Introduction

id Software has been fairly quiet about their upcoming game plans for some time. Aside from their work with Splash Damage on the very-close-to-release Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, they have been working in near secrecy on not just one, but a number of upcoming projects. However, QuakeCon 2007 has become the time for id to finally lift their curtain on at least some of these projects, along with some related id activities as well.

FiringSquad got a chance to chat with id Software CEO Todd Hollenshead and id Software design director Tim Willits where we discussed a number of these projects. Our chat was so extensive, in fact, that we are going to break up our discussion into two parts. The first will concentrate on id's newly revealed game Rage and id Tech 5, while the second will cover id's other upcoming projects and related deals as first announced at QuakeCon.

From Quake to Rage

The big announcement at QuakeCon was, as we mentioned before, Rage, the first all new game franchise from id since the release of Quake over 10 years ago. The game's setting, as described by Willits, is a future Earth that has been devastated by a collision with a comet.

Your player character is described by Willits as "Buck Rodgers but not in space". He's an outsider who links up with a group of settlers who are trying to rebuild the planet. An evil regime, however, has designs to take over the settlers. Your character will work with the settlers to "rage" against the evil forces.

The demo movie that was shown at QuakeCon gives people some idea on what the gameplay design for Rage will be like. This will not be a corridor first person shooter, but a game in an open and non-linear enviroment. While there will be a lot of first person shooter action, Hollenshead and Willits told us it also incorporates vehicles via Rage's versions of dune buggies. You won't just be driving around in the game; Rage will also give players a chance to go racing as well. As Willits told us, "We want this game to be fun. We want fun first person shooter stuff, fun vehicle stuff with combat involved in it, and fun racing." While Willits told us that the game will have load times, the graphics and textures have been streamed so that the load times should be "ridiculously fast". There will be multiplayer features in Rage as well with Willits telling us that they will be concentrating on co-op play for the game.

id Tech 5

The game uses what id is calling id Tech 5, the next graphics engine from the company's co-founder John Carmack. (according to Hollensheadm they consider id Tech 1 to be the Doom engine, while Tech 2 is Quake 1-2, Tech 3 is Quake 3 and Tech 4 is Doom 3).

The new graphics engine was first shown at a Macintosh event earlier this year and a new in-game movie trailer was shown to the audience at QuakeCon on Friday night. While the game does incorporate some concepts of Carmack's MegaTexture tech that he developed for Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, id Tech 5's code was written from the ground up.

One of the most important aspects of id Tech 5 is the fact that id wants their game and all other games that use the technology to run at 60 frames per second on all four platforms (PC, Mac, PS3 and Xbox 360..and no a Wii version of id Tech 5 is not planned). That means that if a developer uses id Tech 5 they in theory will be able to make a game that will be released on all of those four platforms at the same time and perform at the same frame rate (in practice that might not happen due to how Sony and Microsoft have to approve each game for their respective consoles).

id Tech 5 should also eliminate how artists and level designers make games using the engine. Usually developing a game means having to cut textures and parts of levels in order to have it work on multiple platforms. However, the new graphics engine should allow people to use the same art assets and all of the level design on all four of id Tech 5's supporting platforms. While Hollenshead told us that different platforms will still be limited in terms of polygon detail, the art and level design should not be affected.

While id has shown off the tech to other developers and publishers at E3 a few weeks ago, the tech won't actually be available to third parties until sometime in the fall of this year. Hollenshead said that engine licensing has changed since they licensed the Quake engine to third parties 10 years ago. However, he does feel that id Tech 5 will allow just one development team to make a game that will run on four platforms at once.

So Rage is the game and id Tech 5 is the graphical horse that runs it. While the actual game wasn't being shown live at QuakeCon this weekend, the brief in-game movie demo blew us away with its visuals. Combining that tech with open world gameplay, shooting and racing, should make Rage the most original and most sophisticated game id Software has ever made. The game has a "when it's done" release date. Hollenshead told us no decision has yet been made on the game's publisher (Activision has published nearly all of id's games since the first Quake expansion packs).

In the second part of our article we find out more about Quake Zero, the next Quake game, Quake Arena for Xbox Live Arcade, id's new download deal with Valve's Steam service, and the newly revealed deal to make a new Wolfenstein movie. Stay tuned.