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The question and answer session shed some more light on the game including some more details on the storyline as well as some of the weapons that we will have available to us as well as some of the vehicle mods that will trick out our  dune buggies.

Here is the interview:

UGDB.com: RAGE is your NEXT big title, but what are the things that make it exciting for you as a designer? Don’t you think that you guys have waited just too long to come up with a new IP?

Matt Hooper: Yes, the biggest thing about RAGE, and the thing that makes it new and exciting for me as a designer is that this is the first new IP that we make in id Software for over 10 years. If you guys are familiar in what we have done in the past, we have living in the Wolfenstein, Quake and Doom universes for a long time.

So, John Carmack came up with a new technology, and he said “OK, we need a new IP, it’s been too long – there are all these things that we want to get on the gameplay side, lets just try to make this marriage – the technology and the gameplay, so that we just stop to live in our own universe.”
So, we wanted a new IP, and we wanted to do some things that are totally new – not just for us, but maybe industry wide… We haven’t seen some of these elements brought together and this is what we are doing right now. So, we are using idTech5, and one of the great things about that technology is the fact that we can uniquely texture the entire world, so we get a lot of visual diversity. And in the end, we wanted to mix the visual diversity with some gameplay diversity.

UGDB: What’s the story behind all this rage?

MH: An asteroid called 99942 Apophis [which is not fictional – in reality there is such a near-Earth asteroid; initial observations indicated a small probability (around 2.7%) that it might strike the planet in year 2029] is on its way to impact with Earth. All of the governments get together and start the “Eden Project”. They buried these life sustaining pods – which they called “Arks” – all around the world with just a few people, a dozen of people in each. The base idea is that at some predetermined time, they are all supposed to start ascending to the surface. And everybody will emerge to rebuild society and all to live happily ever after. But the things don’t go according to the plan… So, you emerge from your Ark in this wasteland, it seems that more people had survived, there are different settlers running around, there are bandits trying to attack you, some people have mutated, so there are mutants running around, too. You really don’t know what to expect and early in the game it’s a fight for survival. In the beginning you start working with Dan, one of the local settlers, and… There are a lot more elements of the story, which I cannot reveal at this time. But there is authority presence that happens later on, you will learn why you are important and what exactly is going on around you.

UGDB: How is the story going to be told – the way that Bethesda did it in Fallout 3 with dialog trees? And while we are on this subject, how are the NPCs going to treat the player and how are you going to interact with them exactly?

MH: When you move through the main story path, you will have a lot of set ups, the people will react in a different way to you; sometimes they will give you simple directions, for example… But we wanted to be as casual as possible in terms of interactions; we don’t want you ever to have to read more than a couple paragraphs of text. We don’t want to induce you to click on dialog trees; we keep it very action oriented and focused when we are telling the different stories. We allow the players some optional kind of a dig-a-little-deeper by clicking on the characters. You will get different parts of the story it makes it fell more believable this way. Some of the dialog with the people is optional. And a lot of the characters will just react as you move around the world.

UGDB: What about the weapons – at this point there is not so much information about this aspect of the game… So, is there anything new here?

MH: We’ve implemented a quick-use item system, where all off-hand items that can be easily used from there. In the beginning of the game, the player will get a boomerang-like weapon called “wing-stick”. We always joke and this is what makes it fun for us on the design side – we can’t put wing-sticks on a Mars base, this just doesn’t make any sense. But now, we get to introduce players to this whole new scope of weapons that are actually functional in the game – we wanted all to be meaningful choices for the player. So, the wing-stick is a good, long-distance silent kill weapon, it works great indoors as well. We still have pistols, shotguns, machine guns with some little twists. But we have new weapons like a crossbow, which can help you to do some stealth kills. Some of the weapons have a multiple ammo types the pistol for example has “fat boys” bullets. And again, everything has some purpose and we will teach the player how to use it and it becomes a choice as you move through the game.

UGDB: Can you give us some details (and maybe some examples) about the different areas, the towns, the population there, and how you design them?

MH: When we build an area, we make it in a way that it has specific vehicle encounters, specific combat and a specific feel as a whole. We don’t have this procedural landscape with a bunch of grass on it and to call it “wasteland” – everything is kind of hand crafted. For example, the city of Wellspring [which is the first city that you’ll encounter in the game], we almost treat it like a character – we spent a lot of time concepting it, it has a certain flavor and feel, the people treat you in a certain way, they talk to you in a certain way – we spent a lot of time kind of crafting it. So, when you enter the town for the first time the people there don’t know who you are, what you are all about and they will treat you as a outsider, some of them won’t even speak to you. But as you win the big races, take out some bandits and harass them, you will earn respect. By the end of dealing with the Wellspring inhabitants you will be almost a hero to them. So, you have this story progression, and this character progression by the way they treat you.
The next town that you’re going to visit is a subway town, where the people live underground, they are a little pastier, and they talk different. And again, we wanted to take the player to some visually different and gameplay different elements around every corner.

UGDB: Up to this point we have seen only closed areas that are action oriented and those vast areas where there are only vehicle races. Are there going to be open environments where we you can shoot things without the need to use a vehicle?

MH: We have tried to mix it up; we don’t have any specific criteria. We’re doing only what feels right for the pacing. One of the areas that we have is called the Dead City – this is not something that we have shown yet – there you will see a big downtown area, it’s been all destroyed, inhabited with mutants, the authority is doing some things in there. Early on the game, you will come to this destroyed industrial area, very different than the desert-outdoor open area. So we just do, whatever is right for that part of the story. We have a wide variety of different environments.

UGDB: It is clear that RAGE won’t be a racing simulator with some fast pace FPS action, but what can you tell us about this aspect of the game, how is the player going to enter those race events? How does the first vehicle in the game look like and how can you compare it with the vehicles you’re going to get later on?

MH: Depending on what vehicles you have, what things you’ve accumulated and where are you are in the story, different races will open up for the player. Some of them you have to take part in and others are optional.
The first vehicle in the game doesn’t have weapons, it doesn’t do you much good against the bandits with weapons, but it does make a difference compared to when you are on foot. But the third class vehicles, for example are much more heavily armored, they have a large range of weapons and if you take such one against one of the earlier buggies that you encounter, you will destroy it a lot easier.

UGDB: What about the upgrades? How can we get to upgrade our vehicle? Are those upgrades just cosmetic or they‘ll give some actual boost in performance?

MH: The way you get these upgrades is by taking parts of the different races. So, you may go out, run one of the rallies, win some racing certificates and buy new parts – it could be a performance part, it could be something like a new armor, maybe something heavier to smash the bandits, but it may be a purely cosmetic thing too. We tried to keep all of the upgrades really meaningful things that will make your life a lot easier out in the wasteland.

UGDB: When you drive in races, will there be any dangers different than your competitors – like mines on the track, radioactive zones, rock-slips, etc.?

MH: Well, we can say that the different parts of the wasteland are controlled by a different kind of bandits, for example The Scorchers… And there are other, different kinds of dangers. Also it is important what is your vehicle class, what are the weapons that you have equipped on it, etc. When you move through the world, you will learn how to spot the dangers and how difficult they could be.

UGDB: What about the multiplayer? Is there a mode where you can only race with other players?

Tim Willits: Actually, we haven’t finalized our multiplayer plans… We have a lot of ideas and putting them on a plate. We will have multiplayer and it will be set in this universe, it will involve things that you could imagine, but we’ll talk more about this aspect of the game when we have the final plans.

UGDB: We already know that the game will run at 60 frames per second on PC, but what about the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions?

TW: The console versions of RAGE will run just as fast as the PC. But we will know how fast exactly when the game is ready and shipped.

UGDB: When did you start developing RAGE and when are you planning to release the game?

TW: It’s been 3 years already – we stared in 2007… We can see the light in the tunnel, but it will come out when it’s really awesome. The game plays, feels and looks great already. We’re in those final stages of production and the game looks like it’s shippable but we want to take our time and make sure that it feels right.