Rock, Paper, Shotgun

The now Zenimax/Bethesda-owned id have been eerily quiet since Rage met a mixed reception and underwhelming sales. I quite liked it, non-ending aside – it might have nothing on BioShock Infinite’s visual majesty, but the people-filled non-combat hubs between its more tunnelish combat were more convincingly alive than Columbia’s Auton population. In any case, Rage wasn’t the combeback Carmack and co needed, leaving us hoping that the in theory forthcoming Doom 4 would be. Half a decade on, there’s neither hide nor hair of it to be seen, and alleged sources close to the project have told Kotaku why that could be. Clearly there’s something in it, as it prompted Bethesda’s Pete Hines to acknowledge that id had indeed switched to making “a new version” of Doom 4 after an earlier one “did not exhibit the quality and excitement that Id and Bethesda intend to deliver.”
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It says something about John Carmack’s status in the gaming industry that he can hold a talk that lasts for three and a half hours and the majority of watchers are simply delighted. So, if you’ve got nothing else on for the next 210 minutes, here is said relaxed, cheerful, full-throttle, ad-libbed and fascinating QuakeCon speech in full. id’s brain o’brains chats about the problems with Rage and its messy PC launch, his love-hate relationship with the PC as a platform, those Oculus Rift VR goggles that are getting Kickstarted hearts all aflutter, Doom 3 BFG, 3D displays, just the tiniest smidgen on Doom 4 and, of course, a sustained stream of characteristically uncensored techspeak about the past, present and future of computing. Such as viewing images by firing laser beams directly into people’s retinas. Er…

Impressively, as well as talking for so damned long, he doesn’t sit down until the 90-minute point.
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While we’re talking Id, there’s something else that came out of E3 that you might find interesting. Bethesda frontman Pete Hines told Eurogamer that despite the lukewarm reception for Rage, they have big plans for it: “We’re looking at doing some things with Rage. But obviously the first thing out of anybody’s lips now when we talk about id is not, hey, what else is up with Rage? They’re asking the question they’ve been asking for five years, six years, seven years, which is, where’s Doom 4? What about Doom 4? As far as where we are with Rage, the future for that is still TBD.”

Which is interesting, because whatever the do with Doom, I felt like Rage was a move in the right direction, but didn’t quite go all out on any of the things that it was hinting at. The half-formed racing, half-formed exploration, half-formed crafting, all pointed to a deeper game which, if they concentrate on just one of those elements next time, might yet yield something beyond the usual adventure with shotguns. Id are also working on another shooter, which has yet to be revealed.

So, if the (reportedly false) rumours are to be believed (update: and apparently they’re not. Hooray!), the future of Doom 4 might be in doubt. Which raises a question: what do we want from a fourth Doom game anyway? Should the next Doom game keep it old skool with a key-collecting run-and-gun? Or should it up updated to compete with the contemporary manshoots? Do we still want demons on Mars? And should it showcase the next generation of graphics, or do something new with the way shooters work? If you were in charge, what would you do?

Personally I quite like the idea of re-releasing a blow-by-blow remake the original game in an astonishing modern engine, with the only gameplay concessions to modern design being mouse-look and so on. Failing that, a single-button iPhone game, like Canabalt with cacodemons. (Not really. Likely.)

Happy update: Bethesda’s Pete Hines says this rumour is “complete bollocks.” Hooray! Plus, additional denial.

This is pure rumour, but the Big K are reporting that a source inside Bethesda told them the company has made the decision to “indefinitely postpone” development of Doom 4. This move, made at a recent meeting in Dallas, apparently comes as a response to general disappointment with Rage, which was buggy on release and earned review scores of a less than 8/10 average (gasp!)

The story says that the issues surrounding Rage’s launch have resulted in “a serious lack of confidence in the project management at id”. This might be nonsense, of course, but it’s believable nonsense. That said, I am not sure why the company would deny id Doom 4, which seems like a game that would sell no matter how it was managed. Also, Rage seems to be doing okay in the charts, and we all know that it’s money, not review scores, that talk.

QuakeCon. QUAKECON. QUAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAKE-A-CONNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN. Just saying that name makes me laugh: truly, it is the most testosteroney of all gaming conventions. If QuakeCon and BlizzCon were ever to merge, terrible, terrible things would happen. Fortunately, id’s being owned by Bethesda these days means there’s no risk of that happening. QuakeCon ’11 isn’t far off – the doors open August 4. It’s going to be a big one, because that date means it’s a mere month before RAGE finally ships so doubtless there’s going to be a ton of exciting hands-on access for atendees. And could it maybe, maybe, pretty please maybe entail a first glimpse at Doom 4?

One way to find out (actually there’s two, but ‘watching the internet around that time’ scarcely seems like making an effort): pre-register now.
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That’s what id’s design director Matt Hooper told has told Eurogamer.

“They’re [the Doom 4 team] going in their own direction,” Hooper added. “They’re doing something Doom fans will be happy with. I try to support them as much as possible. It’s a good thing. We’re separated enough to be able to go our own ways, but still connected where we can help facilitate both those directions. It is distinct enough. It would be dangerous… We don’t want to make a re-skinned Doom [with Rage] and then Doom 4 be a re-skinned Rage. That would be bad.”

My speculatometer points to Doom 4 (or 400M, as we’re calling it) being an attempt to recapture the demonic themes and pacey blasting of the original games. Odds on for an unveiling at QuakeCon this summer, and a late-2012 release. But I guess we’ll see…

Veteran news-commandos over at Eurogamer have spotted a tweet by John Carmack saying that id will be announcing a new game at QuakeCon tonight. In all likelihood this’ll happen during his keynote speech, which starts at 8:30pm UK time or 2:30pm Dallas / CDT time.

What could it be! Well, we kind of know what it’ll be. It’ll be Doom 4. We know id started work on Doom 4 back in 2008, and in 2009 they said that they’d be talking about it at QuakeCon 2010. Still, exciting! We only have some 10 hours of precious ignorance left! Let’s make some wild assumptions. I think Doom 4 will be a shooter, featuring some kind of gun, with emergent weaponry based on repurposing the body parts of various demons. Like, dual-wielded kidneys, or perhaps a whip made of intestines. What do you think, readers?

Looks like id’s usually impenetrable marketing fortress had a crack in it after all. Actor Brad Hawkins chatted to GGL Wire about the motion capture work in the FPS sequel, which was enough to reveal that the game would feature large-ish squads of human fighters working together – a mixture of soldiers and civilians. Does this mean D4 will chronicle an invasion of Earth by Hell-sent legions? Who knows, but it was a snatch of gossip too far for Doom devs id, who summarily had the interview removed. It’s even gone from Google’s cache now too. Once again, the forces of light have won out against the terrible evil of people getting excited about an upcoming videogame. Hooray for truth, justice and corporate paranoia!

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QuakeCon saw, at last, the release of some official screenshots of FPS Rage. And guess what. Only one of them’s brown! Click on the pics for bigger versions.

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