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id Software On Rage, Storytelling In Games
Tom Willits of id Software took some time recently to speak about storytelling as it relates to id's previous games, and how it will be a part of their upcoming shooter, Rage. He also dispelled rumors that Rage would suffer content cuts due to Xbox hardware limitations. Unfortunately, he called into question whether mods will be a possibility for the game, saying that the issue is still under consideration.
Hey! Some of the best stories ever made are just about a lone marine killing tons of aliens, Nazis, and hellspawn. It is just like Shakespeare. Only without the words and with more firearms.
More people die in Shakespeare though.
Nuclear engineers build weapons. Civil engineers build targets.
Just like how Apple is a relic from the 80's.
To help clarify, I'll translate some key excerpts:
FPS pioneer id Software doesn't exactly have a reputation rooted in strong game stories.
Here at id, we feel that any "story" beyond "here's a gun, shoot anything that moves" is for pansies.
Yes, in the past, we have developed games that have very limited narratives. But to say that a game with limited narrative has bad storytelling is really a narrow-minded approach to what storytelling is.
But it turns out that there are a lot of pansies out there, and it turns out they have money. So now I'm going to actually redefine what "storytelling" is in order to make it fit more nicely with what we've done in the past, and more importantly, what we'll be doing in the future.
Information, he maintains, is learned through experiences, and the experience of playing a game is what forms a narrative, by its nature.
See, here we go. "gameplay" ------>>> "storytelling"... Done!
The first and most important thing is start with a solid, straightforward plot.
*Really* straightforward. As in, get a gun, kill anything that moves. That counts, right?
Matt Castello, who penned the story for Doom 3...
I'll bet that napkin could be sold on eBay for a bundle!
If you've played Doom 3 you know that our pacing was pretty intense. It started up easy enough, but then we kicked up the intensity and kept it there for the whole game.
Non-stop hellspawn popping out of closets behind the player! It was insane, I tell you!
Broad stroke visuals really portray to the user about the wasteland, and what the authorities are trying to do to the wasteland. A character is not trying to tell you, 'Hey these guys are bad, look what they did to the wasteland.' You can see it for yourself."
You can tell this is going to be an innovative game, because we're going to be subtle. And also, we have a *wasteland*! How original is that? Seriously, it's not just dark dungeons and corridors - er, well, it's mostly that inside - but outside, it's a wasteland!
Willits says that Doom 3 players "zoomed right through" the game's highly handcrafted levels, so for Rage, "we have focused on reusability."
It takes an assload of time to hand-craft these levels. Appreciate them, damn you!
His bottom line for Rage? Delivering more choices and more variety for more people, while still delivering "classic id-style mayhem."
Don't worry, it will all come down to shooting everything that moves anyhow.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
Also the 360 is closer to the Wii graphically than the PS3 and desktop PCs. The 360 graphics hardware is designed for 480p with 4XAA.
I know you're just a troll, but this "360 graphics suxx" thing is an absolute fabrication. The 360's GPU is more powerful than the PS3's. Xenos is a prototype R600 (eg, HD 2900), while the RSX is based on the G70 (eg, GeForce 7800). So please, stop posting this nonsense.