Rage

Rage is a first person shooter game that is due to be released tomorrow. Whilst Titus Proxima and I have't yet had the chance to play it, we've been eagerly anticipating its release for some time and we just can't wait to get our paws on it. Gathering information from our friends and the internet, we've managed to put together something to tell you what this awesome new game is all about in hopes that you'll want to play it too.

The Basic Plot

One August 23 2029, an asteroid hits the planet killing all but a few groups of survivors who are forced to start a new civilisation and help the human race grow again
The survivors have made a camp around sensible and practical places for survival that are still habitable (such as oases) and they must defend their territories against the bandits and mutants that wish to destroy them. These groups of enemies are divided into their own sort of tribes and work together in them. Through the majority of the game the mutants and bandits will serve as your enemy. However, rumour states that something major will happen between you and the enemy half way through the game (man, I wish I knew what that was).

You play as a survivor of the asteroid and begin the game as you emerge from an underground shelter. The shelter is called the Ark - a result of the Eden Project in which hundreds of these shelters were sealed underground, each containing twelve people who possess a special ability so that they may help to rebuild society. Sadly, the Eden Project didn't quite work out and it turns out that all the other people inside your capsule are dead and the equipment completely destroyed (handy). You are alone and have no idea who you are, having no choice but to enter the world and discover who you are and exactly what has happened.


Gameplay

Rage will contain an inventory system and different forms and capabilities of weapons, giving it an RPG feel. To add to this there will be weapon customisation and side quests for you to complete - something that will really add to this game. Whilst it's a mainly one player game there is also a multiplayer option with two modes: Combat Rally and Legends of the Wasteland. Up to four players can compete in car races and missions that take place in the post apocalyptic world.

The game is available on several consoles and will be released on different dates according to console and country. Rage for iOS will be released on November 18th , for PS3, Xbox 360 and PC it will be available in Europe on October 7th (OMG readers, it's coming out tomorrow! Yes, I know I've mentioned this before).



The information below has been taken from Wikipedia and was merely edited by us, the bloggers. It is here to give you additional information on the game to enhance your gameplay. Enjoy!

So from what we can gather, the Authority appears to be pretty self explanatory. They seem to have decided that they are the new leaders and so far they seem to be doing a pretty rubbish job except for the fact that they are able to offer rewards for any Ark survivors turned in.
There are other factions such as:

The mutants - also rather self explanatory. They are survivors with genetic alterations, they appear to be wild. They are not technically a factions because they are unorganised, but the Wasteland is crawling with them. They are the most Neanderthal-like creatures of all the living things remaining.

The Wasted clan are a bunch of survivors that dwell in industrial areas using the scrap for mechanical projects. Other than that they are pretty thick and rely on brute force for fighting - which they enjoy.

The Ghost clan are a scary, cult-like bunch. They make sacrifices in hopes that this will guarantee them a place in the afterlife (so, not unlike modern cults). They also appear to be somewhat cannibalistic and use their surroundings for military advantage such as leaping off walls and hanging from beams - pretty much anything they can find. They use boomerangs to cut up their enemies from a distance.

The Scorcher clan...like fire. They really like fire to the point of becoming pyromaniacs. Their leader, Reever, hates the Shrouded clan. The Scorchers believe that the asteroid was the mount of a demi-god and so they think if they can tap the asteroids energy that they can gain the demi-god's powers (I must admit I'm a little bit sceptical. Valhalla is pondering the possibility).

The Shrouded clan, true to their name, hide their faces behind gas masks and ornate scarves. They are made up of deserters from other clans who have joined up to disguise (see what I did there?) their motives. They are generally very good engineers which allow them to booby-trap their hideouts and build gun-turrets and such.

The Jackal clan are bestial part human part beasts who genuinely howl. This is normally how you tell when they are coming. They cover themselves in bones, hair and animal scalps to appear more animal like. They are skilled combatants.

The Gearhead clan, despite the name, are the most intelligent of the inhabitants of the Wasteland. They have built hi-tech machinery that allows them to avoid relying on brute strength. They rely solely on machinery and vow that they will never allow 'Mother Nature' to destroy them again (personally, I think this somewhat disproves their intelligence as logically you can only be destroyed once).

Well, that's all we can provide for you in regards to what is planning to attack you, but here is a timeline!


The first mention of this asteroid comes along in 2004 where scientists have discovered the asteroid circling space. It is petty big. They predict it passing Earth roughly two years in the future and people begin to panic (rather prematurely). The scientists named the asteroid 99942 Apophis, who is, coincidently, the Egyptian god of chaos (I don't really believe it's a coincidence).
20 years later Apophis is secretly assigned a Torino rating of 7 (typical Government, not telling the people anything), publicly they rate it a 4.7 chance of hitting Earth (surely they should be able to figure it out) and they believe it to reach 10 within a year.
One year later they begin the 'Ark' project. They bury Capsules that are designed to dig their own way back out a few years after the collision. Within these capsules they place genetic samples in the attempt to preserve knowledge. They also stick people in these capsules who have been injected with nanotrites, which is some form of untested nano technology designed to keep them alive during the deep freeze hibernation (you'd think as Americans that they'd shove the President in there, but no).
Between 2025 and 2027, the Government build huge arsenals of weapons (typical, they think they can defend the world with guns) and shove them in more big boxes underground.
In 2029, smaller chunks of asteroid begin to impact the Earth and the Government initiate the 'Ark' project. Towards the end of 2029, Apophis crashes into the moon and then impacts the Earth with the force of one million megatons of TNT (that's a lot). The Earth encounters a very, very, very long winter that lasts several years due to the dust and debris blocking the sun in the stratosphere. By the end of 2030 80% of life on Earth is dead.
2035 arrives and so does the sun along with survivors and the clans. 100 years later the Ark life support system begins to fail and the Ark survivors join the wild.


A little bit about the designers

This is a few notes on the creators that we found which we thought was interesting and we wanted to share with you.

John Carmack - lead programmer

John began his programming career at Softdisk and co-foundered id Software in 1991. His seminal work on ground-breaking titles such as Hovertank 3D, Catacomb 3D, and Wolfenstein 3D pioneered the first-person-shooter genre and established id Software as one of the premier video game developers in the world. He has created gaming engines for many critically acclaimed and commercially successful video game series – most notably DOOM and QUAKE. John is currently the technical director for the new id Tech 5 engine that powers RAGE. A rocketry enthusiast, he is the founder and lead engineer of Armadillo Aerospace. John was inducted into the Academy of Interactive Arts and Science Hall of Fame in 2001 and received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Game Developers Conference in 2010.

What do you do at id Software?
I am the technical director. I find and develop the major technology pillars that our games are built on, which involves research, some inspiration, and a whole lot of work.


What was the first time you realized that you wanted to work in video games?
I knew I wanted to work with computers before I ever saw a video game, and I pored over encyclopedia and magazine articles for years before I ever got to actually touch one. Once I actually started learning how to program, games turned out to be one of the more rewarding things to work on, touching on so many different disciplines – graphics, networking, AI, systems engineering, user interfacing, etc.


How would you describe to a layman the work that goes into building a new graphics engine?
In the old days, there was a clear set of milestones that were ticked off with each new generation – 3D perspective, texture mapping, 6DOF, polygonal characters, colored lighting, shadows, etc. In between major changes, there is always the push for more; more colors, more pixels, more triangles, more frames per second, and more depth complexity.

Games today look incredible, and there are few things that we can't do a pretty good job of rendering with the available techniques, so it is much more a question of balancing and trading off the development process against the fidelity of the product. We have to be reactive to hardware trends, and there are still large bodies of work in the offline rendering world to consider, but I don't feel huge pressure to radically rework our graphics architecture right now.

Still, I have done a fair amount of research work this year to help clarify our next generation directions, but so far they have mostly been negative results – I know we won't be rendering with a triangle intersection ray tracer on the next gen, for instance. I have a couple more research projects to undertake in the coming year, but the technical work I am most excited about doesn't have anything to do with graphics, but instead with the data management and work flow through the development process.


Your aerospace company Armadillo plans to send people into space as early as 2012. Will you be on the first flight?
We have a line of adventurous skydiver types that are all more eager than I am to get on the early flights. I have gone on zero-gravity airplane rides twice now, and I am looking forward to suborbital flights, but I'm not our designated test pilot.


Have you ever told anyone, "Come on, this isn't rocket science"?
No. In fact, the saying "rocket science" is bad in two ways – rocketry isn't "science", it is applied engineering, and while it is hard in the sense of having high consequences for failure and a challenging evolutionary cycle, it really isn't all that complicated compared to many other endeavors. A modern video game is much more sophisticated than an orbital rocket.


Tim Willits - Lead Designer

Tim joined id Software in 1995 after impressing the owners and development team with DOOM lebels he forged in his spare time and distributed free over the internet. After joining id, Tim worked on Strife, The Ultimate DOOM, QUAKE, QUAKE II, QUAKE III Arena and QUAKE III: Team Arena. Time was then named lead designer and launched the commercial blockbuster DOOM 3 along with QUAKE 4. Tim is currently serving as the creative director on RAGE.

What do you do at id Software?
I am the Creative Director working on RAGE. I manage the entire RAGE team and ensure things get done with the game. My days involve a little cheerleading, whip-cracking, motivational sneakiness, and just about anything else to get the team working. Luckily for me, I'm working with the best team in the industry, and I like I have the best job in the world!


What was the first time you realized that you wanted to work in video games?
I realized I wanted to work in video games while playing the shareware version of the original DOOM. When I played those levels and experienced what I could do in that game, I pretty much knew it was the path for me. I thank my lucky stars that I was able to do it at the company I fell in love with as a gamer.


What's your proudest accomplishment thus far?
Between designing the shareware episode of QUAKE 1 to building QUAKE 2, to DOOM 3, it's really hard to choose just one. Even today, I am proud of the great work done the team working on RAGE. When someone does even the smallest thing well it helps everyone on the team.


You started your career as a level modder. How did you get id's attention?
The guys at id Software discovered me because I made some really fun and well constructed DOOM 1 levels and posted them to a BBS they frequented. At the time I was modding, the community was rather small so it wasn't difficult getting noticed. It was a bit of luck mixed with a lot of hard work. Even today I encourage people who want to get into the business to work on their own modding games they love –it's the best way to produce something and get noticed.


Matt Hooper - Design Director

Matt Hooper is a game designer who has been creating games professionally since 1996. Currently, as id Software's Design Director on the multi-platform action title RAGE, he's tasked with providing direction for the design team as well as idtech5 goals. In addition to design responsibilities he's served as executive producer on some of id Software's outside projects. Prior to joining id Software, he was co-owner of Third Law Interactive where he served as designer and producer. Hooper started his career working as a contract designer for the Quake Mission Pack #1 with Ritual Entertainment. During his ten-year career he's worked on over 10 titles, most recently as designer on the award winning Doom3 and as executive producer on the Doom3 expansion Resurrection of Evil.

What do you do at id Software?
My title is Design Director, which would imply that I handle the design direction. However, like most folks at id, I'm allowed to apply my skills beyond my title's scope into other areas that benefit the team as a whole.

So, while my main passion has always been design and I do work closely with our group of talented designers, I've also been responsible for collaborating with the core technology group. I've always been excited by our cutting edge directions we take at id, and one of my tasks has been to help focus the practical application of our technology. With industry leading engineers like John Carmack, Robert Duffy, Jan Paul Van Waveren, and many more, I consider that a fun and exciting endeavor more than just a task.


Do you remember the first game you ever played?
Like a lot of people my age, arcades were huge when I was a kid in the late 70's / early 80's. I remember playing all the classics but my fondest early memories are of Galaxian and Donkey Kong. I also have super happy memories of playing all the popular games offered on the Atari 2600 around that same time frame. No one game stands out on that system, but certainly the idea of interacting with that controller is stuck in my head. The TV it was connected to and the arrangement of our family's furniture is a picture that remains vividly painted in large part to those memories. I can't recall any of the other rooms in my home in that same way.


What was the first time you realized that you wanted to work in video games?
This is going to sound a little made up but it's actually 100% truth. I used to dream of making video games after my first few sessions playing them. I remember winning a 6th grade drama class competition where we were asked to mime our desired profession. I choose to act like I was handling up on an Atari joystick with wide eyes affixed on an imaginary television. From that day forward I remember filling notebooks with video game worlds and ideas. Then, when I was going through engineering school in college Wolf3d and DOOM were released and I started building and realizing worlds. Shortly after, QUAKE was released and I went crazy building 3D worlds in notepad before finally ending up in the industry in 1996.


What do you think was the biggest thing you learned while working as a developer at other studios?
I think the most important lesson I learned during my early years in the industry is that in order to maximize quality you need a team with not only talented people but also an atmosphere where everyone believes in the direction. It can be really disruptive and not productive when the vision is not shared but it's a beautiful thing when you get a team of talented people all driving for the same goals. I've been really fortunate throughout my career to be surrounded by some really talented people.


If you've got a dinner reservation for two and you can invite one game developer to join you?
Well, that is certainly a difficult question that I can honestly say has never crossed my mind. I've been lucky to cross paths with some of the most talented and accomplished developers in my years in the industry. I guess I'd have to choose one of the developers I've not yet had the pleasure to meet. I'd probably choose Shigeru Miyamoto. Miyamoto is responsible for some of my favorite games as well as being extremely influential in the industry for so many years. To be perfectly honest, I've enjoyed and continue to enjoy almost everyone I meet in this industry at every level.

The graphics are pretty cool, right? We'll have to do a post on the awesome visuals.

Do you want to play this game as much as we do? Or maybe you don't. Let us know what you think in the comments section!