This one’s a long time coming. To be honest, I’m not really sure why. The first time I began playing it, I trailed off about ten hours in. Little did I know, if I would’ve stuck with it for a bit more I would’ve wrapped it up not long after.
The history of RAGE is a shaky one, and I’m actually pretty surprised there haven’t been more stories on it in retrospect. I’m not an internet historian, but my memory in things gaming-related is usually pretty sharp.
I remember when RAGE was first being shown. It was the poster child for the sparkling new id-Tech 5 and its flagship feature, MegaTextures, which in scientific developer-speak means “big ass textures.” In theory, every texture for every object in the game was part of one gigantic image, with individual objects referencing a particular location on the image. Think of it as a GPS coordinate pinpointing a specific spot on Google maps. I’m not Digital Foundry, so don’t expect me to get any more technical than that. It took me enough reading to understand that much. There were other bells and whistles, of course, like better lighting and physics and such, but I’m sticking with the megatextures because that’s ultimately what hurts this game the most.
Up until now, id Tech had mostly been used on classic id games like Wolfenstein, Prey, Quake, and the like. But with RAGE, id wanted to do something new. They wanted to show off the new engine’s capabilities as something more than a corridor simulator. They wanted large, open worlds, RPG mechanics, and all kinds of wonderful stuff. They showed off the first screenshot of RAGE somewhere around 2008 or 2009 and man, they hyped the shit out of it. Fast-forward past a few more years and a few more delays, and RAGE was pushed out the door as a shell of its former glory.
The first, and most obvious, victim were the highly-touted megatextures. It was painfully obvious that while the tech might have been solid in theory, the current generation of consoles just couldn’t handle it. Most objects looked fine up close, but the world outside and the vast expanses of the wasteland looked like absolute shit. The irony of the “mega” in megatextures was that they were either too slow to load in, or they didn’t load in at all, in which case you were staring at blurry, low-resolution previews. It was a popular thing at the time to spin around in circles and laugh while the engine struggled to keep up. Again, I’m not Digital Foundry, so if you want the technical details on what went wrong, you’ll have to look elsewhere.
The sad thing is, the game had serious promise. But for whatever reason, the game just didn’t pan out. The large open-world was limited to a stretch of roads that connected the “dungeons” and towns. They were walled-in, linear, and not nearly as large or expansive as they seemed at first glance. The player is sent back and forth through the same handful of narrow passages repeatedly throughout the course of the game, only traveling to a new location for the final act, a small number of missions before the end of the game. There’s no reason for exploration, as there’s not much to find out there. Everything was gained or purchased in the towns themselves.
The interesting thing about RAGE is that you can see hints of where they wanted to go with the game before the setbacks and unfortunate events (whatever they may be) caused them to churn out a broken, unfinished game. The character designs and animations are excellent. Each character you interact with is unique and wonderfully animated. Not too cartoony, but not going for realism either, they have a very specific aesthetic that is consistent with the world they were trying to build. While the story is generic and reminiscent of pretty much every other wasteland game out there (Fallout in particular), the biggest travesty is that you don’t actually get to finish the story.
The story ends right when it’s picking up, and the main antagonist is a General you don’t ever meet, in command of an army you barely even fight. The final mission is against the Authority, and the climactic battle is against… wait for it… about five waves of mutants. There is no boss battle. Hit a few switches, fight off some mutants, and push a button. Game over. I was literally dumbfounded when the end animation kicked in and I was watching a bunch of– I think they were undiscovered Arks– emerging from the ground. Apparently all those Arks kept enough… people… in them to fight the Authority? I think?
What I don’t get is that the Authority was unplanned. The people that were put in cryo-stasis in the Arks were supposed to be the people that could help rebuild civilization in the wake of the meteor strike. I’m thinking scientists, doctors, etc. I mean, sure there would have been some in there to be soldiers, but the way the game makes it sound, they’re all capable of being badasses because of the nanotrites in their bodies. And now they’re mankind’s last hope against a literal army? Imagine waking up, thinking you’re gonna have to start planting potatoes and carrots and all of a sudden somebody shoves a rifle in your hand and is like “First we have to defeat an armed and experienced military force employing mind-controlled mutants.” Um, ok.
But the game just ends with them emerging from the ground. And it doesn’t look like very many of them. The Ark I was in only had like, five people. Unless there are thousands of these things, I really don’t see how they could be very effective. Then again, I was apparently able to kill hundreds of people by myself, so who knows.
I can’t accept this. I realize that RAGE 2 fills in some much needed backstory, but it also shows the climax and final battle that should have been in the first one. It’s a bit of a tease on what could have been, I almost feel like a standalone episode could have been released leading up to RAGE 2, as an epilogue to formally wrap up the first game. It wouldn’t be the first time something like that has happened. Metal Gear Solid Ground Zeroes acted as a both a demo and a prologue.
I’m glad that I finally finished the game, even if I don’t really feel like I “finished” it. I mean, imagine if you were three-quarters of the way through something, then all of a sudden it
