RAGE was a bit of a strange game when it launched back in 2010. It showed promise, and featured the trademark id Software action that we expect to see from shooters made by the studio, but there was far too much that was holding it back. One of those things was a dull world design that felt like it was dominated by hues of brown, with very little variety to speak of.
RAGE 2, being co-developed by id Software and Just Cause creators Avalanche Studios, is looking to right those wrongs. The developers have spoken in the past about the variety in the game’s world design, and recently, while speaking with GamesTM in their 206th issue, they spoke once again about the same, also mentioning how the fact that the game is being built on the Apex Engine has enabled it to have that kind of visual variety.
“A lot of that actually came from, first, the desire to push it far from RAGE,” said Tim Willits, studio director at id Software. “And then looking at what the Apex technology could do for us with the jungles and the forests and the swamps and the overgrown cities. And that brought to us light and colour with the vegetation. That led us to have more colourful characters, and people have evolved and let us have more colourful buildings and skies. And now we have a marketing campaign. So it’s really helped establish a unique identity in this world that’s sometimes crowded with brown games.”
“You can’t just add colour to anything,” senior game designer Loke Wallmo of Avalanche chipped in. ” So it’s a part of the identity of RAGE, as well. It’s supposed to be fun, crazy, over-the-top, so it works really well with what we’re trying to do with the gameplay, with the characters, with the factions. It made a lot of sense to make everything as colourful as we could.”
Wallmo also proceeded to talk about vehicles and how much of a focus they will be in RAGE 2. Given Avalanche’s pedigree and the very nature of RAGE, one might expect that vehicular combat will be a huge focus in the game- the developers themselves have talked up this aspect of RAGE 2 in the past as well. But as per Wallmo, the game doesn’t really focus on vehicles as much as it provides players with the freedom to play however they want.
“It is different in the sense that the gameplay is focusing on more guns on the vehicles, more explosions and gadgets and more over-the-top stuff like that,” said Wallmo. “So it does create a different starting point for where you want to go with the vehicles. But we’re not really focusing on the vehicles that much.
“You will have one major combat vehicle that is engineered for fighting out in the wasteland, but you can drive anything with wheels. And some other stuff, as well. It’s definitely up to you how you want to approach getting around the world and what you wanna do. And those main vehicles that you have are upgradable, you can customise the weapons and loadouts a bit.”
RAGE 2 launches next year for the PS4, Xbox One, and PC, while there’s a chance that it might launch on the Nintendo Switch as well.