Rage 2

Avalanche attempts to bring new life to id’s wasteland

Despite the number at the end of its name, you’d be forgiven for assuming Rage 2 has little to do with its predecessor. The original Rage was dry, mostly linear, and often described as ‘solid’—a critical shorthand for ‘yeah, this is good, but…’ The sequel feels brash, vibrant, and silly. In short, Rage 2 is the sort of game that has Andrew W.K. playing over its trailer.

“The first thing I wrote on the whiteboard when I met with the team was ‘more crazy than Rage’,” says Tim Willits, id’s studio director. “Time and time again we told those guys, ‘Everything is on the table. Everything is possible.’ If they’d wanted to make 12-foot cockroaches that you ride, we’d have done it. We don’t have them, but we could. One of the great things about the Rage universe is there’s nothing that is too over-the-top. That’s what people like, so we’ve tried to steer into it.”

Having played a chunk of Rage 2, I can confirm the lack of giant roaches, and also that it is more over-the-top—albeit not quite as much as I was expecting. Nevertheless, it’s only an hour into my session that I find myself competing in Mutant Bash, a sort of wave-based arena combat challenge that takes the form of a TV show set in a rundown warehouse unconvincingly decorated with gaudy cardboard cutouts. So that’s something.

The team responsible for Rage 2’s exaggerated style isn’t id, but Avalanche, creator of the Just Cause series. “It’s a more holistic collaboration,” explains Willits. “Avalanche is the developer, but we have people at id that have helped when they can. We have everyone from the controller guys, to the animation team, the art team, some of the designers. We work with those guys everyday.”