By Jim Rossignol on July 1st, 2011 at 8:41 am.
How does Rage fit into Id’s history? Bethesda attempt to explain in a new video, which you can see below. There’s some new Rage footage, but also footage of a bunch of classic Id games, providing a bit of perspective on where Id went after Wolfenstein. The video has Carmack, Hollenshead and others doing a bit of talking, and there’s a crumb of insight on the megatexture tech, and how that will – apparently – be exploited properly in Rage.
Rage is starting to look interesting, I think.
To me, Rage just looks like Borderlands with less character. The environments/enemies/weapons/vehicles have the same look & feel to them (sans cartoony rendering, obviously).
I’m sure the tech is awesome, but what will it really mean for the game? How will it make Rage better, or even just comparable to Borderlands?
EDIT: Also, how many times can they mention John Carmack in one video? We get it…
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The ‘borderlands’ styling is a throwback to the Max Max films of the 80′s, so neither games are being original in that respect, in fact Rage looks to have ‘learned’ a lot from Fallout. I also think Rage went into development before Borderlands was even announced.
I think Rage is going to be far more immersive that Borderlands (and I love the latter game as well) the NPC bots look absolutely awesome!
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Better gunplay
Better AI
Better exploration, crafting
More integrated vehicle experience
Better balance (was horrible in Borderlands)
And hell, it’s not like Borderlands have lots of character, after the first hour of play.
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I enjoyed Borderlands but it wasn’t that good mate. And Rage is a totally different sort of game. It’s an FPS. A proper one with loads of gunplay not an RPG in FPS clothing.
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@Turin Turambar
And better Art!!!!!!!!!!
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Yeah, the more I’ve seen and read of RAGE, the more interested in it I’ve become. Certainly more than Borderlands, which to be honest, I found a bit of a snooze-fest.
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Funny, it reminds me of Fallout 3/NV, just a bit more gritty.
And forget Carmack, how many times did they point out that they invented the FPS? Got it the first time guys, congratz, but don’t rub it in.
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Well the title of the video is “Legacy of id”. And really, that’s unarguably their biggest legacy. I mean some muppet’s inevitably going to come in here spouting about how “Wolfenstein wasn’t the first FPS”, and to an extent that’s true, but id effectively crafted the genre into the form that it’s in today. The fundamental ideas and concepts, the multiplayer architecture and effective genesis of the online FPS scene. Massive support for modding. Engine licensing. And then those aspects continued to evolve through the Quake franchise as well.
Really, you can’t get much more important than that when it comes to id. It’s not like Commander Keen made a huge splash.
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There’s a chance that it won’t have creepy dead-eyed people like Borderlands did?
This is not a Gearbox insult, they did a good job with it, but it’s something I’ve noticed in every UDK game ever. The facial expression/morphing technology absolutely sucks. I spotted this first in Mass Effect (no insult to Bioware), and I’ve since seen it in the Gears of War games, and just about every other game that uses UDK as its base and tries to have even mildly expressive characters.
Borderlands looked like Action Figure Land™ because of it and that really put me off. I was forced to look away at some points of the facial close-ups in Mass Effect 2 because I didn’t want to be exposed to dead-eyed Shepard who stared through people rather than at them. The crew of the Normandy all looked like they were doped up on something, probably an inability to animate the eyes properly, but they all looked like they had some sort of lazy eye syndrome.
I reeeally dislike UDK facial technology. So if there’s one thing Id has a chance of doing better then it’s that. Things don’t seem to have improved much in UDK 3.5 either, to be honest, as Bulletstorm suffered with the same problem. Bulletstorm was a pretty fun game, I’m with TotalBiscuit on that, but I still can’t get away from how empty the characters looked, it’s like they were only half alive, and it’s a UDK thing. This is something that Source gets right (see: Facial animations in the likes of TF2.) that the UDK hasn’t even begun to yet.
So one area where this could do better than Borderlands is facial animations. Perhaps this won’t have half-zombified characters that scare the hell out of me.
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Looks deeper and more realised han Borderlands. Borderlands felt more like a turbo-developed game that wasn’t what it was originally envisioned, but kind of rushed out the door when they ran out of money for future development.
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Hey did any of you other guys notice that games that are in the same general setting and aim for a well-established aesthetic tend to share visual features? I know, it’s pretty shocking. I mean, I keep on seeing all these “science fiction” games that contain lots of shiny metal and powered armor and a preponderance of blue and silvery hues. Have you looked at the cutscenes in Starcraft 2 and Mass Effect? They have similar visual elements! It’s really weird once you start noticing it!
Oh and this is even wilder — some games share both the same general visual and gameplay style! There’s this game called Modern Warfare 2, came out two years ago, that has a bunch of scenes set in dusty, brownish, Middle Eastern urban areas where you shoot men from the first person perspective with modern high-tech rifles. And I just saw a trailer for this game “Battlefield 3″ which has the same stuff in it. They’re basically the same game!
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Fallout 3 is an open-world RPG. Borderlands is a Diablo loot game married to a (weak) shooter with a heavy multiplayer focus. Rage looks like it is a single-player-focused, story-driven pure FPS.
If you made a list of “games similar in gameplay to Rage” and ranked them, Borderlands wouldn’t be in the first 100 and Fallout 3 wouldn’t be in the first 5,000.
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“Really, you can’t get much more important than that when it comes to id. It’s not like Commander Keen made a huge splash.”
At the time, Commander Keen was huge, because it was one of the few PC games at the time that proved that PC games could look as good as the consoles. (Remember: these were the days when the standard amount of memory that came with your computer was less than a megabyte.) When CK came out, a lot of successful homebrew/shareware games were still being made with ASCII or CGA graphics. But also at the time, “successful” meant a hundred sales or so of something developed by one programmer.
Then CK comes along and really pushes the limits of EGA graphics. Fast scrolling, high framerates, (relatively) fast character movement with smooth animation, and huge variety of levels and character designs. It was the first Id game to have an engine licensed out to third parties.
Commander Keen was actually quite special. It doesn’t seem as special because it was revolutionary. But would there be so many Dopefish cameos in so many games if it wasn’t so special?
We now take it for granted that our desktops have better graphics than the latest Nintendo console, but originally it was the other way around. Commander Keen was one of the very first games to change all that.
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It’s “Master Of DOOM the PC Game” John Carmack making a _console_ game.
That in itself makes it over 9000 different levels of fail and likely to become everything that is wrong with gaming today.
PC is what made you; god dammit Carmack, in turn make stuff FOR the PC!
It shouldn’t be an afterthought, but THE Nr 1 target platform. Always.
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And there’s me thinking it was pronounced “Eye Dee” software for about 20 years. Huh.
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yep, me too
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I’ve known that it’s “id” for about 5 years now, and i still pronounce it eye dee.
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I always link the name to ‘the Id’ in the Lost in Space TV program!!
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Id, Ego and Super-Ego (who I can only assume was John Romero)
though no bitches were made in the making of this video
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Me too… Next we’ll find out the EA is pronounced ‘ugh’…
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Everytime someone says this, I find it extraordinary that in those 23 years since id became a brand that there’s people who haven’t seen a single video where it was pronounced. Really, it’s not surprising that you’d think it was called eye dee, because most people don’t know about Freud’s theories, but that you somehow managed to never see a single piece of video, a single soundbite, anywhere, ever, where they said it. THAT is impressive in this day of information video spam.
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Nooo! They’re spelling it wrong! Carmack, learn your stuff, dude.
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I had actually been pronouncing it the Freudian way from the beginning but then a friend told me off for pronouncing it wrong (around the time Quake 3 went gold). So ‘Eye-Dee’ it was for several years until I saw John Carmack’s keynote at the Apple WWDC in 2007 where he showed the world id Tech 5 for the first time. I felt simultaneously vindicated and like a total idiot.
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Considering the horrifically contorted egos in this video, “id” and freud now make sense
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Errr… Me Nine! I have and will always pronounce it ‘Eye Dee’, Carmack clearly has it all wrong!
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Where can I get one of those IDKFA t-shirts?
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http://www.retrogt.com/retro-t-shirts/IDKFA-T-Shirt-165.cfm
Google is your friend.
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Give my search habits some credit. Not really interested in the Cafepress-style knockoffs with the cribbed DOOM font. I want what Kevin Cloud’s wearing.
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I have no idea where you can get the actual shirt, but here’s an SVG you can give to your local print shop:
http://ubuntuone.com/p/12BV/
I made it from a screenshot from the video in the article, so it should match quite nicely.
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That’s… actually really, really neat! Thanks!
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“We want to add something we haven’t done before.”
Oh boy, Rage will have *gasp* A STORY?
“So you’re not running through the same corridors for 20 hours straight.”
Wait, I thought that was an id’s game!
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That’s somewhat unfair.
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It’s pretty accurate as I remember.
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I took that to mean they were trying to avoid the re-use of the same visual spaces re-dressed with a slightly different internal layouts and different enemy distributions, the first example of which I can remember was the original Halo; some of those levels were maddening for how repetitive they were. Go play Quake and tell me how many of those environments are reused from one part of a level to the next, or from level to level. Even Doom 3 worked hard to try and make their levels visually different despite being part of the same complex.
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I imagine, as with all ID games the storyline in Rage will play second fiddle to the gameplay, and that’s exactly how it should be. Always.
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Is it normal to develop games in the dark like that?
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A typical id Software dev. environment: “Scary, Dark, Fast” XD
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I’d like to ask the same.
This is probably to “get in the mood”, but what about their eyes?
After I saw the all horror depicted in doom3, I can’t stop thinking that there are some people in there that are almost sick. Can you imagine texturing a corpse for hours in that dark room, with reference pictures?
damn
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Yes, well, at least it’s pretty common. The offices I’ve worked in and interviewed at often have a dark area for the artists.
Artists are very picky about colour, and ambient light can make judging colour accurately hard.
We often find it quite a conflict – artists want the office like a cave and the coders would like a bit more light! At my last company they were perpetually taking light bulbs out of the ceiling lights to make some areas darker than others.
It’s complicated by the use of cintiques which are pointing generally towards the ceiling, where there are often rather bright lights!
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But will it have INFINITE DRAGONS?
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And DINOSAURS?
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Infinite dragons only matters if you can have random dance-offs with them.
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I’m looking forward to Rage, but that circle-jerk was just painful to watch.
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Not really. They all seem focused on Carmac.
They’re really pushing the tech front (and so Carmac), rather than the actual game. All I know so far is its got guns, cars and Megatextures (which I’m sure have been around for a while- ET Quake Wars?). I’d be more interested to see how open the world is, oh and potential for stealth. Right now I’m imagining it as a slightly more restricted STALKER, which is no bad thing.
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Let’s face it, the clip is really aimed at console players who aren’t so familiar with id.
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Lol yeah circle jerk indeed, with carmack in the middle, naked except for strategic rose petals **shudder** “OH GOD JOHN DID I SPAFF IN YOUR EYE? Let me wipe that off …”
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Ok we get it you created the FPS genre.
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Ok, we get it: you’re sensitive to repetition.
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Fortunately with the power of MegaTextures, you need never see a repeated texture in an Id game again!
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I liked every Id game. Doom 3 was my least favorite but it was a decent core game with nice visuals and a couple of cool ideas spread too thin amongst a 15-20 h campaign. I really think rage is going to be great just because the actual fighting is going to be a lot of fun. A lot of fpss allow them selves to get into gameplay ruts.
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Well I already have a watch, but I’m still tempted by this free shipping… FREE SHIPPING! At last Sam, you’re becoming a crafty consumer…
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SHOES. SHIPPING. SHOES.
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Meh.
The animations looked weak – the throwing knife seemed to be a soft, floaty throw which then flips a dude over sideways, and the characters still seem to talk to you in pose-pose-pose-pose rather than a flowing animation. The character shading looked blotchy. Most of the environments were corridors and the “unique visual style” was a whole lot of monochromatic areas. The much
wanked aboutvaunted tech of Megatexture just looked like heaps of decal maps.They talk a lotta talk, but I’m not really seeing it.
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Even if it’s not blowing your mind, the fact that they’re doing it on X360 at 720p and 60fps is impressive in a way that is rather more useful to most folks than, say, Crysis was back in 2007.
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Try throwing that many detailed decals on top of each other in any other engine and enjoy your ten day compile time and 3 frames per second gameplay?
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Never argue from ignorance, Brett.
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So basically DNF but without the shrink ray
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I’m curious, what is it like to be so cynical and jaded? Was that even worth the time it took to type?
Rage looks great. And the pedigree has to count for something, right?
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Other than the fact that it’s a first person shooter, I don’t really see where you’re coming from?
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Matt Hooper looks like Peter Stormare, the actor who played the other kidnapper, in Fargo.
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That struck me too.
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October is just going to be an awesome month for games.
It’s always exciting when id bring out a new game engine. No other FPP game ever feels as ‘right’ and as comfortable as a Carmack engine.
Then of course, there’s the fallout of games that will use the id.5 engine.
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Heh. I see what you did there, my friend, and I applaud it. :)
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Hang on a second. Is that John Goodman I hear?!
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That was my reaction, too!
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I never though I’d say this about a new Id engine game, but it’s looking pretty mediocre in the graphics department. Not very impressive at all.
I do like the way the core shooting gameplay looks, though. The animations and overall presentation of the guns shooting and guys being shot is top-notch. I guess that’s to be expected from Id, but it sure is nice looking regardless.
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+1 for lots of screens with visible iD development system on them for spods.
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Someone needs to tell the video editor that when the people are talking about “Wolfenstein” being the original FPS, showing the box for 2001′s “Return to Castle Wolfenstein” is something of a blunder.
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Why didn’t id apply for patent for FPS gameplay?
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And here’s me thinking it was “eye-dee”, not Id.
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Also yay for OpenGL!
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At around the 4 minute mark, Carmack quips, “We are arguably the best looking game on the consoles today and the point is we are running at two times the framerate [60FPS] of what other people might argue is the best looking console game.” Was that a dig at Battlefield 3??? (Not that it really matters to us PC folk, but…)
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Something about John Goodman’s voice in a game throws me off.
Ah fuck it Dude; let’s go bowling.
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