Id divulge Rage at QuakeCon

Mike Bantick
Sunday, 05 August 2007 16:47

Your IT - Entertainment

The id software specific QuakeCon has brought forth a new franchise from the makers of Doom, Quake and Return To Castle Wolfenstein.  Rage takes the First Person Shooter into, literally, unknown territory using id softwares Tech 5 graphics engine.

Though the E3 Media & Business Summit dust is yet to settle, big developers are pumping out new gaming info that you would have thought could have been presented at the summit.

Still big players such as Blizzard (World of Warcraft, Starcraft, Diablo) and id Software (Doom, Quake) are above summits and instead host their own shows.  Right now both BlizzCon and QuakeCon are on.

Over in the id software camp they are ready to hit the big screen again (if Doom with 'The Rock' wasn't enough).  This time with a licensing of the rights to Return to Castle Wolfenstein to Columbia TriStar.

Todd Hollenshead of id told Usatoday ;" To me the thing that is exceptionally cool about this is the team we are working with, (writer and director) Roger Avary and (producer) Samuel Hadida (Silent Hill and Resident Evil) have experience in making successful movie adaptations of video games. It's the first time ever I've had the opportunity to sit down and talk over the table about anything from id, especially one of my personal favorites, with an Academy Award winner (in 1995 for the screenplay for Pulp Fiction). I'm excited about the potential."

Expect more Nazi pummelling along with occult happenings to hit the big screen sometime in the future.

In the meantime we have RAGE to look forward to from id. 

Using the Tech 5 engine, expect wide open spaces with dynamic rendered terrain; "Gamers will never see the same environment twice. It has massive outdoor landscape technology as well as classic great indoor id-style techonology and it is fully cross platform compatible, which means that the assets that we make can work on the (Xbox) 360, the (Sony) PS3, the PC and the Mac. We really have a lot of flexibilty. That's what Rage is built upon." Said id software lead designer Tim Willits.

Hollenshead goes on to expand; "The story is there is this oppressive regime. So there is something for you to rage against. Also there is more of an adventure aspect to the game because of what we can do with these vast outdoor landscapes. We can give you a vehicle to drive through some of them (and) you can make modifications to your car, garage style and of course, r-a-g-e is in "garage" too."

Sounds like finally somebody will tackle a 'Mad Max' style game with a bit of technical and writing talent behind them.  More details on Rage as they come to hand. 

Interestingly, the rumour is that only the PS3 version of Rage will come on a single (Blu-ray) disk, all other versions (Xbox 360, PC and Mac) will require two DVD disks.  Finally a significant advantage to Sony for choosing the Blu-ray drive in a gaming console.