When id Software have a new game on the horizon you tend to sit up and take notice - not many games companies have given us such impactful titles as Doom, Quake, Commander Keen and Wolfenstein.

So, when the opportunity arose to sit down with Rage and id Software Creative Director Tim Willits, it was one that was grasped with the eagerness of a sex-starved Russel Brand in a brothel. 

And so, without further delay... Mr Tim Willits.

IncGamers: The FPS is hardly an endangered species. How do you stand out in such a crowded genre?

Tim Willits: Yeah, it is a crowded genre but Rage is definitely different from your modern combat shooter where like, y’know, you’ve got two guns. I think it really is the sum of its parts. It’s a new IP, it does stuff that’s different, it’s got more of aN adventure/action edge to it but it’s still a first-person shooter. So, if you’re an FPS fan looking for something new and you’re tired of part six of some ‘modern shooter’ then this is the game for you.

IG: Was this a particularly difficult game to design and make? There are a lot of different ideas at play…

TW: Yes! Yes, it was difficult. The vehicle combat and the feel to the handling was something we tackled at the very beginning as we wanted it to feel very ‘tight.’ We went through many different iterations of it - we changed the control configurations, we changed the physics – in a bid to make it approachable rather than just forcing it down people’s throat.

In Rage you only have to race twice; you have to race to get the guns for your vehicle and then you after you enter Bash TV you have a sponsor race you have to do. That’s it though, so if you decide the racing is not for you then it’s not a problem. But, there’s like 25 (I think) races that you can do and then you can upgrade your car and take it online and that sort of thing.

There’s a lot of player choice and a lot of player opportunity. Rage is more than just random shooting.

IG: Does this exploration/player choice approach represent the future of the FPS?

TW: I think so. I think (and this is also the reason we did Rage) that gamers are evolving, they really are. Games are expensive to buy and people want approachability, they want variety, they don’t want to get bored and they don’t want a game that’s only four hours long – they’ve just spent $60 on it…

I think Rage has all of those elements and I think it will captivate people that play it. Everyone that’s played it so far wants to keep playing which is a great sign and I look forward to finally getting it out of the door. That’s why we love to have people like yourself play the game for an extended period, having journalists play the game for more than 15 minutes is key because there’s simply so much going on.

IG: So, the idea for setting, the story etc. Where did that come from?

TW: Well, we were working on a completely different game after we helped Raven with the finishing up of Quake 4. John [John Carmack – Co-Founder and Technical Director of id Software] was developing id Tech 5 and he had this prototype of a large outdoor area he’d made by downloading graphical data from NASA. He’d streamed and virtualised this whole area. I was looking at it and I thought “that’s cool, we could make a game with that.”

If we have a big open area then people would want to drive on it, and if we have a car in an id game then it definitely has to be able to shoot and it has to be a muscle car. So, if you’ve got muscle cars and you’ve got guns then you start getting visions of Mad Max and Road Warrior but we also wanted some very sci-fi elements, which is where The Authority and stuff like that came from.

If you want sci-fi and guns and Mad Max then post-apocalyptic is the only way to go. Again though, we don’t shove that down your throat – this is not a ‘post-apocalyptic’ game, that’s just the setting in which the story takes place. Rage is a lot more than just the setting.

Each of the elements was born from the creative inputs of the team. At id the team structure is very flat, everyone has an input. So, Rage is not just one person’s vision but it does kind of coalesce into this cool ‘Rage’ style.

IG: So what other kinds of environments are there? I’ve seen the canyons, the old-West style towns and the prison…

TW: The second chapter of the game has an almost alien look to it, with huge rock spires. We have the Dead City which is this large urban area. There’s the Jaco Valley which looks like the Grand Canyon and has bandits on tightropes and they’re swinging down and stuff.

Then, of course, there’s The Authority. When you get to The Authority’s base things are totally different. Variety is very important to us. Not only in terms of the settings but in terms of the guys you’re going to fight. You’ve got mutants, different sized mutants, bandits that do various things, The Authority, so there’s a ton of stuff.

IG: Is everything set on Earth?

TW: Yes.

IG: When I was playing I noticed a Fault Boy bobblehead figure to collect in **** (edited for spoilers) that looked as though it had been taken straight out of Fallout 3. Are there many of these?

TW: Yes, there are many different secrets. That bobblehead is worth $150 in-game! There are secrets to find for Quake, Doom and Wolfenstein as well. Make sure you keep your eyes open when you play!

IG: There’s also a collectable card game to play in Rage. How does that work?

TW: In the bar in the town of Wellspring there’s a card player who will start you off. On Facebook there’s a card game called… Wizards, or Wizards and Warlocks, maybe? Anyway, that game is kind of similar to what we’ve got in Rage.

Basically, the more cards you find the more you have in your deck. When you go to play you have your deck randomly shuffled and then you face off against other players. If you find the special cards then you improve your starter deck and you have a better chance of winning.  That’s one of our more complex.., in fact, it’s the most complex mini-game ever, in any game.

IG: And just how sophisticated in the AI? When playing I noticed that they’d be constantly yelling to each other “he’s going this way” or “we need to cut off this path” etc. Is this really the enemy reacting to your actions or is it simply speech that’s been layered on to give that impression?

TW: Well, because we let you use engineered items whenever you want, the challenge we had was making the AI aware of the ammo types you’re using and your engineering items. In other games you have two weapons and the programmers know exactly what you’re going to have, so they can simply tune the AI to take care of exactly that. In Rage you can have anything.

Even if you go back to the Wasted Base at the start of the game with an RC Bomb Car the enemy will know what that is and what you’re doing, even though you don’t have access to that technology at that point of the game. We had to spend a huge amount of time making these guys react to you; otherwise it would just be silly.

Each enemy is different as well. So the Wasted bandits can run faster than the Shrouded bandits and they’ll charge at you but they have a higher fear rating so they’ll take off more quickly as well. Plus, they know where each other are and they will.., we have these groups that we create and if enough group members are killed in a certain amount of time then the remaining guys will run away and stuff like that.

IG: Are the console and PC version really the same?

TW: Yes, they’re the same. On the PC you can turn up the resolution and you can run 4x anti-aliasing but the assets are all the same. It takes longer to stream everything off of the consoles but that’s irrelevant when you look at the big picture.

IG: Okay, I’ve got to ask about the bandits… what is it about bad guys in games and East London accents?

TW: [Laughs]. Well, we have Russians as well! They’re called the Gearheads. It’s funny actually because I made a comment about our bad English accents in some other interview, only to be told by a Brit that they were actually pretty good.

We just want to add colour to everybody, it’s only the Wasted clan that have the English accents. Each clan has a different accent just to make everyone feel unique. [Laughs].

 

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