As John Carmack said a while ago, "Quake2 was a hacked-up, modified version of Quake as far as rendering technology went." To correct the recent trend of browns and grays in the game, the whole engine was redone from the ground up. Sporting a new 24bit-color depth, expect to find a lot more variety in the levels. But it's a lot more than just color. Q3A has many new features that are sure to wow any crowd... such as transparency (being able to see through glass and other objects) and mirrors (you should know what these are). Additions are rotating mirrors, volumetric fog (fog, but it has depth and thickness), shadows (more realistic than what was seen in previous games), specular lighting (applying a shiny "map" to objects, such as players, so that parts of the body reflect light when looked at a certain way), and the ever-famed curved surfaces (Bezier curves which tessellate polygons on curved surfaces so that straight edges can never be seen, at any distance). Although most of these features have already been seen in Unreal, id knows what they are during when it comes to making eerie environments. With the use of curved surfaces, more dramatic and realistic levels can be made. Player models will use many more polygons, as well as the levels themselves. There is player LOD (level of detail), to help slower computers speed things up by dynamically "deleting" polygons from models depending on distance, without a noticeable difference.

But how will these graphical improvements affect gameplay? Mirrors are quite a gas, and a room with many mirrors can confuse the hell out of your opponents, as well as yourself. There are rumors of a level with the whole ceiling being a mirror. Just imagine the possibilities; seeing your enemies around corners before they see you. Fog has thickness and depth, so you can run through it without being seen by others. Also, if you are being perused by someone else, you can run into a patch of fog and literally disappear.

Levels are also affected by the new graphics engine. There are 3 main types of levels, each taken from preview games: Geigerish organic (new style discussed later), Industrial (Quake 2 style), and Gothic (Quake style). The newly invented organic style of maps was brought on by Q3A's curved surfaces, creating strange life-like looking architecture which wraps itself around walls and floors, generating the effect that you are fighting in something "alive". The gothic setting is what you would come to expect from Quake and maybe even the first Quake mission pack. Dark eerie environments are the setting in which the remains of large castles engulf the landscape. Meanwhile, the Industrial setting has lava-covered grounds and long pipes protruding out of the walls. Each one brings a different feel to the game play.