Game Informer has landed on doormats around the nation, and with it comes fresh details on id's brand new shooter, Rage. The game puts players in the boots of a fortunate asteroid strike survivor, who awakens from suspended animation in a massive underground Ark.
As is typical of such places, the Ark is full of dead bodies and ruined databases. Unfortunately, the surface world isn't much better, now a desolate wasteland ruled by mutants and bandits who live in fear of a sinister organization called "The Authority." No prizes for guessing what you're going to have to do to said sinister organization.
"The largest chunk of our market's going to be on consoles," says John Carmack, confirming that this is going to be made with the PC version as a secondary consideration. "I mean, yes, you can use the mouse for it but it's critical that the controller be the way that we design the game."
The PC version will offer higher resolutions, more anti-aliasing and faster texture page-in, but otherwise will be indentical to the console versions. Carmack adds that the Xbox 360 version could run to three discs, though this is proving difficult since id won't make "arbitrary cuts" to split the game up.
Further details include an engineering system to craft weapons such as turrets, regenerative health, hub towns from which missions and vehicular races can be obtained, weapon upgrades, alternate ammo, optional stealth approaches, a gladiatorial game show called Mutant Bash TV, customizable car parts such as EMP shields, tire shreddders, bombs and magnets, and a triple-tipped boomerang called a "wingstick."
Phew, that's a lot of stuff. Finally, multiplayer is yet to be finalized, but they're working on it.
Contest:
1:20 PM on 07.22.2009
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Fucking genius. Where do they come up with this stuff?
Dvd: -3
Yes, I'm still a hardcore PC fanboy.
PC is better and no Console owner can deny it. I hate to see all these designers whoring themselves out to Microsoft and Sony.
i mean which is it? the game is going to have 80 different environment types(hard to believe, coming from id), a ton of HD video cutscenes(hard to believe, being that it's 2009), or has id just become a giant Sony shill?
While it sucked for movies (double VHS blew because the 2 minutes wasted switching tapes was killer, especially if it was good), I enjoyed switching CDs for FF7 and Metal Gear Solid. It felt like there was something more coming. Something huge. Plus, both games had you switch discs on some really perfect moments-- not major climaxes, but during "Shit just got real" revelation moments. Maybe I'm in the minority here.
@smoger - I think its to do with some of the technologies theyre using. Id likes to try interesting new things, in this case I think its a 'mega-texture' that covers the whole environment or something. Takes up a fuck-ton of space, whatever it is.
This game sounded interesting a couple years ago, when apparently it was close to completion. Im losing interest, and the fact that the game takes up a lot more space than most is not doing it for me.
Good for console players, though. Id are good at PC controls, so its probably best they put their main focus on making it work well with a controller, it can really make or break a game.
I've been an avid PC gamer for 25 years but the horrid truth seems obvious to me.
Quote from the article in Game Informer:
Carmack:
"[Mapping] technology evolved with Rage into a much more general purpose paged virtual textured system where we can use it with everything in the game practically; the characters, the vehicles, the landscapes, the buildings are all done with virtual textures. So, from a run-time-perspective, there is no limitation on how much texture you can use. I had one of the new artist hires come up and just thank me for giving him this ability to do whatever he wanted with textures, and how at his previous he was always bear down about the texture limits. Now they can just kind of go crazy."
I imagine this has a lot to do with it.
Also, how does Rage needing more than one disc make id a Sony shill?
Note to 360 fanboys, particularly those with probably zero or very little game programming experience: Please do not comment on what is and is not possible with other people's products when you have no clue what you are talking about. It's better to keep your mouth shut and be thought of as a fool, than to open it and remove all doubt.
My point has been made.
Agreed. The utter simplicity and length of your argument also made me laugh.
Your argument seems foolish. Correct, the PC does have FAR more buttons available. But, if they create this software for the PC and use all these wonderful [keyboard] buttons. Then imagine what happens when they try porting said software to the consoles and their 16 buttons. It won't work will it?
The problem is that all the money to be made is on the consoles. I'm not pointing fingers here, but pretty much every PC gamer knows the word 'torrent'. We used to think that stealing games was a good thing because it would lower the price of games and "sharing is caring". What really happened is PC gamers got fucked in the arse by pirates and publishers are fed up with not making money from PC sales.
The PC is FAR more powerful and has the possibility of being a much better game platform. But, its un-practical and not going to make developers/publishers any where near as much money as the console market.
"I hate to see all these designers whoring themselves out to Microsoft and Sony."
your PC doesn't run on windows?
Piracy isn't the problem on the PC, it's just a simple fact that consoles have more market penetration and therefore have a wider audience. If the PC was dominant, then more developers would focus on it. It's that simple. It has nothing to do with piracy, as plenty of people make plenty of money on the PC.
I can accept that. I mentioned earlier that it I felt it was because of the market. As a user consoles seem a more practical choice. But, you honestly dont think piracy has anything at all to do with PC game publishing these days?
Anyway, Rage... I am hoping the PS3 port is actually of quality, so I can get that one and avoid the multiple discs... if history teaches us anything though, the 360 version will likely look and run a little better, meaning 3 DVDs for me.
If you install Lost Odyssey to the HDD do you have to switch discs?
I don't think piracy is an issue with PC gaming anymore than it is with downloadable music. There hasn't been a single study that has shown that piracy has had a significant impact on either market, so until we have some conclusive evidence we have to assume the negative. In fact, as far as music goes, studies have shown that people who have downloaded music illegally were more likely to purchase music than those who haven't. I haven't seen any numbers yet, but I'm willing to bet that might also be true with games. I've known many people who have pirated a game just to try it out, and then go buy it if they like it.
Piracy is the scapegoat for companies who push out uninspired and unoriginal crap, and wonder why it doesn't sell very well. Instead of recognizing their own failure to make a product that people find value in, they will blame all their problems on pirates.
"The PC market seems to be getting smaller."
your entire argument is a bag of shit, which you've clearly not looked into at all. 5 seconds on google found this:
"13 Billion dollars is the entire PC games market in 2008. In terms of the split, Chart Track believes 24% is retail, 46% online revenue services (i.e. Subscriptions, micro-transactions), 22% is digital distribution and 8% is ad-revenue...All this compares to 32 billion dollars from all console sales."
Yeah, sure companies can push out uninspired and unoriginal crap then blame piracy. But, I am pretty sure that nintendo and their DS console is loaded with both inspiring and original "crap". Their software is rampantly pirated and they are trying to stop it due to lower sales [R4, M3, EDGE?]. The PSP and software sales have also been heavily effected by piracy. Steam exists to try and stop piracy ruining sales on PC. Everybody uses the "try before I buy" excuse. But, a VERY small amount of people will actually pay for something that they can have for free.
You seem to be defending piracy!?
im pretty sure that 32 billion dollars is far more than 13 billion dollars. I may be wrong?
You're making lots of claims based on anecdotal evidence, but you have yet to produce any numbers to prove that piracy has hurt sales on those platforms. Until the last quarter, sales have gone nowhere but up despite all these cries that the sky was falling due to piracy. And the recent sales slump was due to the economy.
I'm not defending piracy at all. What I'm saying is, the industry has failed miserably to prove that piracy is the huge problem that they claim it to be. And that causes me to have to deal with draconian bullshit DRM for PC games, which only inconveniences legit customers.
I'm willing to be convinced that piracy is putting game programmers out on the streets, but the industry either needs to put up or shut up.
You can all argue with me, tell me i have no facts and tell me i'm full of shit.. But, Me and most of my friends work in various fields of visual media. Quite often the only thing that protects us is intellectual property. Intellectual property counts for shit! We are talented individuals and produce some good work between us. We work very fucking hard to make money to live. Its surprising how little money talented digital artists make. If one person steals work from us its a kick in the nuts. If they then share that with a second person, the chances of our work getting re-produced is doubled and so on. I can tell you for a fact that media re-production does effect income and on more than one occasion has put a stop to future productions. The big video game companies have huge budgets. But, don't believe that piracy doesn't effect these people. It's always the little guy working his bollocks off that gets fucked!
Anybody that can use google can acquire video games [any media] without paying and every serious PC gamer knows this. The majority of console gamers are oblivious to this.
I didn't want to argue. But, it is a sore subject and does effect many creative people.
apologies, rant over :P
sorry about that
Proving exactly how piracy effects sales is probably impossible, but that far from means we "assume the negative" and pretend there is no issue. All the evidence in the world I need to know that illegal downloads steal money from the industry is to talk to young people I meet and work with, who all show and tell me they steal all their music, movies and games on a regular basis. I don't remember the last time I went to a party and there wasn't a bootleg movie playing, or a stack of CDs with low kbps mp3s downloaded from Rapidshare on them.
Some people, especially young people with little life experience to know better, see downloading media illegally as a victimless crime. They can never be reasoned with, bargained with or talked to in a way that makes them snap out of it. The only solution is to prevent them from doing it, through technology like DRM or through making it more easy to catch and prosecute them for their activities.
"The only solution is to prevent them from doing it, through technology like DRM or through making it more easy to catch and prosecute them for their activities."
Wrong. This will only encourage it as it will now give people a misguided sense of justice to destroying invasive or troublesome DRM and escalate piracy.
The best method to decrease piracy is not a short term solution. The solution is to make the retail product more attractive than a pirated product. You say "how can I make an item that costs money worthwhile than a free one? While you may cite Steam as the paragon of DRM done right you have to ask yourself is it really defeating piracy through DRM or convenience of obtaining a product?
I'll cite you an example that's a single player game, niche market and not a Valve OR Blizzard game that sold exceptionally well in the face of piracy: Galactic Civilizations 2. The base product is simple to pirate but there is an incentive to obtain a pay copy as the game has been continually added onto over and over again.
This is of course not fool proof system but then again neither is excessive DRM. So you see both methods are risky but one is more favorable by default to the average consumer.
Crazy to think that had Microsoft ignored the welfare parents market and included a HD DVD drive in the 360 as standard, with obvious price hike, then maybe it could have won the format battle and we could be buying films on HD DVD right now - Sony would have been fucked! They could have even included HDD as standard and had games install on there (god forbid, WHO would do that?!), that would avoid these 3 disc shenanigans.
That's just how things panned out hey. Cheapness has only ever held progress back.
For years I've been saying "a time will come in the not so distant future where the best games don't fit on a DVD" - errorbawks fanboys have always rah rah rahed at me, good games don't take much space rah rah rah cutscenes cutscenes rah rah rah.
Suck my fucking balls. That time is coming.
Looking forward to watching Bronson on Blu-ray tonight. Love my blu-ray's and my 1080p LCD.
http://www.destructoid.com/epic-defends-sony-s-refusal-to-drop-ps3-price-140933.phtml