At QuakeCon 2009, id Software's Tim Willits and Matt Hooper took the stage to show the first public demo of their upcoming action game, Rage. Built on a brand new game engine called id Tech 5 and breaking free of relying entirely on the corridor-style first person shooter stereotype id Software's known for, Rage wowed QuakeCon's attendees during a nearly hour-long presentation.
The first impression I got was that the technology powering this game is absolutely the best I'd ever seen. Running on a PC that an enthusiast can build for about $1000, we got an HD resolution along with fantastic visual quality at a silky-smooth 60 frames per second. But what's the most amazing thing is the texture quality - the rocks of the canyon that Willits started out in all looked unique and really popped off the screen with detail. This is due to the "megatexture" system that id Software has developed that has completely redesigned how a game uses memory to store the two-dimensional art that covers the game world. It's probably not worth going further than that to describe it for this article, but I will say that as game engines go, this is most definitely a revolution - especially with what the current generation of game consoles can do.
After a brief introduction to the world of Rage - it's a post-apocalyptic game where the main character has emerged from an underground vault called an Ark years after the bombs fell - I was a little skeptical. Wasn't this the exact premise of Fallout 3? Are we going to be saving the world again and making a better world for the few inhabitants left? None of that is clear just yet, but the mix of quest-based first person shooter missions, open world to explore, vehicle combat and racing, and some of the most amazing visual design seen in video games certainly combines a lot of what id Software is known for doing right with things they've never done before.
And that seems to make some gamers nervous: id has never really had vehicles to drive in their games, so how will this work? From what we got to see at QuakeCon, it looks great. A range of vehicles with different upgrades and mountable weapons will be available, and the vehicle combat uses a lot of slick acceleration and quick handbrake spins to keep your front-mounted guns trained on your enemies while theirs point at some cliff-side wall.
And when you're on foot, the action doesn't center entirely around just the guns being carried. The id guys deployed little spider-looking robots with guns (they were like mini-Spiderbots from the original DOOM) and a boomerang-style flying weapon called the Wingblade to lop off enemy heads silently from a distance. According to the devs, collecting the parts to build and upgrade your gadgets, as well as improving your ride, will be a fairly significant part of Rage.
But the design of this game's world goes beyond just driving around and tossing out spiderbots. The game's got settlements, missions you'll be sent on, and even a ridiculous carnival of a shooting gallery that'll have you fighting for your life against mutants - a fitting tribute to Smash TV, as your fight is being filmed for an audience to see - and using your impeccable aim to win even better cash and prizes.
For those who have been playing id's games since the early days, I will say that this is by far their most original and breakout project since, well, their early days. It's not because they went off and started working on a genre they knew nothing about - they didn't - but they're expanding their usual game design in a ton of new ways and are finally bringing one of their games out primarily into the light of day. For those who got sick of DOOM 3's dark hallways only an hour or two in, this should be a welcome change. I should also mention that Marty and Tim both used Xbox 360 gamepads for the demo, but for a second Marty also spun the mouse around a bit to show that yes, the mouse and keyboard work - and it was smooth and looked perfect. For those who were worried that Rage was going to be made primarily for consoles, well, I don't think there's much to worry about.
For someone like me who enjoys the technology of video games, it's difficult to not feel hugely excited about Rage's unprecedented detail and diversity of its textures, silky-smooth performance, and the game it helps bring to life. From what I can tell, though, the action will be as fun and explosive as the graphics are - many said that both Far Cry and Crysis were eye-candy games that delivered surprising playability and fun, and I think that if Rage doesn't collapse under the weight of its own hype before it's released, it'll stand there as well. As of now, Rage is intended for release on PC, PS3, and 360 sometime in 2010, but id's official release date of course is "when it's done".
