ven though Enemy Territory: Quake Wars is in full public beta swing, gamers are looking to the future of id. After John Carmack dropped a huge bomb in the form of the id Tech 5 demo and the debut of Rage, the big question is...what is it? Is it a racer? Is it a shooter? What's the deal? Before we left QuakeCon, we had to find out, so we got the opportunity to chat with id Software's Creative Director Tim Willits about their new project to find out as much as we could about this mysterious project. 

Game Informer: Looking at the game, the big surprise when we saw the footage that came out of the Mac developer’s conference was racing elements, which is a huge departure for id. But then this new trailer shows first-person elements. How is the game going to work? Is it half racer, half shooter? Are you a guy that’s going from race to race and then shooting people on the way?

Tim Willits: Basically, there are many different elements to the game. We already know we can do great first-person stuff. That’s easy. What we wanted to do is really kind of blow it out. With id Tech 5 technology, it allows us to create much larger wasteland kind of areas and it allows us to build race tracks – this world that is much much larger. So basically you play – and this is all teaser stuff – the setting takes place in the future. After the Earth is mostly destroyed by a comet and civilization is trying to rebuild itself, and in this time the lines between good and evil and right and wrong are kind of blurry. You play an outsider. You play someone that’s kind of a Buck Rogers guy, but not from space. It’s got a Road Warrior feel to it, and there’s the settlers and those people that are trying to rebuild society and then there’s this evil regime – it’s a very classic story. You work alongside the resistance and settlers to rage against the regime. 

There’s a garage element to the game, where you can customize your car, put different weapons on it – that’s where Rage fits in the garage. Then you have Road Rage, you’re out and about driving around shooting at other vehicles and bandits in your car. Then, of course you have the classic id intense first-person combat as well. It has a fair amount of adventure elements – I hate to use the word adventure, because it sounds like Monkey Island. I don’t want to use the term RPG, because then you think of WoW. It’s non-linear, but it’s mission driven. You have wastelands, race tracks, indoor areas – in the future. The main entertainment for people surviving in society is racing. It’s like, after Armageddon only Nascar fans survive. (laughs)

The big focus is fun. We need to make sure we make the first-person stuff fun. We need to make sure we get the driving, vehicular combat and the racing fun. We’re not trying to do Gran Turismo. It’s more arcadey. In my design, I will always err on the side of fun, action, arcadey against realism, because those pure racing simulators are awesome but it’s not something that I like to play, because I don’t have the patience for it. I want to drive around, blow sh** up, run stuff over and have a good time. That’s what I want to do with Rage.

GI: I can kind of foresee what people in the forums are going to say when this video hits the Web. It’s MotorStorm meets a post-apocalyptic first-person shooter.

Willits: That’s not bad. I would not feel upset if people said that. Now the reason we picked the post-apocalyptic setting, and I know lots of games do this, but it allows us to build things grounded in modern technology, but it also gives us the freedom to do the fantasy stuff that we like to do. We just like to have that stuff at id, where you see in the videos the mutant guys and things. In that setting it gives you the freedom to do different types of things because when you go fantasy you can go cool. Like in Doom 3, everything was kind of fantasy, and in this game the fantasy elements will stand out. They’ll be bigger than life, because it’s grounded in something that’s more modern day.

GI: Who’s the Asian guy in the video?

Willits: Oh, the vendor? He’s just a shop vendor.

GI: Nobody special?

Willits: Nope, he’s not even the main character. And what that does is it shows the level of detail that we’ll go to for these characters. That guy literally works in one of the bigger towns that you visit. If you need more ammo or need some health bandages or need a better gun, you go talk to him and see what he’s selling it for.

GI: Is that where the customization stuff is going to come in?

Willits: Yes.

GI: What percentage do you foresee the driving action versus the shooting.

Willits: It’s really hard to say right now. Maybe 40% driving, 60% shooting. The thing is with the game is that you can get out [of your vehicle] anywhere. You’re driving along, and if you want to get out and check out a shack, there may be a mutant in there. You may find a cave that will load a whole other area.

When you’re racing and you’re in a circuit, obviously you don’t want to get out of your car there, but the world allows us with the detail of id Tech 5 you can get out and shoot anyone anywhere, really.

GI: So it’s a single player, story-driven game. Will you offer cooperative play?

Willits: We do the competitive multiplayer deathmatch type stuff, and the problem with deathmatch is you have a winner and you have a loser. Most of the times I’m on the losing side. (laughs) But for co-op, everyone can be a winner, and this game fits much better in the co-op setting. We haven’t finalized all of our multiplayer stuff quite yet, but I highly doubt we’ll have any deathmatch type stuff.