The Mac version of RAGE goes for $39.99 and includes both the first-purchase incentive Wasteland sewer missions and the Anarchy Edition content. It’s available via the Mac App Store as well as some other retailers, but has not yet appeared on Steam and the rest of the digital distribution massive.

What has appeared on Steam – and elsewhere – is a patch for RAGE, bringing the game to version 1.2. The substantial update fixes a number of bugs, but most importantly, addresses the much-derided texture issues which have been a source of annoyance since launch.

For those with high-performance rigs, a texture detail option has been enabled to improve the look of assets, while a new transcode benchmark has been added to help players discover how quickly their PCs can decipher encoded graphics information and adjust settings accordingly. Additionally, new error messaging and “safe” fallback settings have been implemented, so identifying and dealing with errors should be easier than in the past.

RAGE was id’s first new IP since Quake, released in October last year, and maintains an 81 Metacritic average on both consoles, with a 79 on PC.

Thanks, CVG. [image]

Thanks, Joystiq.

Thanks, Joystiq.

Thanks, Gamefront.

The id shooter’s demo is up for 2.03Gb, so settle in for a wait. You’ll be able to try the Well mission, explore Wellsprings, do mini-games and try a couple of the races.

It’ll arrive on PSN on December 6, according to Bethesda VP Pete Hines.

The link to queue the 360 demo is here.

According to a tweet from the developer, Bethesda’s lawyers are “skittish about the patent issue” surrounding the code for “Carmack’s Reverse,” which is a stencil shadowing technique patented by Creative Labs and jointly created by the id legend and other coders.

id Software contracted the use of the tech for Doom 3, but providing a source code using the technique would have been a litigation issue.

No word yet on when the updated source code will be released.

Thanks, Shack.

“DOOM 3 source is packaged and tested, we are waiting on final lawyer clearance for release,” Id Software’s resident wizard John Carmack tweeted.

At Quakecon 2011, Carmack said the source code would be sent into the wild after RAGE’s release in October.

As well as enabling mods to be launched as stand-alone games, the release of the source code enables fans to develop community patches fixing bugs or increasing compatibility, or even overhauling graphics.

Thanks, Blue’s News.

In a tweet, CC’ed to Eurogamer operations director Tom Bramwell, VP of PR and marketing Pete Hines bluntly said Kotaku’s original report was “complete bollocks.”

He added in a further tweet that “no title under development at id has been postponed – indefinitely or otherwise.”

The site was given the info by an anonymous source close to Bethesda, who claimed the decision was made at a “company wide” meeting in Dallas.

The game, first announced in 2008 and largely silent since then, was reportedly put on “indefinite” hold due to “the issues and reviews” of Rage’s launch, with Zenimax and Bethesda apparently feeling “a serious lack of confidence in the project management at id”.

RAGE currently holds a Metacritic average ranging from 79 on PC to 83 on PlayStation 3. The PC version suffered a number of GPU driver issues at launch which detracted from its claims to graphical prowess. The game has charted highly in all territories.

[Original story by Brenna Hillier, contributions by Johnny Cullen]

FIFA’s sales were down by 68 percent from release last week, but was still 13th in the all-time weekly unit sales ever tracked.

RAGE sales were dominent on 360, comprising of 58 percent of sales to PS3′s 32 percent. No numbers for the PC version were announced.

Dark Souls entered third to strong sales on PS3 with 58 percent to 360′s 42 percent on the platform breakdown. There was no comparison on sales for how the PS3 version of Dark Souls compared to Demon’s Souls, though.

Top five is rounded off by Gears of War 3 and F1 2011.

Full top ten for the week ending October 8 is below. Last week’s data is here.

1. FIFA 12
2. RAGE
3. Dark Souls
4. Gears of War 3
5. F1 2011
6. Zumba Fitness
7. Dead Island
8. Deus Ex: Human Revolution
9. LEGO: Pirates of the Caribbean
10. Resistance 3

The patch, which hit Steam over the weekend, allows savvy gamers to override id Tech 5′s automatic optimisation in favour of turning all the sliders up – or down – as they please.

“The original release of RAGE does not expose many video graphics options for people to tweak because some of these settings, although desirable from a quality perspective, simply will not work on specific configurations either due to hardware limitations and/or driver bugs. Due to popular demand for more video and graphics options, this patch updates the video settings menu and exposes several quality and performance settings. However, not everyone may be able to increase the settings due to hardware limitations and/or driver bugs.”

This demand has wrought new menu items for Vsync, Texture Cache, and Anisotropic Filter.

Although hailed by some gamers as the answer to their fervent cries, continuing hardware problems mean some seem to be worse off than before, with a small handful of users reporting severe, game-breaking issues.

The patch notes linked above include a list of known Nvidia and AMD card issues.

RAGE released on PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 last week, with strong reviews. The PC version was troubled by a need for GPU driver updates, which has overshadowed its reception somewhat,

Thanks, Gamefront.

Speaking with Kotaku, creative director Tim Willits agreed with Carmack, stating that when the game was submitted to the “build system,” for testing, the console versions were “solid and bug-free,” but  there were issues on the PC end.

“We have had video drives issues that have caused problems and frustrations with our PC fans,” he said. “Everyone at id Software is very upset by these issues which are mostly out of our control. We are working with both AMD/ATI and Nvidia to help them identify and fix the issues with their drivers.

“We’ve had assurances that these problems are being addressed and new drivers will be available soon.”

Carmack, although censoring himself, called the PC launch issues a “clusterfuck”, stating the team thought driver issues during development were mostly worked out.

“We were quite happy with the performance improvements that we had made on AMD hardware in the months before launch,: he said. We had made significant internal changes to cater to what AMD engineers said would allow the highest performance with their driver and hardware architectures, and we went back and forth with custom extensions and driver versions.

“We knew that all older AMD drivers, and some Nvidia drivers would have problems with the game, but we were running well in-house on all of our test systems. When launch day came around and the wrong driver got released, half of our PC customers got a product that basically didn’t work. The fact that the working driver has incompatibilities with other titles doesn’t help either.

“Issues with older/lower end/exotic setups are to be expected on a PC release, but we were not happy with the experience on what should be prime platforms.”

When asked if this could have been avoided if RAGE’s primary design platform were on PC instead of consoles, as the team at id has noted several times, Carmack reiterated id went the opposite route for a reason.

“You can choose to design a game around the specs of a high-end PC and make console versions that fail to hit the design point, or design around the specs of the consoles and have a high-end PC provide incremental quality improvements,” he said. “We chose the latter.

“We do not see the PC as the leading platform for games. That statement will enrage some people, but it is hard to characterize it otherwise; both console versions will have larger audiences than the PC version. A high end PC is nearly 10 times as powerful as a console, and we could unquestionably provide a better experience if we chose that as our design point and we were able to expend the same amount of resources on it.

“Nowadays most of the quality of a game comes from the development effort put into it, not the technology it runs on. A game built with a tenth the resources on a platform 10 times as powerful would be an inferior product in almost all cases.”

Yesterday, id updated the Bethblog with download links for AMD and Nvidia drivers, and today, it has updated the page once more with more RAGE-specific updates.

RAGE was released in the UK today.

Tim Willits is optimistic that the game he’s worked on for the past five years, id Software’s first new IP in 15 years since Quake’s original release in 1996, will turn out well in a crowded holiday period. And it seems like that might be the case.

Despite a few issues with the PC version, RAGE is holding up relatively well on the scoring front, getting an 84 on PS3, 83 on 360 and 82 on PC.

I spoke to him before the game’s release this week at Eurogamer Expo a couple of weeks back. Here’s what he said.

VG247: After nearly five years, give or take, you’ve approached the finishing line on RAGE. How does that feel?

Tim Willits: Very exciting. The game’s all wrapped up, we have people playing it and they’re having a fun time. It’s very exciting to have the 20-year anniversary and to launch a brand new game. It continues the id legacy of doing what we want and we have new technology, a new paradigm of cross-platform. We’ve always been PC-centric, but now we’re not. It’s a new game; we’re very excited.

But it’s so long since you announced it. I think it was Pete [Hines, VP of PR and marketing, Bethesda] that said recently you guys had announced it too early. I know you were initially with EA Partners before you were bought by ZeniMax, but what would be your opinion: do you think you announced the game too early?

It’s always easy to play Monday morning quarterback, but no. The thing is John [Carmack, id tech boss] loves talking about cool stuff. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter. For us, now we’re right around the corner and doing these events, the game’s looking great, plays great. Whether you’re talking about it early or late, or you announce this or you announce that, or you have this campaign or that campaign, all it comes down to the game being fun. And the game’s a heck lot of fun.

How will you feel if there’s a wrong turn with the reception at release?

This game’s not much different than when we released DOOM 3, Quake III, Quake II. People’s anticipations of what the game is, people’s expectations of what id Software does and has done in the past – yeah, we don’t let those things stress us out. But I do think RAGE will change people’s perceptions of the company. It’s a really different type of experience that we’ve done in the past. Yes, it’s a first-person shooter, but it’s a lot different. I’m proud of the fact we don’t do exactly the same game every single time.

Lots of game companies do that all the time: we don’t. So it’s very exciting to work on something new and exciting.

It’s the 20th anniversary of id. You basically made the FPS genre; you’ve said that yourself. From a personal perspective, how much have you enjoyed seen id grow?

I’m excited. I’ve been working at the company for 17 years and there are still times when I have to stop and pinch myself and say to myself, ‘I’m making videogames for 17 years, this is awesome!’ And the world is shrinking and I go on these tours and everybody knows what we’re working on.

“But I do think RAGE will change people’s perceptions of the company. It’s a really different type of experience that we’ve done in the past. Yes, it’s a first-person shooter, but it’s a lot different. I’m proud of the fact we don’t do exactly the same game every single time. Lots of game companies do that all the time: we don’t.”

And we release globally now. We have new global markets, global marketing campaigns. It’s so exciting, and it’s thrilling to continue to work in the industry and continue to make the games I love to play. And the industry itself is really hot right now: there’s millions of gamers, millions of new gamers that coming onto the scene. There’s lots of opportunities, not just for the guys who make the big mega-hits, but for people working on mobile games, social games.

The future is very, very bright, for not only id, but really for the industry in general. It’s a good time to be in the industry.

But there seems to be a bit of a downturn recently. Sales are down.

That’s our global economy. But some of these games are just awesome. Every year, games just get better and better. So, I think the future’s bright. Yeah, the economy maybe beating everyone down a little bit, but the games sure are not taking a hit.

There’s so many AAA games coming out these days. We’re approaching the holiday season, and there’s going to be a worry that a couple of these games are going to crash and burn. Are you worried?

We’re the only game in the top ten that is a new IP. People, frankly, may be getting tired of whatever games they’ve already been playing. But it’s much better to be at the front of people’s minds than to be long forgotten. The exciting thing about RAGE is that it’s not part three of something; it doesn’t follow the same cookie cutter formula that a lot of other mega-hits follow these days.

We could have taken the safe route and just kept making DOOM games for the past 20 years, but I think gamers are very intelligent. They know when there’s new things. I have high-degree confidence we’ll do very well.

Remind me, when did you guys go multi? It was DOOM 3 on Xbox?

Well, yeah. Vicarious Visions did the [Xbox version] of DOOM 3, which was alright. But that’s one of the reasons we wanted to make id Tech 5 from the ground up. Start with a true, multi-core, multi-processing-type engine. A lot of developers have faced hurdles making their game run on PS3 or 360 because of older technologies; we’ve side-stepped because we’ve built everything up from the ground up.

And it’s really exciting that all the assets, textures and levels that we’ve developed for one system work across all the systems. That is the future: cross-platform. It’s difficult to develop a game for one platform, especially if you’re a new IP. It’s definitely the future. You’ll want to throw that net as far and as wide as you can.

I want to stay on multi-plat for a second. Todd [Hollenshead, id CEO] mentioned at QuakeCon that going multi-platform enabled a richer experience with id’s games compared to being PC-exclusive. What’s your perspective on that?

Yeah, I’m not really sure what Todd was talking about. For us, our objective for RAGE was to deliver the same experience on all the systems. That’s probably what he meant. You’ll have to email Todd to get clarification on what he said.

You got into a lot of trouble recently over a certain DRM comment.

No, I’ll clarify that. I was saying I personally feel that I think games being connected online all the time is great. I have zero issue with that. That has nothing to do with DRM. I think people were just being confused. Being online, always being connected, is the way of the future. I still think it’s great. RAGE has standard Steam DRM.

As you’d say in England, ‘Not to get their britches all bunched up.’ But me personally? Yeah, I think being connected is great. I love it. I get updates, all my stats would be there.

Consumers these days, they don’t really like being always connected because there are always going to be times when you’re not, and you want to play games like Assassin’s Creed or Diablo. That’s where the problem lies.

OK. When are you not connected?

On a plane, or on a bus, or in a car, and you want to play Diablo III!

That’s the silliest thing I’ve… Yeah, that’s lame.

I could play StarCraft II on my Macbook if that had offline.

But do you? Really? No, but the possibility’s there.

Well the possibility is silly. I mean really.

Fair enough, I’ll drop it.

[Tim laughs.]

Where do you intend to go next-gen with id Tech 5?

This is more of a John-type question, but the great thing about id Tech 5 is it’s very scaleable. John believes, and I believe John, that we will use this kernel, the core of id Tech 5, well into future. Heck, we can go on for ten years.

Tim Willits after his EG Expo
Behind Closed Doors session.

Look at Quake III: Quake III tech is still powering some of the greatest games out there. Yes, they don’t call it Quake III tech anymore, but you know what I’m saying. We’re very excited.

We have no clue about the next generation of consoles. We have no inside information, but we’re very confident that our technology will easily scale right into the next generation. We made some very conscious efforts to create a tech that will get us well into the future. What about Wii U? Is that something id would be interested in?

To be honest, I haven’t even looked at it. The Bethesda booth at E3 was next to Nintendo, but I never made it over there. I have no clue.

Could you still outsource games now you’re with Bethesda? Is that something you’d like to do?

That’s a decision that’s above my head. Right now, I’m just focussing on getting RAGE done and then I’m going to help the guys finish up DOOM 4. So, whatever the organisation wants to do with those, I’ll just follow suit.

How is DOOM 4 going, by the way? I have to ask.

That’s question two! That’s all I can say about that.

Answer me this at least: is it something we could hear about by the end of the year after RAGE has released?

Come on, you think I’m going to answer some questions about DOOM? They’ll have to wait.

Tim Willits is creative director of id Software. RAGE is out now for PS3, 360 and PC. Watch the first half-hour of the game here.

RAGE, id’s first new IP for 15 years, is here. Hands down, it’s one of the most attractive games you’ve ever seen. That’s in a tech sense, obviously; those mutants are pretty darn ugly.

Check out the entire first mission of the post apocalypse’s newest shooter in the two videos below. Listen carefully and you can hear my twin sons screaming in the background. Get all the review scores here.

According to the post on the Bethblog, a lot of times these problems can be remedied by fixing driver issues, and id Software is working with AMD and Nvidia to resolve problems as quickly as possible.

Users with the aforementioned cards should do the following:

• AMD users need to update to the most recent RAGE Catalyst driver. Grab it here.
• Nvidia users should try updating RAGE to the current beta driver. When this driver is updated, a notice will appear on the Bethblog.
• Check the forums for solutions that can improve reported issues with screen tearing, blurry textures, and texture pop up.

id is currently working on an update which will allow users to more easily make configuration changes. Details on this will be announced “shortly”.

The studio’s creative director told VG247 at Eurogamer Expo a couple of weeks back that, regardless of when it was announced or not, it comes down at the end of the day to the game’s fun factor. Which he says there’s plenty of.

“The thing is John [Carmack, id tech boss] loves talking about cool stuff,” Willits said to us in London a couple of weeks back when the early announcement question was posed to him.

“At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter. For us, now we’re right around the corner and doing these events, the game’s looking great, plays great. Whetever you’re talking about it early or you talk about it late or you announce this or you announce that or you have this campaign or that campaign, all it comes down to is the game’s fun. And the game’s a heck lot of fun.”

RAGE was announced at QuakeCon 2007 as part of John Carmack’s keynote blowout on id Tech 5, but launched yesterday in the US. So far, consumer reaction is too soon to call, but Willits insists he isn’t worried if the four year wait has dampened expectations, reiterating it will change gamers perception of the company.

“This game is not much different than when we released DOOM 3, Quake III, Quake II. People’s anticipations of what the game is, people’s expectations of what id Software does and has done in the pas – yeah, we don’t let those things like that stress us out,” said Willits.

“But I can tell you I do think RAGE will definitely change people’s perceptions of the company. It’s a really different type of experience that we’ve done in the past. Yes, it’s a first-person shooter, but it’s a lot different. I’m proud of the fact we don’t do exactly the same formulate game every single time. Lots of game companies do that all the time, we don’t. So it’s very exciting to work on something new and exciting.”

Our full interview with Tim Willits will go live on Friday morning along with RAGE’s UK launch.

According to the Bethesda Blog, Id is working with Nvidia to push out a similar fix. Users are advised to wait for the Rage-specific update rather than upgrading willy-nilly.

Of particular note are those using drivers updated for the Battlefield 3 beta, which will need to be rolled back.

Rage released yesterday in the US and arrives elsewhere by the end of the week, for PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. Reviews have been largely delighted.

Thanks, GiantBomb.

As always, we appreciate your contributions – share any more you find in the comments.

• Game Informer – 9/10
• GameTrailers – 9/10
• TeamXbox – 9.5/10
• CVG – 89%
• Machinima – 9/10
• Joystiq – 3/5
• Strategy Informer – 6.5/10
• Destructoid – 7/10
• Mundogamers (Spanish) – 9/10
• Telegraph – 3.5/5
• Gamefront – 75/100
• Guardian – 4/5
• JeuxVideo (French) – 18/20
• 3DJuegos (Spanish) – 9.1/10
• Meristation (Spanish) – 9/10
• GameReactor.se (Swedish) – 8/10
• Eurogamer – 8/10
• Eurogamer.es (Spanish) – 9/10
• Gamespot – 8/10
• IGN – 8.5
• RipTen – 9.5/10
• EGM – 9.5/10
• VentureBeat – no score
• 1UP – B
• UGO – A-
• AusGamers – 9/10
• IncGamers – 9/10
• MonsterVine – 4.5/5
• Shopto – Excellent
• GamesVillage (Italian) – 360 – 9.1/10; PS3 – 9.1/10; PC – 9.2/10
• Hardgame (Spanish) – 9/10
• Vandal (Spanish) – 9/10
• DigitalSpy – 4/5
• Power Unlimited (Dutch) – 93%
• 9lives (Dutch) – 94%
• Ripten – 9.5/10
• GamingNexus – A
• JPS – 4.5/5
• gamrReview – 9/10
• The Escapist – 4.5/5

RAGE releases in the US on October 4 – the calendar’s just flicking over at time of writing – and is due in Australia and Europe on October 6 and 7 respectively.

RAGE releases next week in on October 4 in the US and October 7 in Europe.

Speaking in an interview with GI.biz, Willits said that on day one, id knew it wanted to make RAGE a franchise, instead of a one-off release.

“You need to made a franchise,” he said. “Especially for us. We’re doing everything we can to turn Rage into a franchise, please let it sell so we can make another one.

“We definitely, from the get go, planned to make this a much bigger franchise, a much richer world, that allows us to have different games, and we can make more mobile games, heck, we could make a social game with Rage if we wanted to. And hopefully we can make a Rage 2. Hopefully.”

Considering the work that went into the technical aspects of the game, it only made sense for the team to think of RAGE as a franchise due not only to accumulated man-hours, but the engine’s expense as well.

“It’s huge investment in new technology, it’s taken us a long time to make the engine, we’re definitely leveraging this technology of course with the next Doom game and hopefully with Rage 2 and some of our other titles,” said Willits.

“From a business standpoint, making a part two is always smart.”

RAGE is out October 4 in the US and October 7 in Europe.

Check out the footage below.

The time’s 7PM on a brisk, Australian Wednesday evening; the place is Sydney’s own world-renowned architectural fallacy, the Opera House. The guy is id Software creative director, Tim Willits. He’s speaking at length to a cast of hundreds. Some of us are industry pundits. Some of us won a competition and brought our attractive, bewildered girlfriends along for the ride. Most of us are not doing the stereotype any favours. The guy to my left is wearing a brown corduroy jacket and breathing extremely heavily. The guy to my right’s thumbs keep unsettling his lap by compulsively raking the air with Ryu and Ken’s F, D, DF + HP dragon punch movement. At one point, he looks at me helplessly.

Regardless of unenviable dress sense or indentured arcade mannerisms, the unity factor is that we’re all here for one thing. Tim’s hour on stage is as much an affirmation of id’s place in game development history as a confident display of Rage’s many post-apocalyptic charms. The former’s important, not just because it serves as a buffered lead-in to what Rage has to offer, but also because what the giant dot-points behind Tim keep beating everyone over the head with is unequivocally true: id invented the FPS. The team’s been tucked away working on Rage since 2007 and it’s been a long time between drinks, so a lot of people could be forgiven for forgetting that fact. Some in attendance never knew it in the first place.

Tim’s hour on stage is as much an affirmation of id’s place in game development history as a confident display of Rage’s many post-apocalyptic charms.

The likes of Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, and Quake did much more for the genre than simply lock you inside a hellbound marine’s skull and give you mondo guns. While many will point to Doom as the genre’s most important development after a certain pixelly hunt for Hitler debuted it, Tim disagrees.

“I believe that Quake was actually more important to our industry than Doom was,” he notes rather controversially.

Not only did id invent the FPS, it also perpetrated much of the theory behind its supporting infrastructure – infrastructure you still enjoy almost twenty years on from Quake. Sure, Doom’s 3D inroads meant you could go up and down, and the BFG was all kinds of cool and excess, but Quake boasted an industry catalyst. At the time of its genesis in ’96, John Romero devised the concept of dedicated servers – and, subsequently, sweet networked multiplayer – amidst no small amount of peer scoffage.

For Tim personally, Quake also served as a very important watershed moment for the then-budding level designer.

“So Quake had this kind of schizophrenic design, and we had a number of these half-levels, these small, little, orphans of levels,” he relates, eyes twinkling.

“I finished all my work on the shareware levels and I said to John Romero and John Carmack, ‘Hey, there are these levels that are kind of cool, but we haven’t finished them. I can finish them, and then we can make deathmatch only levels!’ And both John and John were like: ‘That is the stupidest idea we’ve ever heard.’”

“We can make deathmatch only levels!’ And both John and John were like: ‘That is the stupidest idea we’ve ever heard.’”

There’s a knowing group guffaw and the scribbling in of notebooks: Chalk one more up for id.

“We invented the word ‘deathmatch.’ If we had have trademarked it… we’d be rich!” Tim laments, laughing.

He’s right, id should’ve. Which is why it’s interesting that Rage doesn’t actually have deathmatch. It doesn’t have any kind of adversarial multiplayer. There’s a limited form of two-player co-op, but this is a predominantly single-player FPS. That alone makes it a contemporary anomaly.

Rage also serves as somewhat of a greater metaphor for id itself, as it is now. The very first thing that happens in-game is that you emerge from a long stasis, greeted by the aged corpses of others who were once like you but less dead. Then you stumble, and find your way outside the cold walls of this sterile pod. Instantly, you’re blinded by the light of a plundered and unfamiliar world.

Considering everything Tim’s told us tonight, this moment and this moment alone seems especially poignant. A lot’s changed out there on the wild gaming landscape since the developer pushed out Doom 3 in 2004. The unexplored reaches of first-person gameplay that helped make id a household name in the early ‘90s and beyond now no longer apply.

As influential as it is, the indelible pedigree isn’t supposed to convince you that Rage must be the greatest FPS of all time simply because id made it. Tim prefers demonstration over hyperbole.

“Many people ask me, why a new IP? You have Doom, Quake, and Wolfenstein, why Rage?” he muses, booting up the game on that towering screen behind him.

“When we finished Doom 3, we were looking at all our titles, all our games. We wanted to stay true to the core of the first-person shooter, but we wanted to expand the experience. Rage has a brand new technology, id Tech 5. There are three things that, really, are the highlights of this new technology: megatextures, true cross-platform, and it’s a 60Hz game.”

Megatextures mean that, even though a whole lot of Rage is broken and barren, nothing ever repeats itself along the game’s expansive virtual canvas. ‘True cross-platform’ tech claims that, in theory, it’s built for exactly the same kind of high-speed sin on both console and PC. And the 60Hz, well. That takes care of the high-speed sin. In a nutshell, Rage is pretty, it (hopefully) won’t suffer from consolitis, and it’s slick. Real slick. It also has one girthy narrative shepherding you from quest to quest.

“John Carmack had a famous saying,” Tim related earlier. “He once said, ‘Story in video games is like story in porn: No-one cares.’”

Call of Duty’s makers, some learnt tonight, even purchased the back-end of Quake III’s engine and repurposed it as the ‘CoD Engine.’

At the time we laughed, but we were also chilled by the prospect of an id-brand facsimile of Borderlands. Tim warms our bones once again when he reconvenes on that anecdote and quips: “Yes, John has come around. The story is important!”

But tonight’s Opera House storytelling is drawing to a close. The lights go down on Tim Willits, his brief history of id, and Rage’s slavering mutants. The cheers and applause aren’t wild, but they are respectful. Some of them are even awed, younger minds still trying to comprehend the gravity of all this stuff they never might’ve known laid the foundations for every marathon Call of Duty session they’ve ever had. Call of Duty’s makers, they learnt tonight, even purchased the back-end of Quake III’s engine and repurposed it as the ‘CoD Engine.’

“Doom was the father of first-person shooters,” Tim farewells. “Quake was the father of awesomeness, and I think Rage… is the new awesomeness.”

Rage releases for PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 next week.

Id Software creative director Tim Willits said in an interview with Spong that there are “lots of expectations and preconceived notions”, which bring pressure to bear on the company.

“I believe when RAGE ships though, that it will change the perception of the company,” he said.

“I think that our hardcore fans will get it and love it, and we will actually get some new fans.”

These new fans are to be recruited from among the console crowd.

“We’re really excited about getting some fans on the PS3,” Willits said, adding that some long-term PlayStation fans might never have played an iD game – apparently forgetting a successful Doom port.

“So right there that’s about 75 million people out there that we want to try and recruit. That’s what the cross-platform strategy will do for us.

“We’re trying a lot of new things and it seems to be working really well – people who have played it really seem to love it.”

Open world post-apocalyptic shooter RAGE ships for PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 next week.

According to Willits, the large install on PS3 is to cut down on texture loads.

“Sony was great. Kudos to Sony for letting us do that. They don’t allow every game to do that. So definitely, hats off,” he said. “What we were able to do is install all the textures to the highest level. What is nice about the PS3 platform is that it’s just one platform. Everyone has one Blu-ray drive, one hard drive, it’s all the same. Some of the other systems you have… should I install it on my 360? Should I not install it? So yes, it’s very nice.

“[On 360], we recommend installing the game to the hard drive, but you don’t need to install all three discs. If you don’t have the space available on your hard drive, don’t stress. Install the first disc, the first chapter, the first half of the game, then when you’re done, uninstall and install disc two.”

Willits explained that on 360, there isn’t specific cut-off where you will need to swap discs, as you “can go back if you want to but there’s really no reason to.”

“You don’t really need to install the multiplayer disc if you’re really tight on hard disk space,” he said.

As far as using the game’s tech for the future, Willitis said id is prepared for it, and since the engine scales up, it will be “easy-peasy,” to implement in next-gen consoles.

“We’ll be using parts of this tech for decades,” he said.

RAGE is out the first part of October on PC, PS3, and Xbox 360.

Willits will be going over the origins of the company as part of its 20th anniversary. id opened for business back in February 1991 by John Carmack, John Romero, Tom Hall and Adrian Carmack.

We’ve also been told to expect a couple of surprises this time during Willits’ talk. Don’t miss this for God’s sake. If you’re here, get in this session. If not, get reading below the break.

Speaking with Gamespot at TGS, Hooper said there will be plenty to do in the single-player campaign especially when you venture off the beaten path of the main storyline. Basically, he implied that the single-player campaign wasn’t shortened in order to focus on multiplayer.

“Our goal is to create a lengthy campaign, probably about 15 hours,” he said. “But for a shooter, that time count is significant because most shooters are eight hours or less. If you do the game’s side quests, that adds up to 20 to 25 hours. We put a lot of focus for this significant amount of game alongside the co-op and vehicles.

“Online components like Combat Rally and Legends of the Wasteland would be a good match for the Rage world. We still care a lot about deathmatch and on-foot combat as a studio, but that kind of sticks to Doom, Quake, and those franchises.

“We’re really happy with how multiplayer turned out, but it was more on concentrating on single-player and thinking: ‘That works pretty well. Wouldn’t that be fun to do that with a buddy?’ We added split-screen mode and online co-op campaigns as a result.

“The vehicles were there because there weren’t any parallels to draw from. We tried the vehicles, physics and all, and we liked it. Those are just bonuses for the players.”

Hooper goes on to say RAGE has ample diversity, as there’s “always something new,” around the bend.

“We have the visuals that then matches the gameplay, and we have a big toolbox consisting of the gadgets, the weapons, and the ammo types,” he said. “We’re not aiming for a typical one-look one-feel shooter.”

RAGE is out the first part of October on PC, PS3, and Xbox 360.

Speaking in an interview with Gamespot at TGS, Hooper said the inspiration for the game’s locale didn’t come from any one source specifically, but “a dozen or so.”

“We watch the same movies, play the same games, and read the same books [at id], he said. “We sat down on a table and discussed about nothing but ‘Wouldn’t it be cool if we did this?’ and if we like it, we put it in the world. We’ve been tethered with the Doom and Quake world, so it’s fresh to start anew with the Rage universe.

“We get the Borderlands and Fallout parallels a lot, but when you sit down with the game for an amount of time, there’s a lot more fidelity in there. Visually, people want to make a comparison because they haven’t got their hands on it. Some of the other games have RPG with exposed stats and dialogue trees [that make for a] heavy experience. Or it’s a game just about a million guns. We’re still about trying a million things but paring it down to the ones we think work best and making sure everything has a lot of beats to it.”

Hooper goes on to say the team is please with both the story and the way it unfolds for players along with the “open-ended nature of the world,” which is a first for the studio.

“It’s a lot different than what we’ve done in the past,” he said. “People are always talking about it being postapocalyptic, but really, that’s just a cool excuse to twist the world the way you want it. If we wanted to have a realistic game, that would be like GTA.

“We don’t want to show something where you can just walk outside for it; we wanted a departure from reality.”

RAGE is out the first part of October on PC, PS3, and Xbox 360.