>>5255606
Quake 2 was a completely different direction, it wasn't even meant to be a sequel to Quake at all . It's just that the name they wanted to use was taken, so they decided "Let's just call it Quake 2 for brand recognition"
I think the Strogg were meant to be more like a Heavy Metal album cover version of the Borg from Star-Trek, than to be anything particularly creepy.
A thing with Quake was that John Romero was supposed to spearhead the development of the game, to be a project lead. iD Software hadn't ever had any kind of formal project lead for their games before, they just kind of made their games and worked things out.
Years earlier, Commander Keen had been a pretty big success, Wolfenstein 3D was as well, breaking new ground, then they made Doom, and it was more groundbreaking than all of their previous games combined (particularly with a feature like online Deathmatch). It was mega popular, the shareware spreading around the world, making the game a phenomenon over night.
John Romero has always had kind of a childish side to his personality, and with all this success and fame, his ego was growing mighty bloated. He would frequently be talking with press or playing Deathmatch with fans online. Initially it was great PR, but he really became a LOT less efficient at work, he didn't make that many maps for Doom 2, and when it was time for Quake, he had this really ambitious idea for this open world fantasy RPG, but he really wasn't putting in the required effort as a project lead, leaving the others to kind of spin their wheels a lot of the time. Little got done on the game, and too much time was passing, which is why Quake got turned into a compromise, a compromise that Romero absolutely loathed.
He did eventually put in the work to help make Quake, and he recognizes it as a good and fun game he was proud to be a part of, but it was absolutely not what he wanted to do, and the reason why he left iD Software afterwards to start his own studio.