Video Games to Watch for Fall 2011: Rage

If you’ve looked at the release schedule for video games this fall, you may have noticed the number “3″ cropping up a lot.  ”3″ is everywhere.  First, September starts the season with Resistance 3 and Gears of War 3.  October follows up with Battlefield 3.  November will have a whole slate of “3′s” including Uncharted 3, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 and Saints Row 3 (okay,so  technically the official name is Saints Row the Third).  Also, Max Payne 3 is currently scheduled for December, but I’ll believe that when I have the game in my sweaty little hands.

It seems like every video game that’s launching this fall is the third iteration of a franchise.

Why?

Economics is your answer.

In our current economic climate, with video game sales declining, or flat at best, developers and publishers are banking on titles with a proven track record.  Consumers are more likely to purchase games with recognizable titles when their finances are tight.  This makes it extremely difficult for new IP’s (intellectual properties) to break into the launch schedule for fall, the biggest video game buying season of the year.

Thankfully, there are a few new IP’s making it to launch this fall that are worth watching.

Which brings us to Rage.

id Software/Zenimax Media, Bethesda and Electronic Arts (EA) are banking that this non-sequel title can break through the big name sequels that are due out this fall and make a name for its numberless title.  They’ve literally been banking on it by spending big money on an ad campaign during the 2011 NBA playoffs featuring LA Clippers star Blake Griffin and featuring the game on AMC’s hit tv series Breaking Bad.

Of course, the fine folks at id Software are no strangers to breaking new ground.  They essentially created the FPS (first-person shooter) genre with Wolfenstein 3D in 1992, followed by the first of the Doom series in 1993 and then the Quake series, beginning in 1996.

It’s always difficult to describe something new without comparing it to something that people are already familiar with, so I’m not going to try that.  I’m going to give you the apparent ancestry of Rage.

One of the features of Rage will be a driving/racing element that allows the player to compete in races to earn vehicle upgrades and compete quests.  The racing element of the game looks very similar to the extreme off-road 4wd dune buggy racing of the game franchise pictured above, Motorstorm by Evolution Studios.  Keep in mind that Rage is not a racing title.  It just features racing elements similar to the Motorstorm games.  The shot below is from Rage.

Rage is not the only game with a post-apocalyptic setting and a driving element.

If you followed the development of Gearbox’s Borderlands, you know that there was a time when the game wasn’t going to be cell-shaded, but instead was planned to have a more realistic art style.  This second ancestor of Rage also features a driving element, though not as involved, and a post-apocalyptic dust-bowl setting, similar to the Mad Max/Road Warrior movies.  The other common trait they share is that of being an FPS with RPG elements.  They both feature quest-giving NPC’s who guide the players through the large game world through sharing their quests.

The art style of Rage promises to be a bit different from that of Borderlands.  There’s no cell-shading here.  The environmental textures of Rage, powered by the id Tech 5 engine, are stunning.  Still, both games feature post-apocalyptic worlds overrun by gangs of bloodthirsty bandits and small outposts of civilization barely surviving their depredations.

The story behind Rage is something that may seem a bit familiar to veterans of the Fallout franchise (that’s Fallout 3: Point Lookout, above).  After an apocalyptic event (in Fallout, it’s nuclear war – in Rage, an asteroid strike), the surface of the planet is a hostile, shattered world.  The protagonist of Rage weathered the apocalyptic event in one of a number of large underground areas known in the game as the Arks.  Things did not go well in his Ark, and due to its malfunction, he is the only survivor.  This is strikingly similar to the concept of the Vaults from the Fallout series, many of which malfunction, causing unforeseen consequences for the inhabitants.

Both Rage and the Fallout series of games also feature bizarre and hostile mutants, twisted by life in the harsh conditions of the surface wastelands.  In both games, the survivors are divided into factions that the player must interact with, including Fallout‘s Brotherhood of Steel and Rage‘s rough equivalent, the Authority.

One of the other things I’ve noticed about Rage is that the game’s atmosphere and setting can get extremely creepy at times.  Some portions of the game actually remind me strongly of what I consider the be the game’s other immediate ancestor, the Bioshock franchise.  Dark, eery and at times claustrophobic settings (though the game also contains wide open vistas and even some visual verticality) with dripping water and stagnant pools on the ground, filled with weird mutated enemies that can crawl along the ceilings and leap down at the player, much like Bioshock‘s Spider Splicers created a very creepy gameplay experience during those moments.

Of course, Bioshock‘s beautiful visuals seem to even pale in comparison to Rage‘s incredible graphics and textures, enabled by the id Tech 5 engine.  The game is said to be an entire terabyte uncompressed and should consume 2 or 3 discs on the XBOX 360 (or a single blu-ray disc on the PS3).

So, with immediate ancestors that include Motorstorm, Borderlands, Fallout, and Bioshock, combined with the gameplay style that is a hallmark of id Software titles like Rage‘s elder ancestors Doom and Quake, this stands to be a landmark game that will definitely be able to compete with the more established franchises releasing this fall.  As you can see, this title is hard to pin into a single genre.  The closest I can come is to call it an FPS with extreme racing, horror, and RPG elements.  Just because the game combines similar elements from many different and diverse games that inspired it doesn’t mean that it won’t bring something new to the table and establish its own identity.  I’m sure it will.  It just helps to have something familiar to hold onto when you’re contemplating dropping your hard-earned cash on a completely new IP.  I recommend this game for anyone interested in any of its ancestors.

Rage launches on October 4th, 2011.