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Thorgrim103

Is id Software slowly dying off?

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I don't by into id dying. I get why people assume they are but I think they've still got something left in them. Rage's gameplay was fun and I enjoyed blasting through each territory, and if you crank the graphics it's damn good looking as well. The only points I had a problem with was the lack of activity on the wasteland and that damn ending, building up, and building until... You hit a switch and the credits roll. However Carmack in his QuakeCon 2012 keynote admitted that they screwed up and they're aiming to do better the next time. Rage is id's first game on current-gen consoles/tech so I can forgive them for making mistakes...

As for this talk about them not being pioneers any more, I think this too is untrue. first off as I mentioned before Rage's graphics are brilliant and not many games released in that time had that level of animation, and MegaTexturing is still a great idea. I mean really what do you want them to do? Define the terms of the use of the word "pioneers" used in that context. Really, what does UE3 have that id Tech 5 hasn't?

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You hit a switch and the credits roll.


Yeah. What kind of game designer thinks that would be acceptable, let alone fun?

Still, ID Software isn't dying. But its target audience has shifted away to people who are not me.

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Id is more and more like a tech/engine company: they make their dough by showcasing licensing engines, not so much by making breakthrough games anymore.

Certainly, there's no better way to showcase an engine than making a half-decent game around it (and e.g. Doom 3 and Rage certainly qualify) but the game is not the end.

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Maes said:

Id is more and more like a tech/engine company: they make their dough by showcasing licensing engines, not so much by making breakthrough games anymore.

No longer the case since they were bought. ZeniMax wants them to keep their new tech to the family. So the Rage/Doom 4 engine can be used by Bethesda, Arkhane, or Machine Games among others, but not by, say, Human Head Studio (Prey used the Doom 3 engine) or Raven Software (Wolfenstein 2009 also used the Doom 3 engine).

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Maes said:

Id is more and more like a tech/engine company: they make their dough by showcasing licensing engines, not so much by making breakthrough games anymore.

Their engines aren't even all that popular anymore. id Tech 4 had, what, eight games that used it, including the Doom 3 expansion? Compare that to it's contemporaries like Source or Unreal 3, which have hundreds of titles using them.

I haven't even heard about any interest in id Tech 5, besides the tentative new Doom game of course.

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DoomUK said:

I haven't even heard about any interest in id Tech 5, besides the tentative new Doom game of course.


Apparently, MachineGames is using it for an upcoming project. Few people care because who has even heard of them?

Anyway, as I said, it's on lockdown. You want to use IdTech5, you've got to belong to the ZeniMax club. So don't expect much people to express interest in it, since either they're out and they can't use it, or they're in and they don't have to make any public statement about it.

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The fact that iD may never have another Q3 Engine may be the worst part. I mean, even CoD games still carry over that engine to a degree. And if I remember correctly there wasn't much of a club you had to be a member of to use that one. But, times have changed I suppose.

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Really, what does UE3 have that id Tech 5 hasn't?

Get a load of this guy.

UE3 - 2006 (first game)
id Tech 5 - 2011 (first game)

Five years of existence, that's what UE3 has, and UE4 will come out soon, while idT5 is locked up in Zenimax's dungeon only for their use.

Rage is id's first game on current-gen consoles/tech so I can forgive them for making mistakes...

Tech? How about freaking gameplay? Why Quake 2 has better encounters than Rage? Well, health regen removes a lot of depth, but you know what else? Firing talented and most importantly experienced designers for arguing with the boss, that's what else.

Man, bizarre things i see these days. Nailgun as a DLC for an id game, id Software as someone's tech department... surreal, bro.

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Harmata said:

Get a load of this guy.

UE3 - 2006 (first game)
id Tech 5 - 2011 (first game)

Five years of existence, that's what UE3 has, and UE4 will come out soon, while idT5 is locked up in Zenimax's dungeon only for their use.


I meant specifically technical features, not featured games. Even with the amount of games created with UE3, there's a load of them that are just horrible.

Tech? How about freaking gameplay? Why Quake 2 has better encounters than Rage? Well, health regen removes a lot of depth, but you know what else? Firing talented and most importantly experienced designers for arguing with the boss, that's what else.


The core gameplay for Rage was pretty good. The first-person controls, to me, felt fluid and smooth. Fair enough there are some missons that I thought contained a little more backtracking than anything and the Mutant Bash stuff was really only fun the first time, but as a rule the general blasting away of mutants and bandits was pretty fun.

Design wise the one thing I think that id need to do is stop putting references to their older games in there, I don't mind one or two but when I saw the Wolfenstein 3D room I thought that was a bit too much. Easter eggs have pretty well always been a part of id games since the Softdisk days I know, but really?

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I meant specifically technical features, not featured games.

Me neither, i was talking about presence on the market which id clearly lacked and will be lacking more. There was a lot of games on UE3, a lot of popular best-selling games on UE3.

The first-person controls

Whaaaa... controls? Bizaaaarre things my eyes see and my ears hear these unfriendly days, id Software gets a compliment for not sucky controls...

The core gameplay for Rage was pretty good

Ugh...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeEOX9_MV1s

Design wise the one thing I think that id need to do is stop putting references to their older games in there

But how would we know that this is an id game we are playing otherwise. These days... these days you just can't tell anymore...

*walks off into the sunset*

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On a side note, I really never understood all the hate on Quake 4. Sure, it had some cheesy dialogue and cliche war game elements, but the enemies were done very well(for the most part), the high-tech art style was nice, and the weapons were fun to use.

Flame away.

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Caffeine Freak said:

On a side note, I really never understood all the hate on Quake 4. Sure, it had some cheesy dialogue and cliche war game elements, but the enemies were done very well(for the most part), the high-tech art style was nice, and the weapons were fun to use.

Flame away.

The art style was entirely wrong for Q4. Doom3 looked more like a sequel to Q2 than Q4 did. Fortunately ETQW saved the day by actually basing it's designs off of the source material and not reinventing it to look stupid.

Also, about Harmatas link. Hardly the first time that an enemy glitches out in a game and won't move. Or that someone finds a way to glitch it out that the designers of the creature didn't forsee.

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Ummm, that dude just kinda stands there and the health regen soaks up all damage.

but the enemies were done very well(for the most part), the high-tech art style was nice

The game had worse problems with flow than Doom 3. Just compare Q2 enemies dodging with Q4 enemies dodging: the former bow, the later actually jump to the side. What a flow breaker. And death animations... do you remember how awesome were hurt and death animations in Quake 2? How Guards did the last shot when they were on the ground, how Enforcers were shooting with their head shot off, how Icarus was agonizing in the air, how smaller enemies were pushed back or down from a shotgun blast, how Tanks were falling down, how Iron Maidens had massive boobies. Delicious. Nothing of this in Quake 4.

Also, Quake 2 had a lot of concrete, and this was completely ignored by Raven. Metal and flesh? After Doom 3? On id Tech 4? Enough is enough.

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Harmata said:

The game had worse problems with flow than Doom 3. Just compare Q2 enemies dodging with Q4 enemies dodging: the former bow, the later actually jump to the side. What a flow breaker. And death animations... do you remember how awesome were hurt and death animations in Quake 2? How Guards did the last shot when they were on the ground, how Enforcers were shooting with their head shot off, how Icarus was agonizing in the air, how smaller enemies were pushed back or down from a shotgun blast, how Tanks were falling down, how Iron Maidens had massive boobies. Delicious. Nothing of this in Quake 4.

Also, Quake 2 had a lot of concrete, and this was completely ignored by Raven. Metal and flesh? After Doom 3? On id Tech 4? Enough is enough.


Enemies dodging to the side? Are you actually complaining about better AI in Q4? And how is that a flow breaker?

Sure, I remember death animations in Q2. They were the best animations in the game, and really the only saving grace in the animation department, the other animations had a tendency to look clunky and mechanical by comparison.

Who fucking cares about concrete. Or having the levels look exactly like they did in Quake 2.

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Caffeine Freak said:

Who fucking cares about concrete. Or having the levels look exactly like they did in Quake 2.

The problem was that the levels didn't really resemble Q2's aesthetic, except for a few outside areas. It's built by the same creatures with the same technology, so you'd expect there to be more similarities than there were, advances in real life technology notwithstanding. There's no harm in branching out a little, but most of the game more closely resembled Doom 3 than a Quake 2 sequel. I mostly ascribe it to laziness on Raven's behalf.

Same applies to the Strogg design. Not many of the enemies looked like anything in Q2, or anything that might fit into that universe.

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DoomUK said:

Same applies to the Strogg design. Not many of the enemies looked like anything in Q2.


If by that you mean they didn't have faces composed of 6 polygons anymore, sure.

So according to you, it's lazier to compose new art styles for environments than to simply copy the ones from an older game?

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Caffeine Freak said:

So according to you, it's lazier to compose new art styles for environments than to simply copy the ones from an older game?

I said nothing about copying anything. I just think there was a really cool visual style to Quake 2 that wasn't acknowledged (enough) in Quake 4.

And again, there's nothing wrong introducing new elements, so long as they fit. I don't think anyone at Raven knew what they were doing, and they might as well have been working on a new IP, were it not for the fact they'd signed up to do a new Quake game.

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Caffeine Freak said:

If by that you mean they didn't have faces composed of 6 polygons anymore, sure.

Gettin' mad, bro.

Personally, I didn't have too many gripes with Quake 4's visuals. Some of the enemies seemed a little too Borg-ish for my taste. Quake 2's monsters looked like they had human faces stretched over robotics that by no means look like a human's should. One of my favorite things about Quake 2 was that characters looked less Robocop-like and almost Roman-esque in appearance -- they were covered it rusty razorblades and blocky, square, parts. The limitations actually made the creatures look that much alien.

DoomUK said:

I said nothing about copying anything. I just think there was a really cool visual style to Quake 2 that wasn't acknowledged (enough) in Quake 4.

Considering Quake 4 takes place, maybe, hours after Quake 2, it is a little jarring to look at it like a direct sequel, or in the games case, the same battle.

Duke Nukem Forever did an excellent job remaking the 2D monsters into 3D renditions, almost flawlessly. It's a shame becasue Duke Nukem Forever shouldn't have been a complete re-hash of 3D, while Quake 4 needed it.

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You hit a switch and the credits roll.

If my memory serves me correct, Apogee Software was doing something similar to this with most of their shareware titles, but perhaps I'm slightly exaggerating though.
They did try to type some quick and snappy end-game texts before jumping to the "please order" and the credits.

Technician said:

Duke Nukem Forever did an excellent job remaking the 2D monsters into 3D renditions, almost flawlessly.

Yet it was an absolutely pointless waste of time since the fans have already made a free model pack and high-resolution texture pack for Duke3D for free. What the fans really needed from the company was a friggin sequel, and they were all let down.

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kristus said:

Don't confuse design with graphical fidelity. Only makes you look stupid.


No shit, my point was that the only way you could NOT see the similarities in some of the enemies between Q2 and Q4 would be if you couldn't see past the technological limitations of the former.

kristus said:

This is the mother fucking strogg.


I think it's interesting that you didn't post any visual comparisons from Q2 to support your argument that ETQW has 'the mother fucking strogg'. Doesn't matter, though.

If you're honestly going to tell me that there's no similarities when you compare this:

http://www.playerzblog.com/wp-content/quake4_image10.jpg

to this:

http://quake.wikia.com/wiki/Icarus?file=Icarus_2.png

And this:

http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20100530184931/quake/images/e/e9/Gladiator.jpg

to this:

http://quake.wikia.com/wiki/Gladiator_%28Q2%29?file=Glad_2.png

And this:

http://quake.wikia.com/wiki/Teleport_Dropper?file=Dog_4.png

to this:

http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20080803080247/quake/images/0/07/Para_2.png

And this:

http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20110125172715/quake/images/5/57/Strogg_Beserker%28q4%29.jpg

to this:

http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20080803075353/quake/images/b/bf/Beserk_2.png

And this:

http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20110131154656/quake/images/e/ec/Tactical.jpg

to any of these:

http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20100506214236/quake/images/d/d5/Light_2.gif

http://quake.wikia.com/wiki/Shotgun_Guard_%28Q2%29?file=Shotgunguard.JPG

http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20100507140832/quake/images/a/a3/Machinegunguard.JPG

...then I think you should ask yourself again if I'm the one who looks stupid.

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188DarkRevived said:

Yet it was an absolutely pointless waste of time since the fans have already made a free model pack and high-resolution texture pack for Duke3D for free. What the fans really needed from the company was a friggin sequel, and they were all let down.


To my recollection, the model pack (unless I'm thinking of a different one) is rather lacking in visual fidelity and animation.

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Caffeine Freak said:

...then I think you should ask yourself again if I'm the one who looks stupid.

I'm talking about design here, and you're talking about similarities. Comparing some of the enemies from an FPS with borg like aliens to another with borg like aliens. You are bound to hit similarities, wether they are intentional or not. Granted there are similarities between the games, they do remember that Q2 existet, as is evident by them featuring a hologram of the Jorg in the briefing. But the references are very weak and usually far apart. As if Raven wished they were making another game.

And regardless of what you say now, that comment you made about the polies were still stupid. The games designs are "thematically similar" but they are not matching in any meaningful way. And how the fuck you can compare the Scientist to the Icarus and say they are similar are beyond me. Yeah, they both fly. Not very high requirements for similarity there.

Anyway, I didn't compare them because I thought it was so fucking obvious where they taken the inspiration for the designs from Quake2.
The strogg got edgy and sharp dark rough metal designs with heavy armors. and a very specific color scheme with the orange details. (NOT to be confused with the hideous orange metal spandex jumpsuit of Quake4's foot soldiers)

But since you're one for comparing.

For instance, an iconic weapon in Q2 was the rail gun.
Quake 2: http://lcql.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/railgun-quake2.jpg
ETQW: http://www.loffysdomain.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/modscreen_lib1.jpg
Quake 4: http://www.freakygaming.com/gallery/articles/2005/quake_4_weapons/railgun.jpg

But lets look at something like the Icarus:
Quake 2: http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20080803075546/quake/images/3/39/Icarus_2.png
ETQW: http://www.beyond3d.com/images/articles/etqw/katana-big.jpg http://etqw.geezergaming.com/newbies/images/icarus.jpg
Quake4: Not featured.

Then there is the Tormentor craft in ETQW(which while in Beta was still called the Hornet) ( http://pnmedia.gamespy.com/planetquake.gamespy.com/images/etqw/strogg/tormentor.png )
Which is inspired by the Hornet from Quake 2.
http://ledzep.tastyspleen.net/images/quake2/monsterdb/biggun.png
Which in this case also is pretty similar in Quake 4, though I can't really remember them from the campaign. Though I'm guessing they are the little flyers attacking you on outside missions:
http://quake.wikia.com/wiki/Hornet_(Q4)?file=Strogg-hornet.jpg

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Borg are just another kind of Cyborg just like with the Strogg, I wouldn't say the Strogg are specifically like the Borg.

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Belial said:

That example doesn't help your point at all.

Q4: Alien dude in armor.

I really liked this concept artwork:

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Quake 4 was not made by Id, so it's not very relevant to the discussion. Also, if you look at the art direction in Doom 3, you will see that it is a very subtle evolution of older styles like Quake 1(In the Hell levels) Quake 2, Quake 3 and even Doom 1.

I don't think Id is dying, both Doom 3 and RAGE had some very good stuff in them, the art style being consistently good in both games (although Doom 3 could have had more color) the problem was the gameplay which was fortunately fixed in RAGE. I think this proves that they are not just a tech demo company but they get lost sometime during development. They clearly have to try harder in Doom 4 though, they have no excuses for failing now.

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