Preview of id Software's Rage

id Software's upcoming shooter Rage is nearing its Oct. 4 release, and the company recently provided some hands-on time with the game in its current state. GiantBomb described it thus: "In those three hours, I discovered a first-person shooter. Also, a racing game. And a car combat game. And an open-world adventure. A collectible card came, too. Lastly, it's practically every piece of apocalyptic science fiction we have known to date tossed into a blender, set to puree, poured onto a disc, and spread evenly over a seemingly lengthy and elaborate single-player adventure. In short, Rage is a kitchen sink kind of game, the kind so often labeled as 'missed potential' due to a lack of focus on any one particular aspect. I don't think Rage will garner any such labels." Rock, Paper, Shotgun's write-up is a bit more poetic, providing a first-person preview of the first-person shooter.

Comments

id color palette

[derGoldstein]

From the in-game videos released so far, the game looks fantastic. But it still has the same color scheme that id (and many other companies) have decided must haunt FPSs since the early 90's: grey, brown, beige, and some chrome. I get that it's part of the environment, but at least some departure would have been nice.

Re:id color palette

[ledow]

Really? That's like complaining that horror movies take place mostly at night, or cartoons aimed at young girls are mostly pink.

Even since the original Quake, I never understood the concern - those who were playing it at the time never complained about the palette until much later, if at all - and still don't know. It's a post-apocalyptic, dust-track racer. What colour did you *EXPECT* to see? Even if you had the ruins of something-or-other-colourful, it would be dust-covered and aged by the time the game is set.

If the biggest complaint you have is a steampunk colour scheme (because that's exactly what it is), then I really pity you for not seeing through atmospheric environments like that.

What, exactly, would you suggest you see in a post-apocalyptic world that would be colourful? Who's got time to paint the fence-posts when you're being shot at and chasing food / energy and NOBODY is making paint?

Re:id color palette

[derGoldstein]

Maybe I should re-word my complaint that FPSs tend to take place where the brown-grey-beige color scheme is prevalent. I realize that Portal isn't technically an FPS, but in Portal 2 you have (at least) two separate aesthetics. For an exceptional example of creative environment design, check out the trailers/videos for BioShock Infinite.

The brown-grey palette just gets boring after a while. You'd think that it would *especially* get boring for the developers, who sometimes have to spend years in that environment. This is a game in which you can strap a bomb on an RC car, throw a boomerang-like weapon, or upgrade your weapons in countless ways. It's not like they lack creativity. And yet so far the only environments within the game (that I've seen, anyway) are the same dust-dirt-rust that's typical of the genre.

Even if it's post-apocalyptic, you could find excuses that some structures survived. Possibly underground. I'm not looking for a rainforest, but there's no reason for all the indoor environments to look the same.

Re:id color palette

[YojimboJango]

The "Mostly brown and grey" argument always bothered me, so I'd like you to run a one man experiment for me. Stop reading and look around you. Count the instances of grey, and browns around you. When you get back compare with my results.

I sit at a wood desk (brown) with a hutch that has grey tack board. The walls are beige (grey and brown mixed), the carpet here is brown and beige patterned. There is wood coloured (brown) trim on the walls. My keyboard and monitor are black, so there's a difference, but not towards the direction of adding colour.

Now I want you to compare your results, and imagine how a developer at ID software, perpetually locked in their cubicle, would do. Think on that.

Now consider: Id is based in Mesquite, Texas. I'm not familiar with Mesquite personally, but the last time I drove through Texas even the grass was brown. When the creative talent at Id are allowed to leave their brown and grey boxes, they walk outside to a world where grass is also brown and the concrete is grey. It being Texas I'm sure that there is a high probability for guns and ammo crates to be found littered around the landscape.

You see it's not that they lack the creative talent to do colour. It's that after years of being locked in a brown and grey cube, with only brief access to a brown and grey world outside, it's the only two colours they can comprehend. It's a disability, and making fun of them for it is intolerance.

You intolerant jerk.

Re:id color palette

[Hsien-Ko]

It's mostly due to colormapping. Quake's palette was arranged in a 16x16 fashion. Try doing atmospheric lighting with 15 gradients of colors + a row of non-shaded colors. It's also kind of a lost cause for colored lighting in that limitation too. Believe me, I tried - the only good color lighting shades on 8bpp come in piss yellow and period red. (This would have sent Pentiums to hell by the way, even if you send that wizard Abrash to knock out x86 asm surfmipblocks for colored lighting)

Also there's been colorless games before Quake's released existence. MechWarrior 2's a good one. Entire palettes are dedicated to rendering the whole level a certain shade of color. No one ever called them out on it though...

Serious Sam is even dropping its trademark color for the third game.

Re:id color palette

[Artifakt]

To be fair, the lava was red, the acid, acid green (or that was very mean algae in those ponds). I seem to remember some very brightly hued things, all of which killed your character quite efficiently. And there were some levels where a bluish gray predominated. One fourth of Q1 was the Medieval style levels, and by all accounts that whole era in the real world was brown all the time, so maybe they can claim historical accuracy. ;-) Quake 2 actually was better - there were levels where the Stroggs had things lit up with a thousand points of blue white laser communications grids, throbbing power-plants, and display screens to where it was often quite pretty. All too many fans criticized that, in effect demanding more brown whether that's what they meant or not. In the same way, there were reviewers and players who criticized the stained glass windows in Hexen.
        Just as a guestimate, a quarter of the posts on this thread will involve somebody complaining in such a way that, if the company actually listens to those complaints and does exactly what they imply should be done, the complainer will still end up very disappointed that they got exactly what they asked for.

iD software is Bethesda now

[Sycraft-fu]

ZeniMax Media, Bethesda's parent shell company, purchased iD back in 2009. While Rage was for sure developed by iD, and likely without a lot of Bethesda input (dates aside, iD is in Texas, Bethesda is in Maryland as the name implies) it is now all the same company so not really competition.

I would imagine Rage, or rather the engine behind it, is the reason Bethesda wanted to buy iD. Bethesda has been using Gamebryo for their games but development on that has more or less stopped and of course it isn't their engine so they have to pay license fees on it. I image they liked what they saw of iD Tech 5 in Rage and decided it would be good to have that engine as their own, along with the development staff for it.

If the game is also their kind of open world games, well makes all the more sense.

Re:Bethesda has competition?

[rbrausse]

as I never heart of VATS (and I'm sure I'm not alone):

VATS is "Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System", where you can pause the game and target specific enemy body parts.

PS the first Googlöe result page is full of articles about lobectomy, in this case the abbreviation means "video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery"

Re:The groupthink in more detail

[RivenAleem]

I came from a generation of playing the SEGA with my brothers, Golden Axe, Streets of Rage, "lives and levels" of Kid Chamelon/Sonic/Strider. They liked games, but I was a natural nerd/geek and far better than them. So when Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat came along, the fun rapidly disappated as they got beaten a lot. Eventually I was left (post it's release) playing my PS1, and Tekken, alone as they wouldn't play me anymore :(

So now I know not to try to play head-to-head games at home anymore, sticking to games where we both finish the session happy. I play competitively online on my PC instead, where I can trash and be trashed by anonymous people.

There are so many 'vocal regulars' that say the same thing over and over again. Sony BAD, they tuk ur linux. My PS3 is brilliant. I can play games on it AND plug in a USB Stick/Drive and watch my downloaded TV/Movies. Sony never took away something from me that I never would have used.

I tried for a while to get my Fiancee to paly WoW with me, but the other PC is in another room, so we actually had to skype eachother to talk, and if there was something she didn't understand with the UI, I had to get up and walk over to sort her out. I resolved to only play co-op games where she could be right beside me, under my watchful eye :P

This is where consoles with capability for more than one controller come in. They are one machine, plugged into one TV with 2-4 input devices. If I felt that the X-Box had better co-op titles, I'd sell up in a blink and get one. But, as many games are coming up across platforms now, there's little to distinguish between them. (I'd like to avoid bringing the Wii into this debate, as I've played one and don't like the controls)

I really like playing with people in the same room. It's more social when the person you are playing with it right there. It's also very nice to get some post hard boss physical contact, which is impossible when you are across or in another room.

So it's possible that I have the wrong system, perhaps the PS3, with it's removal of other OS also removed all the co-op splitscreen games. Perhaps it's evil Sony's plan that people never get to play and have fun together. Perhaps it's their intention that all games be confrontational, where all other players are your opponents.

Perhaps there just isn't a way to make another Borderlands. It could be there there is no working formula for split screen games, and I should instead play the Sims.

Perhaps my working parameters are far too narrow.
1) Must be full campaign co-op mode
2) Must be complicated enough to interest a pro-gamer, but simple enough for a casual.

Are these games just so unpopular that the designers don't consider it profitable making them? Why make a game that 2 people will share, when you can try to make one that each has to buy individually?

Is making PC co-op games more profitable, as you have to have one disk per machine (legally playing). Am I being naive thinking that games companies are trying to make games for the fun and enjoyment of consumers or just for profit?

The groupthink is self-contradictory

[tepples]

You make good points. Now to help make your argument stronger, I'd like to discuss a few.

So now I know not to try to play head-to-head games at home anymore, sticking to games where we both finish the session happy.

Thank you for the insight that local multiplayer can allow for stronger group cohesion in a cooperative game.

My PS3 is brilliant. I can play games on it AND plug in a USB Stick/Drive and watch my downloaded TV/Movies.

But can you play anything homemade? I'd look up Sony's qualifications for licensed development of indie games for PS3, but the web site in question has been down for nearly four months. (I found this link in a Sony press release and have been checking occasionally since April 10.) Or if not for the PS3, then for which platform should indie co-op split-screen games be developed?

I tried for a while to get my Fiancee to [play some PC MMORPG] with me, but the other PC is in another room

Consensus is that gaming PCs can be easily moved from room to room. Perhaps some people are used to having laptops or small-form-factor desktop PCs designed for easy transport to and from a LAN party.

This is where consoles with capability for more than one controller come in.

And, ideally, where PCs with capability for more than one controller come in. PCs since about 1999 have had USB ports that allow for four gamepads and more. And TVs made since about 2006 have had inputs to show PC video: VGA ports for VGA video and HDMI ports for DVI-D video. So why don't people make use of that?

They are one machine, plugged into one TV with 2-4 input devices.

As are home theater PCs. But consensus is that home theater PCs don't exist. Consensus is that PCs can't be moved from room to room. Yes, this means the consensus is self-contradictory: people are willing to move a PC for a LAN party but not move it next to a TV.

Why make a game that 2 people will share, when you can try to make one that each has to buy individually?

David Wong, columnist for Cracked, agrees with you. But Slashdot consensus is that PC games are so much cheaper than PS3 games that it's just as cheap for a player to buy two copies of a $30 PC game that doesn't support split-screen as it is to buy one copy of a $60 PS3 game that does support split-screen.

2) Must be complicated enough to interest a pro-gamer, but simple enough for a casual.

Sounds like Super Mario Galaxy for Wii: player 1 controls Mario and player 2 shoots candy at the enemies to get them to stop.

Why are there no grass or trees in the future?

[elrous0]

Why is it that videogames always seem to presume that a post-apocalyptic future will have no green? You know, even in the worst case scenario (and all-out nuclear war) there would still be plenty of plant life (unless you live in the desert or something). Hell, look at Chernobyl. That place got dumped with fallout and there is still a lovely forest there. Is it because everyone has seen Mad Max 2 and assumes that the Australian outback is what a post-apocalyptic future is SUPPOSED to look like?

Re:Why are there no grass or trees in the future?

[demonbug]

Why is it that videogames always seem to presume that a post-apocalyptic future will have no green? You know, even in the worst case scenario (and all-out nuclear war) there would still be plenty of plant life (unless you live in the desert or something). Hell, look at Chernobyl. That place got dumped with fallout and there is still a lovely forest there. Is it because everyone has seen Mad Max 2 and assumes that the Australian outback is what a post-apocalyptic future is SUPPOSED to look like?

I always assumed that the post-apocalyptic setting was favored for video games because it made the environments a lot easier to draw - sort of a built-in excuse for blandness and lack of creativity, with the desert or Outback-esque theme chosen so you don't have to worry about things like trees.

Why the bland post-apocalyptic setting is still favored I can only assume is due to inertia. People are used to it, so probably wouldn't find a vibrant green Chernobyl or Fukushima-esque environment believable.

Re:Why are there no grass or trees in the future?

[blahplusplus]

"Why is it that videogames always seem to presume that a post-apocalyptic future will have no green?"

Many videogames are about conflict and war, and many do it to create a sense of barren wasteland. Most games center around conflict vs monsters/enemies. You wouldn't exactly want smurf village. Also Crisis and Far cry have done the green/tree thing just fine and so has Modern Warfare series, do you not remember the snow/mountain levels, or the jungle levels? I think many gamers have a bad memory. CoD 5 was jungle/trees for a long time.

Re:Bethesda has competition?

[c0mpliant]

Nobody said anything about it ruining the game, I simply said I didn't like VATS and prefered not to use it

"Oh no a comment on slashdot, I wont bother reading the full contents of it, I'll just look at some individual words and jump to whatever conclusion/subject I want to rant about" - I don't get you people