Rage Interview – Tim Willits, Creative Director
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Saturday, May 08, 2010 @ 03:37 PM
Saturday, May 08, 2010 @ 03:38 PM
Saturday, May 08, 2010 @ 03:41 PM
Saturday, May 08, 2010 @ 03:53 PM
Saturday, May 08, 2010 @ 04:45 PM
Saturday, May 08, 2010 @ 04:55 PM
Saturday, May 08, 2010 @ 05:01 PM
Saturday, May 08, 2010 @ 05:11 PM
Saturday, May 08, 2010 @ 05:59 PM
Saturday, May 08, 2010 @ 06:31 PM
Saturday, May 08, 2010 @ 08:53 PM
Saturday, May 08, 2010 @ 09:02 PM
Saturday, May 08, 2010 @ 10:41 PM
Sunday, May 09, 2010 @ 03:42 AM
Sunday, May 09, 2010 @ 06:28 AM
Sunday, May 09, 2010 @ 11:02 AM
Sunday, May 09, 2010 @ 09:41 PM
Monday, May 10, 2010 @ 06:47 AM
Tuesday, May 11, 2010 @ 02:38 PM
Monday, May 31, 2010 @ 10:11 PM
Wednesday, July 07, 2010 @ 02:00 PM
Sunday, December 12, 2010 @ 02:57 PM
Saturday, May 08, 2010
Three years later and Rage is in incredible shape, with its asteroid-ravaged desert wastelands uniquely textured and filled with a variety of weird and wonderful characters. Running almost as well on 360 and PS3 as its PC counterpart, thanks in no small part to the efforts of programming virtuoso, id co-founder and Technical Director, John Carmack, in developing id Tech 5.
Meeting up with Rage's Creative Director, Tim Willits in Paris to talk about the game, we found him to be incredibly open, affable and passionate about id's most “awesome” project to date and what should be their best game since Doom 3.
I think probably the coolest thing – I can use cool – is really all the uniqueness and the variety to the gameplay. Like I say, at the core of a first-person shooter is that moment to moment interaction – you're holding a gun, you pull the trigger and something happens – that's key, but the vehicle - racing that, going onto Mutant Bash TV, finding the sewers around the wasteland, there's so much variety, you just won't get bored and that's really important to me.
It's a neat aside that's kinda part of the main mission, but there is an old TV producer that now lives in the wasteland, and he has set up this Running Man-type arena. In the game, you need a new car, but the only way to get that, is in a sponsored race and you'll need to get sponsorships from him. So, you go meet him and he says, “yes, I'll sponsor you, but you have to compete in Mutant Bash TV.”
The cornerstone of id Tech 5 is the mega texture technology, where we're basically able to paint everything uniquely. When we had that, we knew the world was going to be unique, we had to make sure we had unique bandits and we had to have unique mutants.
What's been the most challenging aspect in making Rage so far?
When they say legendary, I think, “oh my god. How old are you?” And we all have so many kids too.
Yes, we're a first-person studio and I've had that question in the past. It's like asking Ford, “are you gonna start making aeroplanes?” No, we make cars. But we could do other things as a first-person experience like the vehicle stuff and a lot of other aspects of the game.
Rage looks like it pushes the envelope in terms of the FPS, but what do you see being the future of the genre beyond Rage and the current crop of first-person shooters?
I think for the long-term, you're going to find much more community, much more people playing together. I would like to see something like a Rage world that you play with a number of people, not really like an MMO, but as a game that's based on what other players do that affects the storyline. That, I think in the future would be very interesting as well.
Yeah. And it's not just pre-programmed for you. You're not just going through it. Like say the last guy that happened to play, went into Wellspring and shot somebody, so when you go to Wellspring it'd be like, “some guy came into town and shot Crazy Joe!” so then other stuff changes. Some type of evolution like that down the road would be really neat.
Well, the short answer is that John (Carmack) is so freakin' smart. The long answer is the advantages that we have with id Tech 5 meant that when the guys set out to make it as a reboot, they could start from the ground up. They were able to look at PS3, 360 and PC and leverage that hardware to build it from the ground up.
We're usually in fear and panic most of the time, and we'll be like, “oh, this is great” but every time we see a graphical issue – and trust me, there are some issues with that, which John needs to work through – but when I see them, I'm like, “whoa!” But, luckily from the feedback I've gotten, some of the issues weren't really seen, but then we're not alpha yet and we have a good, strong footing on all the consoles. We just need to improve performance, get the bugs worked out and finish the game up.
Oh yes. Still working on it! It's gonna be cool. It's gonna be awesome. Hopefully, it'll be even more awesome than Rage. For us as a company, every game needs to be better than the last. I truly believe that Rage is the best game we've ever made. When we made Doom 3 I said, Doom 3 is the best game we've ever made and Rage will be better. Hopefully. Doom 4 needs to be even more awesome than Rage.
Ooh, yeah – that's definitely not a question for me. But those guys have a great handle on it, and I promise you it'll be cool.
It's just hard to picture an open-world Doom.
Well, you never know. You'll just have to wait and see!
Rage is set to release some time in 2011.