It always bugged me when I saw replacement weapon/player models that depicted Quake's axe as being round, like in Generations Arena.
A year ago, I've posted these thoughts about the matter in Capnbubs' Authentic Model Improvement thread at QuakeOne:
I wrote:- Keep the bottom of the axe's head rounded, but make its top flat, like this one. This would make it realistic while still retaining Quake's style. This is important because, in the original viewmodel, what seems to really deal the damage is the sharp corner at the axe's top; its a blend of piercing and cutting, not just cutting.
Today, I've found this pic:
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh mankrip Hell's end wgah'nagl fhtagn.
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Funny, the very fact the player starts with an axe always sounded wrong to me, at least from the plot perspective. Originally that same axe as the ogre melee weapon. Also, the original plot talked about a magic war hammer, which would be much more fun to play IMO. But all of this is the result of the lack of coherence in the creative process (due lack of leadership in this area) this game suffered.
I know FrikaC made a cgi-bin version of the quakec interpreter once and wrote part of his website in QuakeC (LordHavoc)