RAGE

I'm curious if it's dead, or now that Bethesda owns the IP they'll do something different with it long after it's forgotten. Like Prey; the footage of the original Prey 2 (especially the ending concept and how the mechanics were a few years ahead of the industry and some seemed done better) sums up my feelings concerning Destiny: What could have been, and what happened after the publisher hammed things up over money. That's another rant however, but with RAGE I personally would like it to be an odd little one note in the id history than rebooted improperly.

I'm in the minority but I found RAGE to be amazing. I got it on PS3 on release night and fell in love. Id's first game with vehicles handled beautifully and I had a blast with the little bit of online car combat and races I experienced, the guns were nice and the gun play was solid (especially with the damage specific animations of enemies), the characters were fun and cliche but vibrant (one of the few cases I don't mind professional voice actors because who doesn't need more Steve Blum and John Goodman?), the graphics looked great (I can't believe the PS3 handled this or even a toned down GTA V to be honest), I really enjoyed the light RPG elements and of course the Easter eggs, and the story and side quests all blended together well; nothing really felt bogged down by anything else. The Scorchers DLC was a great little addition with a second Mutant Bash TV (so over the top and fun) but the rail gun you get at the beginning makes the entire game pretty damn easy, especially if you've got the Sewers DLC and have more money and parts than you need really early on.

Of course it has it's flaws, the most notable being megatextures are horribly inefficient, modding is a tremendous effort, the story feels like it ends in the middle of itself, linear and repeated levels, no traditional PvP, a really vague and cliche ultimate enemy (with an equally disappointing final mission; a DLC to pick immediately up would have been nice. Scorchers was nice but just adds into the existing campaign without being too out of place.). I can understand the aversion to the Sewers DLC being a pre-order bonus, although it basically just boots your money and inventory which makes the game easier in exchange for a few relatively easy and repetitive dungeon sewer battles. Bad practice, sure, but we all already agree that the game was a bit short in general so this is more or less lumped in the same thing and more of another story about industry practices in general by itself.

So of course I want to talk about RAGE: what you liked, what you hated, do you think/hope/hope not that it's dead, and what you would have liked to see in the sequel.
I can see a sequel being a well done expansion of the base mechanics with more open ended mission structure and multiple endings that isn't overbloated.

Spoiler alert while I explain.

Depending on both side quests (since the main story is basically finding where the protagonist wants to stand) and world activities you build up and lose reputation similar to GTA2. This allows more arcade like mechanics with the world involving racing, car combat and arena combat (maybe there's a random poster you can find that offers a reward for slaughtering a specific group of bandits - assuming the group wanting it done doesn't hate you, in which case that option isn't available. You slaughter the bandits but the Bandit group now thinks you're a prick. Or there's a race you win, which pisses off the groups competing but pleases the group hosting.) 

At some point in the third act your choices will mostly be made and then you finish out the ending, each of which can be affected in their own ways. (Think Sonic CD with Good Future, Bad Future, Present, Good Present, and past.)

I wouldn't change much of the combat mechanics from the first one, but rather utilize them better and balance out the world resources better. The sentry bots, for instance, were great fun to use but the levels were smaller so they had pathing problems occasionally and battles would tend to boil down to setting turrets and sentries at one end of a level and letting them handle the heavy work. I'd also change the weapon selection wheel so that all weapons were available to use without going into the menu and adding a swap ammo button in place of the completely useless jump button. (Perhaps obstacles could be approached by a simple collision detection system, like pushing into a barricade hard to vault it, although this in itself would create problems.) Larger level design and a more interesting design to the world while keeping it clutter free like the first was (although a few more active towns and "live" levels versus load-ins would improve the experience.)

I'm not sure how everyone felt about the co-op missions in the first game; I personally didn't get to experience much of it except the first couple of levels. I found the online races to be exhilarating and fun, and the car combat filled that void Twisted Metal had failed to for so long (TM's driving felt worse over the years), so more of both would be nice. Kids these days would want some kind of unlock system, which would be fine with it being purely cosmetic. I realized we don't need games with infinite endgame content, we just need fun damn games that are memorable (that's why I still play Doom, Quake, Tomb Raider II and Half-Life vanilla as much as mods). Seeing both MP DLC as well as SP DLC (especially after the Scorcher's DLC was so well implemented - other than the OP railgun) would probably do well in an industry starved for quality add-ons.

Anyway, discuss if you'd like.

EDIT: OH! Traditional deathmatch style modes. I'm not sure how I would approach it with RAGE since the mechanics are Action lite-RPG. While being a huge fan of DM I can admit I don't have much experience in how to take the base mechanics and apply them against an active environment. I'm still learning how to make good SP Doom maps (and still not doing a good job of it I might add).

I really like RAGE. I like that it is like Fallout but more in line with a traditional shooter. I did not care for the abrupt ending though.

It looked and ran absolutely amazing on old consoles; looking back though, some of the skybox stuff looks like absolute ass and I would rather have real time lighting than mega textures and props glued to the table.

I thought the vehicles and open world stuff was a great idea but completely wasted since they rarely ever focused on them. Could've just had a linear progression from level to level and focus more on making an ending.

That might be why I like the co-op; just a level to level combat sequence.

I loved RAGE. I rented it on the 360 probably about a year after the game came out and it was one of two games I ever paid to keep from Gamefly. The combat was great, I enjoyed getting to drive around and blow up other cars, the races were...well some of them really annoyed me but it was still cool to have them, and overall the game was good fun. Though the abrupt ending with no real final boss (if I recall correctly) was the only real disappointment I experienced with the game. I did get the Scorchers DLC too, though I honestly can't remember if I ever finished it.

I'd love it if a sequel was made at some point, but I don't think that's very likely to happen.

9 hours ago, wheresthebeef said:

It looked and ran absolutely amazing on old consoles; looking back though, some of the skybox stuff looks like absolute ass and I would rather have real time lighting than mega textures and props glued to the table.

I thought the vehicles and open world stuff was a great idea but completely wasted since they rarely ever focused on them. Could've just had a linear progression from level to level and focus more on making an ending.

That might be why I like the co-op; just a level to level combat sequence.

I dunno, I think it looks great still but at the same time I agree about the sky boxes and baked lighting for the same reason I agree about the static props. A lot of the environments were interesting and more dynamic level props would have enhanced the experience. On my slower 100% Ultra Nightmare run I started to notice this more, but at the same time really admired the handcrafted levels and their art direction. And yeah, the vehicle parts did leave me wanting more. The levels being split up would have worked better with objectives during the drives beyond world events.

10 hours ago, Nevander said:

I really like RAGE. I like that it is like Fallout but more in line with a traditional shooter. I did not care for the abrupt ending though.

That's actually why I preferred this to Borderlands, as that game felt too much on the RPG/Item management side; RAGE is actually what I imagined BL to be more like in both art and mechanics in it's Game Informer reveal. I still haven't finished either BL either, though I was enjoying it for the short time I had it a few years ago. It's faster still than Fallout, which I only get a few hours into each time. I don't like too casual, I don't like too grindy, heh. RAGE is one of those few games that tickled that spot perfectly, and it's fuse burnt out too quickly. :/

I bounced off RAGE, unfortunately. But it's due for a replay soon, I think.

I liked RAGE. The ending was a bit "eh", but otherwise, I found it really enjoyable.

Should replay it, now that I think about it.

I never finished RAGE. I got bored or disillusioned at some point. I will tell the one story that I like to tell about my experience with it.

At some point a few hours into the game, I was sent to do a quest in some generic dungeon/bunker/ruin, and I couldn't figure out how to progress through the area to do the thing that I needed to do. I wandered around like I often do in Doom, looking for an obvious switch that I missed or something. There actually was something special about this generic area though: it's where the game started, and where the basic control tutorial takes place. Here's something you have to jump over, here's something you have to crouch under, etc.

I was stuck because I forgot that jumping existed in the game, and the thing that you jump over in the tutorial looks a lot like all the other waist-high barriers that can't actually be jumped over, because they're serving as the visual cue to mark where playable space ends. The game briefly taught me to jump over this one thing, then spent the next few hours without ever incentivizing me to jump, and in fact dissuaded me from trying to jump over things. So in the one place that I was expected to jump, I forgot that I needed to, or that I even could.

I will give id software the same advice that I give ZDoom mappers: if you're allowing me to jump, please give me more than one reason to jump. And if that one reason to jump is only in the tutorial area... I will lose all confidence in your ability to make stuff that is worth my time.

That's just one example that contributed to my feeling that RAGE was an amalgamation of a bunch of features that games were expected to have at the time (open world! quests! crafting! vehicles!), without any competent or interesting gameplay design. The engine is the only thing that saved it from being generic to the bone.

16 hours ago, Nevander said:

I really like RAGE. I like that it is like Fallout but more in line with a traditional shooter. I did not care for the abrupt ending though.

I remeber it for its huge size when it came out, 25 gb was a lot for me back then.

I played a lot of RAGE to be fair, I really liked the combat and the online Co-op but I found the overall plot to be lacking.

The soundtrack for Capital Prime is still one of all time favourites though.

I didn't get very far in RAGE. The way the world was animated put me off so I didn't give it enough of a chance after that. I would like to revisit the game sometime.

It looks like it could be a nice setting for a Battle Royale type of gamemode.

My favorite part is going through the Dead City. The feeling of being alone in a destroyed city overrun by mutants, scavenging supplies and using all your gear and weapons so far is awesome. Just imagine if it was an even larger open area with more missions and stuff within that area. I feel like a RAGE 2 could really deliver if they did it right... but you know, sequels...

The one issue I didn't like was how every weapon was handed out to you like candy after every mission.

Rage was getting a planned sequel at one point but bethseda turned down the idea since no one bought rage. I've never played the dlc but i heard some of the ideas for the sequel got put into it. 

RAGE was...alright, with a few flashes of brilliance here and there. It was an important stepping stone for Id, I think. I think it took them a long time to actually mature as a company. I mean if you think about it all they did after Doom 1 was better Doom clones, which is not bad per se but I get the feeling that they couldn't really adapt to the post-Half-Life era. I think that game caused them a bit of a crisis, which could be seen in Doom 3. After Doom 3 I think they realized this, meaning that they didn't know what their place in the industry was and what was expected of them.

I see RAGE as the culmination of this, it was the mid-life crisis of a really talented developer and even though it was a messy game in almost all regards, the talent could still be seen.

Rage did great with it monster AI, and setting. There are so many gorgeous scenes that you happen across that creat some great atmosphere and wow moments. beautiful game.

On 11/29/2017 at 2:01 PM, Benjogami said:

I never finished RAGE. I got bored or disillusioned at some point. I will tell the one story that I like to tell about my experience with it.

...

I will give id software the same advice that I give ZDoom mappers: if you're allowing me to jump, please give me more than one reason to jump. And if that one reason to jump is only in the tutorial area... I will lose all confidence in your ability to make stuff that is worth my time.

The jumping was useless. IIRC every time you needed to it was for a purely cosmetic reason. I remember not liking Doom 3's jumping, but exploring was much better in that game. In RAGE it would have been better to have put a quick swap for ammo types on X and all the weapons in the weapon quick menu - which reminds me, I found the weapon and item menus handled beautifully on the PS3. I much preferred using the D-Pad or face buttons to select with rather than a weapon wheel on a stick, which I find slower. It was probably one of the better utilizations of a controller scheme in my opinion (unlike other games that utilize a loadout system for multiplayer and then stick a bunch of useless emote taunts on the D-Pad that do nothing to enhance the gameplay. Damn it Doom 2016, even COD saves the taunts for the victory screen! SMH). And as much as I revered the game, every invisible wall marking a boundry, no matter how pretty, still gave me a sigh.

On 11/29/2017 at 6:04 PM, Nevander said:

My favorite part is going through the Dead City. The feeling of being alone in a destroyed city overrun by mutants, scavenging supplies and using all your gear and weapons so far is awesome. Just imagine if it was an even larger open area with more missions and stuff within that area. I feel like a RAGE 2 could really deliver if they did it right... but you know, sequels...

I agree, and the boss fight was quite memorable. Also one of the few "same level but in reverse" levels that I genuinely enjoyed. Of set battle pieces I particularly enjoyed the mutant battles in the train station. Pretty satisfying arena combat.

22 hours ago, Chest Rockwell said:

Rage was getting a planned sequel at one point but bethseda turned down the idea since no one bought rage.

It was talked about happening after Doom, but then put on hold indefinitely when they restarted that game. I'm kind of surprised Nicolas Raine isn't in Quake Champions since he technically is id hero alumni; they own the IP so why not? Or give it to Machine Games to work on since they're doing such a fine job with Wolfenstein. They could definitely craft some good characters and nice set pieces, and I'd be interested in seeing their refinement with the items and weapons.

30 minutes ago, Johnatone said:

I'm kind of surprised Nicolas Raine isn't in Quake Champions since he technically is id hero alumni; they own the IP so why not?

Ranger is in Quake Champions because he is the original Quake character.

Doom slayer is in QC because he is id's most iconic character and a new game just came out last year

BJ is in QC because Machinegames gave him a personality and a voice with their new Wolfenstein games

Rage guy has no personality, you only ever see what he looks like in a menu, he never talks and only grunts, and even then some of those sounds are reused from Doom 3, most people that play Rage likely dont even know he has a name (I didn't even know), and if anything more people would recognize this guy from Rage before they would the main character: https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/rage/images/5/50/Coffer.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20111007062452

Now if John Goodman's character was put in Quake Champions, I would be all about that shit

Game feels like it's complete is only for 70% or something. Nice design, gameplay, really cool AI, but feels totally uncompele. If id's new game will be rage, I will get real RRRRAAGE. I don't need RAGE anymore.

Bethesda has Fallout IP and it's enough.

10 hours ago, wheresthebeef said:

Ranger is in Quake Champions because he is the original Quake character.

Doom slayer is in QC because he is id's most iconic character and a new game just came out last year

BJ is in QC because Machinegames gave him a personality and a voice with their new Wolfenstein games

Rage guy has no personality, you only ever see what he looks like in a menu, he never talks and only grunts, and even then some of those sounds are reused from Doom 3, most people that play Rage likely dont even know he has a name (I didn't even know), and if anything more people would recognize this guy from Rage before they would the main character: https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/rage/images/5/50/Coffer.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20111007062452

 

Now if John Goodman's character was put in Quake Champions, I would be all about that shit

I see and concede your point on this one. Hell, I thought the merchant was going to be more of an involved character based on early screenshots, and I did have to look up Raine's name when starting this thread. By the same token it gives the developers a lot of creative freedom.
 

Dan Hagar would be fun to play, I agree. Even Loosum, Sarah (from the DLC), Captain Marshall of the resistence. With the original lacking tranditional multiplayer we've yet to see the wingsticks in a competitive setting. I haven't played QC yet, my computer won't run it so I could be wrong on it being a fun addition.

1 hour ago, qdash said:

Game feels like it's complete is only for 70% or something. Nice design, gameplay, really cool AI, but feels totally uncompele. If id's new game will be rage, I will get real RRRRAAGE. I don't need RAGE anymore.

 

Bethesda has Fallout IP and it's enough.

True. The Fallout series are not terrible games; I watched quite a bit of it when my roommate went through 3 and later when my ex-wife went through 4. It's just slow for my taste. On the other end of the spectrum, something like Destiny is more hands on but the RPG elements have been incredibly simplified and the storytelling in that game is abysmal (there's a fun universe there, especially with the Vex and their time fuckery, but aside from scrounging the grimore cards or scanning 100 different random unmarked objects on each planet with only like 10 of them giving you any useful information it's pretty much fuck all for depth.) As I stated earlier, I know there's better or more in-depth games, but despite it's incomplete nature RAGE hit just enough of everything without bogging itself down and really did leave me wanting for more (and not because it was incomplete but because it was fun). 

Once I get a decent PC again I'll probably get RAGE for nostalgia (and probably take the time to give Borderlands a fair shot all the way through while I'm at it.) It's a shame the engine wasn't optimized very well for modding, as this community could have made some amazing things with it; the little I've seen is quite impressive for the feat I know the editing is. ...BUT it's probably time to add a sequel to my list of things that'll never happen (along with new Commander Keen, Quake 1 continuation, Half-Life Episode 3 and/or 3, SiN Episode 2, et cetera).