for Quake -- Not the Soldier of Fortune you're thinking of.

A few months back, to celebrate its 25th anniversary, Bethesda re-released the id Software classic Quake on modern systems. Ported to the versatile KEX Engine by Nightdive Studios, it added the base game, the two official Mission Packs, the MachineGames developed Dimension of the Past made for the 20thanniversary in 2016, and a newly made expansion, Dimension of the Machine, also by MachineGames.

Going back through Quake was a nice nostalgia trip, and while I had already played through the game countless times in the past – most recently in June to test out the fan-made Copper rebalance mod – It felt good going through the tech bases and castles with nailguns and the Thunderbolt once again.

(It's interesting how Quake 64 minimized a lot of Quake's level geometry to fit on such a small cartridge. This secret in The Underearth is missing the Tim Willits/Theresa Chasar signature.)

The official port has licensed mod support, akin to the Unity-powered Doom remasters from a year or two back, with Midway’s port of Quake for the Nintendo 64 being the first supported mod. Though it does also support some older Quake mods if they were just simple levels and not involving complex scripting from recent source ports, which means stuff like the oft-praised Arcane Dimensions don’t work in the remaster yet. It made me think of many old custom levels from the early days of modding, and one that I thought of was during that wild west period, when map makers would offer to make stuff based on licensed properties as free promotion.

(Kinda hard to do that in 2021, but okay.)

Soldier of Fortune, Inc. for Quake is not what you think it is. It has nothing to do with the later 2000 game by Raven Software, this three-level pack existed as a promotion for a television show back in 1997, back in those days when people could just make custom levels and have them officially sponsored by movies and TV shows. Nowadays those same entertainment companies would cut a check to Activision to put John Rambo in Call of Duty: Black Ops – Cold War for $25.

(I assure you, this is something from 1997 and not from this year. Perhaps the show was ahead of its time?)

But what is Soldier of Fortune, Inc.? SOF was a TV series created by Dan Gordon, an ex-Israel Defense Force soldier turned screenwriter, produced by Don Simpson/Jerry Bruckheimer Productions and Rysher Entertainment. Named after the magazine of the same name, SOF was an action series involving a rag-tag group of soldiers trying to stop various people doing the bad things. In essence, it was a modern-day Mission: Impossible. It often aired in late-evening time slots alongside shows like Baywatch, which was one of those shows meant to capture some of the Baywatch audience by having an action-packed romp.

The show did get renamed for the second season, losing the Soldier of Fortune branding. Now called SOF: Special Ops Force, the show had a few notable cast changes, including basketball player Dennis Rodman playing a supporting character and Peter Graves doing an introductory narration, further leaning into the Mission: Impossible trappings. The show ended in 1999 after that second season, being mostly forgotten by the general populace.

I was reminded of this show’s existence thanks to a podcast. It Was a Thing on TV – a podcast hosted by a few of my game show colleagues – covers the obscure shows and forgotten moments of television. They had recently done an episode on Thunder in Paradise, another short-lived action show starring Hulk Hogan and Chris Lemmon stopping evil villains on beachfronts. Much like Soldier of Fortune, Inc., it was trying to capture the Baywatch crowd, but wasn’t successful at it, only having one sole 22-episode season.

Thunder in Paradise would get a video game adaptation for the Philips CD-i and DOS that was during the peak of full motion video, using an episode from the TV series but with more footage shot for the game. It made me think of similar action shows that got video game adaptations, and suddenly I started thinking about how a similar action show somehow got a custom level pack for Quake, back when that was a thing that could happen.

(Ah, we seem to be working with mod royalty here.)

The Soldier of Fortune, Inc. level for Quake has someone fairly notable behind it: Neil Manke, a level designer whose work I’ve talked about before. Manke had done a bunch of custom levels for games, and had a knack for working with cross-promotion with other brands alongside co-designer Einar Sakuas. This Soldier of Fortune level set would eventually lead to Manke doing promotional levels for PC Gamer magazine, featuring their masket Coconut Monkey or inserting covers of the magazine itself in mods. In a sense, this is likely one of Neil’s earliest ventures into making cross-promotional mods for games – if not his first.

(Time to do some Soldier of Fortuning.)

Surprisingly the level set does have a plot: You play as Matthew Shepherd, the principal star of Soldier of Fortune, Inc. played by Brad Johnson. Shepherd suffers from nightmares thanks to a conflict that happened in South Africa back in 1988. After finding the keycard in the briefing room and choosing the level difficulty, Shepherd falls asleep and starts having a nightmare of reliving the South Africa incident. Eventually Shepherd’s on a helicopter with his compatriots as they get slaughtered. He picks up a backpack with a shotgun, and gets to blasting.

(Not sure if Shepherd would wield a futuristic rocket launcher, but why let realism get in the way?)

If you’re familiar with Quake’s mechanics, then Soldier of Fortune, Inc.should be fairly straightforward. Find dudes, shoot, try not to get shot too much, and scavenge for secrets whenever you can. Outside of some minor scripting with traps and a few complex puzzles, it’s a fairly standard Quake level.

(They may look different, but they fight the same.)

Throughout the level, Shepherd will not only fight the standard grunts, dogs and ogres from Quake, he’ll start to fight fiends who are reskinned to look like mutated ape monsters, and shamblers who look like Bigfoot’s cousin. The skins are merely cosmetic here, they act identical to the standard Quake bestiary; so if you have some familiarity with fighting these foes in regular Quake, then you should have no problems.

(I mean, this is probably better than the plot of any standard SOF, Inc. episode...)

As Shepherd roams through this South African jungle, he finds out the enemies have been doing weird tribal rituals, and eventually goes down into a military base to stop them. Now, I saw one episode of Soldier of Fortune, Inc. for research on this article, and I’m pretty sure the show is relatively grounded in reality. Granted, a Hollywood depiction of reality, but I’m pretty sure there were no tribal rituals and soldiers doing strange voodoo experiments on the TV show. I wouldn’t know for myself as there’s not much about this show out there, but the mod’s plot only tangentially relates to the TV show, which might be a bit jarring if you were a fan of the show and loved playing Quake as well.

Initially, the mod only came with one level where Shepherd roams South Africa, but a later update added two more levels: The aforementioned military base where they were doing experiments, and a reprisal version of the first map where Shepherd grabs some mission-critical items before flying away. The mod then boots back to the hub level at the beginning. It’s a fairly short experience, probably no more than about a half hour total for those three levels.

(I'll always appreciate a bit of friendly fire.)

One cool thing this mod does is take a page from the Quake expansion Scourge of Armagon where the player can have friendly NPCs help out. In addition to the friendlies at the start of the level, the second map features a POW named Dale, and alternate versions of those monsters that Shepherd had been fighting up to that point that can be befriended to take out other enemies in the map. It was a treat to see this kind of fighting in Scourge and it’s no exception here. Just make sure you’re not in their line of fire.

(Two shamblers?! I’m honestly amazed I beat this without turning god mode on.)

Even with those supporting characters, the mod is not easy. I played through this mod on Nightmare, and it was rather punishing in spots, a bit more than standard Quake levels. If you’re a sane individual, play on Medium/Normal, which is the ideal way to play these kind of levels, really. Be prepared to quicksave often though, as it does throw a fair share of death traps in these two levels.

(Fairly quick turnaround. Thought Quake II was designed a bit differently, but I guess not.)

Surprisingly, Manke wasn’t done with the Soldier of Fortune, Inc. promotion. A few months after the second part, Manke released a sequel, Soldier of Fortune Mission 2, for Quake II. Once again playing as Matt Shepherd, this time he must find two data discs around a sprawling mountain landscape. No enemy reskins this time, so Shepherd’s fighting the Strogg, which kinda takes one out of the somewhat realistic world that was established in the first one. It’s also ridiculously harder than the original.

(The iconic Black Widow spider, referring to Manke's company Black Widow Studios. An interesting logo to be sure.)

After this, Manke would get a bunch of business offers to make more of those levels throughout part of the 90s and 2000s, and the rest is history. One of them, They Hunger, is something I wrote about on the site in the past. He would also do mods for films like Underworld, and has mostly gone silent in recent years. A sequel to They Hunger, Lost Souls, was announced not long after Half-Life 2 came out, but had been quietly canceled. I assume at this point Manke is happily retired, though his creations still live on through the legacy of those mod communities.

(Nothing like a little monster infighting to make an unremarkable level fun.)

Soldier of Fortune, Inc.is a pretty simple level set in retrospect. It does have some pretty complex scripting for a 1997 level, and is at least somewhat creative if a bit out there. It doesn’t stack up to more contemporary Quake offerings like Arcane Dimensions, but in 1997-98, people were still figuring out these newfangled 3D engines. If you’ve played Quake, you should have no problems really hopping in and shooting as if it’s any other custom level.

You can play Soldier of Fortune, Inc. courtesy of Quake level repository Quaddicted. Part 1 is here, Parts 2 and 3 are here. A full version of registered Quake is required. If you want to play the sequel, Mission 2 is also on Quaddicted, which you can get here. This one requires Quake II.

I recommend source ports to play these – in my case, I used vkQuake for Quake, and Yamagi Quake II for Quake II. I wouldn’t recommend playing these on the original executables, though they might still work even if you’re on Windows 10 or 11, but you’ll get a less-than-ideal experience.

(Dang, what will those wizards at Nightdive do next??)

And yes, Soldier of Fortune, Inc. does work in the remaster. Put the levels in the Quake\Rerelease folder in a separate folder – I called mine “soldier” – boot up the game, and type “game soldier” in the console. I recommend turning off the high-quality models for a more accurate experience. It was a bit tougher in spots in the remaster – a section involving having to touch a mask through a fast-flowing current in Part 1 was a lot harder to complete in the remaster compared to the original, which might be an issue with how acceleration is handled in the KEX engine. But it’s still beatable, even on Nightmare.

Yes, I know I’ve been writing a lot about crossovers this past year. But to be honest, I couldn’t think too much of anything “spooky” for October, and I figured this is close enough. I’ll try to do less of these in the future.