Gibbing
In all Quake games, there is a special death animation called Gibbing. This word is formed from gib, short for giblets.
When Gibbing occurs
When a character dies, their health goes into negatives after reaching zero. Around -50, a character will burst into bloody bits of muscle, bones, flesh, and organs, while making characteristic sounds. This is referred to as "Gibbing". Some characters cannot be gibbed, while some must be gibbed to be permanently killed.
In Single Player levels of Quake and Quake II, enemies will gib if they reach a certain negative health value. Weaker enemies often require a smaller negative health value while the more powerful enemies require a larger value. This makes certain enemies appear more resilient than others.
In Quake, a Zombie can be knocked down by taking damage from any weaponry, but it'll shortly get back up again. Gibbing the Zombie with explosives, or particularly powerful attacks such as a weapon under the effects of Quad Damage, will permanently kill them. Crushing ceilings/walls and telefragging can also gib enemies, and as such are other potential ways to permanently kill a Zombie.
In Quake, certain enemies drop ammunition when killed (namely the Grunt, Enforcer and Ogre) but they will not do so if they are gibbed. Player characters in Deathmatch, however, will still drop their backpacks even if gibbed.
In Quake II, corpses can be further damaged simply by shooting them with any weapon until they gib. There is a Strogg enemy, the Medic, which can revive the corpse of a fallen Strogg, but he cannot do so if the corpse has been gibbed. Furthermore, both of the official expansion packs (The Reckoning and Ground Zero) introduce a new enemy that can also revive fallen Strogg in the same way (namely the Repair Bot and the Medic Commander). As of the 2023 remaster, a monster's corpse loses half of its durability each time it is revived. This doesn't affect the health of the living monster after it has been revived, but it does allow a player to gib it faster once it is killed again.
In Quake III: Team Arena, players must gib the corpse of Kamikaze carrier of the deathmatch after fragging him/her to deny the giant energy explosion following shortly after.
In multiplayer players can be easily gibbed with a powerful weapon such as a Rocket Launcher, although if one has a 100 health value and is hit by a direct hit rocket they will die normally instead. For gibbing a corpse further brutality needed.
Trivia
- Gibbing was first introduced in the 1993 game Doom, also developed by id Software.
- In Quake III: Arena, even characters like Bones, who is a Skeleton, and Angel, who is a robot, will burst into fleshy bits.
- In Quake 4, only Guards and Tactical Strogg can be gibbed. On the Xbox 360 version of the game, other enemies can be gibbed with the Dark Matter Gun.
- In Quake Live, giblets have been turned into impact sparks, most likely to avoid a Mature rating from the Entertainment Software Rating Board.
- In Quake II every enemy can be gibbed and all bosses except the Makron gib automatically shortly after their death. Flyers, Technicians and Icari always explode into gibs when killed. In the original game most enemies turn into the same pile of gibs when gibbed, whereas in Quake, each enemy character has its unique gibs. However, the 2023 remaster updates this to give each different Strogg its own set of gibs.
- In Quake and Quake II, a minor detail is that the first person camera follows the player's head after being gibbed. This detail is not present in Quake III Arena, as the camera follows the player's "body" instead.
Gallery
|