[smcl]

Possibly. Nowadays we might look towards existing languages like Lua if we wanted to bolt on a scripting system to our new game engine. But remember that in the mid-90s id and Carmack were breaking new ground and had to figure this out as they went along. It might have been overengineered if the result was simply that they shipped a single game, but we know now that what they built was a very powerful, customisable platform that spawned hundreds of mods and kickstarted possibly hundreds/thousands of people on the path to careers in the games industry.

So it's maybe a bit overengineered for Quake the game, but it turned out to be perfect for Quake the ecosystem (and everything that followed) to emerge :)