Bethesda suspends Doom 4 - rumour

By Robert Purchese Published 21 October, 2011

Bethesda responds: it's "complete bo****ks".

UPDATE: Bethesda has poured cold water on the rumour that it has "indefinitely postponed" Doom 4.

Responding to a Tweet by Eurogamer Operations Director Tom Bramwell wondering about the rumour, Bethesda's VP of PR and Marketing Pete Hines said bluntly: "complete bollocks".

"Re: Doom 4 rumour, games are done when they are done and no title under development at id has been postponed - indefinitely or otherwise."

ORIGINAL STORY: Doom 4 development has been "indefinitely" postponed, a new rumour claims.

Studio owner Bethesda apparently has "a serious lack of confidence in the project management at id [Software]", following the "issues and reviews" surrounding the launch of Rage.

The decision was made at a company-wide Zenimax/Bethesda meeting in Dallas, Texas, a source told Kotaku.

Bethesda told Eurogamer this morning it doesn't comment on rumour or speculation.

The Rage team was to move onto Doom 4 "as soon as Rage ships", id Software icon John Carmack revealed this summer. After that, work would begin on Rage 2.

Will Rage 2 now skip the development queue? Or does Bethesda plan to wade in, restructure, and then continue with Doom 4?

That's if this turns out to be true.

Rage was to be the long-awaited, triumphant return of Quake and Doom maker id Software to the video game scene. But Rage turned out to be good rather than great, and id Software's comeback was marred by technical hiccups on flagship platform PC.

"It's not going to change the world," wrote Tom Bramwell in Eurogamer's Rage review, "but it does serve as a timely reminder of that other thing id Software games always did besides smashing through some new technological barrier. They made shooting things fun, and it's nice to have that back."

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About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds. @Clert on Twitter.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (92) Latest comment 7 months ago

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  • crsmithy #1 7 months ago

    From a financial perspective Rage must have cost a whole boat load of cash to develop so I can see some merit in this decision..

    However...this isn't going to go down well with id or John Carmack who probably doesn't like suits pushing him around.

  • DozyKipper #2 7 months ago

    I liked everything up to Doom 3. Then Quake IV was pants, Rage is pants. So yes, I hope this is true and Doom 4 gets some proper gameplay.

  • homerramone #3 7 months ago

    Might not be such a bad thing really. Not sure I want doom again, again, again.

  • Whitster #4 7 months ago

    Rage was good in the shooter bits, but the need to pack it full of all the open-ish world tedium was where it fell down. I'm guessing that Doom 4 wouldn't have these anyway so I don't see the worry?

  • doragor #5 7 months ago

    Picked Rage up on impulse and glad I did. Sure it's not a 10/10 game of the year but it's well worth playing. The weapons are cracking and sound fantastic. Shame that a hugely enjoyable game that scores a lot of 8s is considered a failure of sorts.

  • mashk #6 7 months ago

    @DozyKipper - ID didn't develop Quake IV. Raven did.

  • GamesProgrammer Verified Games Team Programmer, Eutechnyx Ltd. #7 7 months ago

    Just because rage was'nt rushed out with hundreds of bugs, its just not the way Bethesda like to do things, get in line ID!!

  • Rogueywon #8 7 months ago

    I suppose you always need to be careful about taking this kind of thing as gospel before it's rather more firmly confirmed.

    But if it is true, there are two possible scenarios, one of which is isn't so bad for id, the other of which is awful. The first scenario is that this is due to dissatisfaction over Rage's sales and/or review scores. In this scenario, Bethesda probably just want to see id beef up their emphasis on game design, rather than technology. This would be no bad thing - id haven't really put out a fun game - as opposed to a game that modders went on to make fun - since Doom (well, ok, maybe Quake 2).

    A more serious issue would be if this is an issue about idTech5. The problems that the PC version has experienced are well known; and for many people, they're still a long way from resolved. I haven't seen the console versions, but I've noted a lot of people, both on forums and in real life, noting that while the console versions look great when paused, there's a lot of tearing and some really uncomfortable movement when the game is in full flow. For at least a decade now, id have been as much about producing engines for licensing as they have been about making games. It's no secret that idTech4 lost a lot of market share to Unreal Engine 3, so if idTech5 is looking like a dog, then id probably have a more serious problem.

    Of course, it's all just speculation for now, so all of the above is potentially irrelevant.

  • Gearskin #9 7 months ago

    I call BS. Rage is great, the way Tim Willits handled most of the PR was great; he attended EGXP twice.
    It debuted well in the charts, was well received critically. So what if PC users had sone trouble, they always do. Same thing will happen with Battlefield 3 and Skyrim.

  • OverWind #10 7 months ago

    Rage was good. It had the potential to be great. - The ending ruined everything for me though. It was SO horribly bad and rushed, that it felt like them saying "Hey we're coming out with DLC soon to end the game properly!"

  • StooMonster #11 7 months ago

    I'm still waiting for GPU drivers to play Rage on my PC.

    ATI finally delivered working drivers last week, but only for single GPU and CrossFire multi-GPU is still "coming soon" -- there's no point in me getting drivers for my hardware after I've finished the game so I am going to wait (although I've already played 90-mins or so and quite enjoyed it).

    Don't know about the console versions, but the issues with PC version have been terrible: making a decision to force all settings to the lowest, no options to change settings, not working with Nvidia and ATI to ensure drivers ready, etc. One of these things would be bad enough, but all of them together is a poor show from ID, no wonder Bethesda are pissed off.

  • polaris70 #12 7 months ago

    I hope Fallout 4 takes the combat from Rage, then you'd pretty much have the perfect game.

  • Eraysor #13 7 months ago

    Rage just felt totally uninspired to me. Post-apocalypse has been done to death already, particularly where it doesn't have an interesting hook like the 1950s-inspired Fallout games.

  • bobfish09 #14 7 months ago

    id Software's games have always been about the technology behind them. They are massive hits because they are the first to use the latest generation engine from id and do things that no other game can do with their old engines.

    They have never been about great gameplay, so to move away from the technical edge, they've just shot themselves in the foot. No one is going to care about their engine because its only average and not ground breaking and no one is going to care about their game because its... quite frankly... not that good either.

    The failure isn't in project management, the failure is in the direction and decisions made by the company as a whole.

  • Burnt-Kona Verified Senior Artist, Full Fat Productions #15 7 months ago

    I blame Bethesda for releasing a new IP in the midst of a glut of established IPs hitting the shelves

  • Vortex808 #16 7 months ago

    Rage is great fun to play, sure there are some issues, but I've been having a blast playing through it. This has to be conjecture and rumour surely.

    I though Rage reviewed well in most places didn't it? I fail to see how Bethesda can complain about anything in this after the bug-riddled FO:NV and poor net code shambles of Brink. Both of which I had very high hopes for and was rather disappointed with.

  • GAmbrose #17 7 months ago

    I guess it depends how much $$ was ploughed in to RAGE/idtech 5 and how much they are expecting to recoup based on intial sales of the game.

    From my perspective i've been enjoying the PC version (Played with an Xbox 360 pad) but there are lots of bugs and many issues with crashes, flaky AMD drivers etc etc. Certainly the Xbox 360 would have been the most hassle-free version of the game to have played.

  • Ternon #18 7 months ago

    Rage animation system+Fallout New Vegas=perfect game

  • Whatascoop #19 7 months ago

    They should be praising the Rage team for helping to prevent PC piracy. 22gb? sod that!

  • Subdominator #20 7 months ago

    It's totally irrelevant, cause id Software was self-funded over most of the development period. They only sold out to Zenimax less than two years ago. In fact if Zenimax hadn't bought the publishing rights from EA they wouldn't have got a single dime cause Rage was not part of the purchase of id Software, only projects after Rage.

    So I highly doubt that sales numbers would be responsible for such a decision. I can however see that Zenimax wasn't pleased by the reception of id Tech 5. Megatextures are great where they work but they come with a lot of setbacks. Texture popin is just one of those. Texture resolution is a major concern. And don't forget that megatexture only applies to the ground. What good is it to have one giant texture for the floor but still the same repetitive tiled wall textures? The current consoles simply aren't made for this technology. Rage can look gorgeous, mostly in the open world parts. The rest suffers from the lack of dynamic lighting. Doom 4 will probably take place in closed spaces, so they have to make a decision now whether to use id Tech 5 or if the game wouldn't be more beautiful with standard technology. Maybe even id Tech 4.

    Personally I think they should just stick with id Tech 5 because it is the future and developers need to look forward and not backwards to keep their mojo.

    Rage is the most beautiful game I ever played - as long as I am moving. When I am standing still, looking around, it looks pretty dated. I doubt Zenimax invested 100 million dollar in id Software just to read in Doom 4 reviews that it looks dated. I think Carmack needs to do some explaining how most of the problems with Rage came from wanting to do 60 fps and how it won't affect Doom 4 which will run at 30 fps. And they will continue to work with id Tech 5. And if Zenimax doesn't comply they (= the old if Software, not the 200+ guys that were hired after Zenimax bought them) will simply walk away and open a new studio.

  • karooo #21 7 months ago

    Bethesda? It's Zenimax. They own both Bethesda and id.

  • Gurgeh #22 7 months ago

    It took too long, shipped with too many bugs (and yes it's ironic that Bethesda would raise that as a problem), and wasn't good enough. Before giving the financial green light for further development they will want to try and ensure the same doesn't happen again.

  • Subdominator #23 7 months ago

    Rogueywon: The reason why id Tech 4 lost to UE 3 is because id Software stopped selling engines a long time ago. Must've been around 2006 when they realized they could not do the necessary support to sell engines and instead only licensed them to friendly studios. With the purchase of id Software Zenimax announced that only Zenimax studios would use id Tech.

    Also the game does not tear, it does not look awful in motion, quite the opposite actually - on Xbox 360.

  • FanBoysSuck #24 7 months ago

    @StooMonster : I'm running a single 6870 with the latest drivers and I'm still having major issues with stuttering and certain textures.

    I honestly can't remember the last time I've had so many issues with a new PC game :(

  • AndyBeans #25 7 months ago

    I blame Bethesda for forcing an "RPG-lite" ideology into Rage, it's quite obvious that open world wasn't really adopted by id in that the mission areas were brilliant but the boring travelling between areas was very... well, boring. I can't quite believe that Bethesda objected to the launch issues, surely bugs and broken features are Bethesda's trademark? Most gamers predicted it would be completely broken simply because Bethesda was involved.

    However much it cost to finish Rage, I regard it as a tech demo for id's new Tech5 engine and looking forward to see how it will compete against other engines such as Frostbite 2. As such Bethesda should see it as an investment and should treat id with a little more respect.

  • Haloboy #26 7 months ago

    RAGE is great but id's handling of the launch was a fucking catastrophe. And they were so quick to blame shoddy drivers from amd and nvidia. After Brink and now RAGE Bethesda sound like they are doing the right thing.

  • Phantom_Dynamite #27 7 months ago

    as i say pot calling kettle black look at the cluster fuck that was New Vegas plus Rage launched ok on consoles and was a solid 8 imo.

  • Sparx #28 7 months ago

    Its there fault regarding Rage PC issues, They released it in that mess. Ill be honest ID do and have made great engines for games but god they are so over rated it untrue.

    Rage whilst im few hours in shooting bits okay over all im bored with it it holds zero interest for me to return to it anytime soon. Doom3 was okay at launch. They want to come back to pc gaming they need to do Doom4 but make sure it doesnt launch like a complete mess ala Rage.

  • CaptainQuint #29 7 months ago

    So Bethesda must be disappointed with the sales of Rage, once presumes.

    What are its numbers?

  • Inmediasress #30 7 months ago

    @Rogueywon
    I agree in some ways with you.
    Rage was nothing more than a tech demo for ID tech5 thgat is totally obvious for anyone (or should be) and it failed miserably.
    With all the negative reviews abaout the game and corresponding engine they won't see too many licensing fees for that particular engine especially not when the next unreal engine will hit.
    It's really no wonder that Bethesda/Zenimax or whatever are cracking down on ID and Carmack.
    I really don't think they bought them for their underperfoming games which there are only two of them rage and doom3 so far this gen and likely there won't be any others before next gen.

  • ubergine #31 7 months ago

    Couple of points:

    Bethesda stated a while back (after purchasing Id) that ID Tech 5 was not going to be licensed but rather used only in-house. That could change of course but it was a pretty clear statement of intent. We could speculate on their reasons for that, maybe they don't want to have resources aiding other developers nor have the potential trouble from any other Denis Dyacks out there, maybe they just want to have an edge over everyone else, or maybe the engine just isn't that great yet.

    Rage was (I'm told) over 6 years in the making. A lot of that would have been building the technology, we can assume, but there's the possibility that the megatexture tech or some other aspect of the new engine actually makes it much harder and longer to develop a game with it, which would at least be death to licensing it - see point 1.

    If this rumour is even true, and it does have a credible aftertaste to it, hopefully Bethesdanimax can do the inevitable workplace interference and shape Id into a really good dev instead of a company that's always been based around a kind of engine-tech auteur. Hopefully they won't fuck it up because then they'd look like an EA-buying-then-murdering-90's-devs.

  • jack24 #32 7 months ago

    Bad times. I knew it wasn't a good idea when they were bought up by bethesda. They let fucking Brink out but Rage is considered a failure of management. I really hope this isn't true.

  • Darren #33 7 months ago

    RAGE was a good game, one I very much enjoyed, but, given the amount of hype surrounding it, it perhaps wasn't as good as it could have been in terms of gameplay and structure. Also, the megatexture technology was more miss than hit, adding enormously to the game's file size (20 GB!) yet many textures look absolutely dreadful close up, like something from the N64 circa 1996, especially indoors where you can't help noticing them! The game looks gorgeous though as long as you don't stare too much. The slick 60 fps framerate was nice as well, I've yet to see the game stutter once on my PC and that adds enormously to the whole experience IMO.

  • asphaltcowboy #34 7 months ago

    Disappointing. Looking forward to Rage after playing it a lot at the Expo... and I'm looking forward to Doom 4 (if it still exists)!

  • vizzini #35 7 months ago

    If this article is true, I assume Bethesda are referring to the three tweets made by Carmack that could have potentially alienated around half the potential customer base.

    John Carmack 11 Oct: convince Sony to allow unbuffered hard drive IO and/or free up more OS mem and we can make it better.

    John Carmack 14 Oct: we don't know of anything we can do to improve ps3 performance much, especially on wasteland. Tight memory, poor IO performance.

    John Carmack 14 Oct: I can make benchmarks that will show either the PS3 or 360 to be superior, so they are close, but I prefer the trades on the 360

    When you actually look into the issues he raises (north/south bridge performance and) OS footprints: 50MB on ps3 versus 32MB on 360) it comes across that these 140 character comments aren't about the consoles so much, but how mega texturing fits a premium configured model of each; one without unified RAM and one with.

    Strangely enough, it this “we can't do anything comment” that has temporarily stopped me playing Rage on PS3, to dust off and write up some of the floating point real-time lossy compression research I did and write it up in a formal paper for possibly a OpenGL extension.

    As I now assume in this generation, that algorithms such as 3Dc+(FourCC_ATI1) and DXT YCoCg are quickly out growing their usefulness because of accuracy, and the full storage penalty of raw floating point data is being taken in RAM/VRAM on games like Rage, after the data traverses the north/south bridges in compressed format using lossless Zlib..

  • King_Edward #36 7 months ago

    Needs more horse armour.

  • Dogstar060763 #37 7 months ago

    If RAGE was 'tech demo' for idTech5 I'd be p*ssed-off, too, if I was a Zenimax investor. RAGE was supposed to have been a proper game, that worked, and set new standards at the cutting edge of PC gaming. What was finally delivered was less than stellar and certainly not revolutionary. It was also not worth the near-seven years of development and countless $millions sunk into it's gestation.

    There are no excuses id can give to explain the appalling state of RAGE - from the dodgy graphics (one moment 'wow', next moment the ugliest texture work and object modelling this side of a N64 game) to the uninspired game play (including entirely redundant driving sections). Carmack Willets and Hollinshead all recklessly bigged-up the game prior to release, making unrealistic claims for it that we now see were wholly unsubstantiated. It's frankly embarrassing.

    I sincerely hope Bethesda/Zenimax grab id by the scruff and shake the lot of them up. It's about time someone explained to these people that in these straitened economic times NO game should be allowed to languish in 'development hell' for almost seven years, Doom 4 included. If these guys want to continue making games they need to take their publisher seriously, their customers even more seriously and start living in the real world, like every other developer.

    'Done when it's done' was fine ten years ago, but now other younger, more agile developers are putting id to shame at a fraction of the cost in time and money. Bethesda/Zenimax are making the right call. And about time.

  • Whitster #38 7 months ago

    @Inmediasress

    What negitive reviews? Metacritic has it at an 81 and all major gaming news outlets I saw gave it at least an 8. So far the only negitive review I've seen was Zero Punctuation and thats to be expected.

  • berelain #39 7 months ago

    I really hope this isn't true. I love id, and everything they stand for - Rage was a real breath of fresh air in an increasingly stale FPS market, and I still adore Doom over and above pretty much any shooter ever made.

    And I generally don't like to see publishers mucking about with their developers. I thought bethesda were better than that.

  • GamesConnoisseur #40 7 months ago

    Rented Rage but found it to be a great preview for next gen consoles, installed on X360 was quite sexy with mega textures, shame about issues on PC. Is this a verdict on Rage, ID or PC gaming where once great PC software house struggles now?

    I m stumped.

  • Lolatron #41 7 months ago

    Maybe Bethesda weren't happy there were no lawsuits surrounding Rage's launch... Jus' sayin'.

  • LOLLERS #42 7 months ago

    Come on, stop messing around and knock out Quake 4 Arena in 6 months and everyone will be off your backs.

  • SheffAl #43 7 months ago

    It's a bit humiliating for ID sadly. How the mighty have fallen.

  • mashk #44 7 months ago

    @vizzini - INCONCEIVABLE!

  • el_pollo_diablo #45 7 months ago

    That's if this turns out to be true.

    That's if this turns out to be true.

    That's if this turns out to be true.

    That's if this turns out to be true.

    update:
    and it wasn't.
    Edited by el_pollo_diablo at 21/10/11 @ 14:55

  • StooMonster #46 7 months ago

    FanBoysSuck: @StooMonster : I'm running a single 6870 with the latest drivers and I'm still having major issues with stuttering and certain textures.

    I get those too on single 5870 if settings are cranked up, if the textures are default low-level etc then none of these problems. :(

    As mentioned, I'm keen to get Crossfire drivers but not only because of extra horse-power but also because the Tweets from Catalyst team seem to suggest more fixes for single-GPU set-ups.

    But you're right, I can't remember a PC release in many years that has had so many technical issues and problems as this one. Meh, actually Crysis 2 had plenty of issues with my setup and in the end I waited until DX11 was available before playing it.

  • kar #47 7 months ago

    First thing, the saddest bit about this whole Rage/id saga is the apparent death of 'when its done'.

    That and I miss JC's .plan entries :)

    Like a lot of posters, I kinda question the point of this news story as none of us really know if it's true or not. What I would say, I was only able to play Rage yesterday and I've had it since launch. There are sound technical reasons for that, drivers mostly, but still I'm a software developer and particularly IT literate. The average person who bought this game on Steam isn't, and releasing a game that wont run on very common intel, and amd hardware out of the box, is not good.

    I kinda get the feeling (and it's always been a little bit like this with id) that their games are engines with a game tacked on. They've never really been strong at building a coherent game around their colossal tech. As games have gone from mere games into full blown productions that weakness has been exposed.

    The decision to join forces with Zenimax kinda made sense to me, id didn't have the resources to do a full production development you require for AAA titles. And the release of Rage highlights that. I think if Zenimax want to take a breather re-assess id's development programme it will likely be for the good. I want John Carmack tech, with Valve, or Bethesda like attention to detail and game design.

  • repeater #48 7 months ago

    Will Rage 2 now skip the development queue? Or does Bethesda plan to wade in, restructure, and then continue with Doom 4?
    Yes, because Bethesda have such a great history of nurturing quality franchises beyond the Elder Scrolls and (recent) Fallout games..

  • The-Jack-Burton #49 7 months ago

    I thought that id, while under the Bethesda umbrella, still operated autonomously. Kinda like how Bungie is with Activision and Respawn is with EA. And although Rage didn't blow the critics away, it is the best selling IP to come out of Bethesda this year.

  • Jonny5Alive7 #50 7 months ago

    id seem a bit stuck in the 90's, games have moved on from Quake. A lot of devs can release a fast paced shooter these days, back then it was mainly them.

  • repeater #51 7 months ago

    Will Rage 2 now skip the development queue? Or does Bethesda plan to wade in, restructure, and then continue with Doom 4?
    Yes, because Bethesda have such a great history of nurturing quality franchises beyond the Elder Scrolls and (recent) Fallout games..

  • Haloboy #52 7 months ago

    AMD's preview three driver sorted rages performance and glitches out for me some two weeks after launch. But now the game crashes every single time I try to leave or enter an area and it drives me completely insane. I can only put so much blame at AMD's feet for this whole shit fest.

  • abigsmurf #53 7 months ago

    Why suspend one of the most well known names in gaming because a new franchise that took a few years too long to be released and didn't offer much new was a flop?

    Doesn't make sense

  • Hindle #54 7 months ago

    Post deleted at 23:04:43 04-04-2012

  • FanBoysSuck #55 7 months ago

    @StooMonster :"I get those too on single 5870 if settings are cranked up, if the textures are default low-level etc then none of these problems. :( "

    I get these issues no matter what I do to the settings . :( x 2

    I didn't get any technical issues with crysis 2 thankfully, just the inability to play multiplayer as I registered the code with an old crytek account which somehow vanshed from their system.

  • oceanmotion #56 7 months ago

    Crysis 2 didn't have an online pass.

  • T3TSUO #57 7 months ago

    Don't talk shit.
    Doom 4 is not or will not be postponed or abandoned.There was nothing wrong with Rage. It's my favourite game this year. Enjoying it immensely. So Bethesda just throws development money down the drain do they. Besides id software really doesn't need them.
    Rage wasn't Duke Nukem you know?
    If you bought it thinking it was open world then maybe you should have read up on the game. Post apocalyptic doesn't automatically qualify it as open world aka Fallout.
    If you had graphic problems then hey blame ATI\AMD. They told Carmack that was as good as the drivers get. Through out ATI's history they have been notoriously bad at opengl.Something I bet people who owned one haven't taken into account as fewer opengl games are released these days but they do and are still in development. No doubt Doom 4 will be opengl too.
    A patch was released the day after the European launch to fix issues with Nvidia's BETA drivers so high end cards that need to use them can run no issues.
    ATI have had to release three drivers in a month to fix issues. If you still have issues then switch to a card that does opengl proper if that desperate to play it.
    Typical sensationalism Euro-gamer headlines.
    I've not played a better standard shooter all year.

  • Bleemo #58 7 months ago

    "Just because rage was'nt rushed out with hundreds of bugs, its just not the way Bethesda like to do things, get in line ID!!"

    Yeah but Rage DID have hundreds of bugs. To be honest I do think ID are a bit past it and not sure what a Doom remake brings to the table.

    Bethesda becoming publishing other studios stuff has kind of been a bit of a disaster to be honest, every game other than New Vegas they've published has flopped in some way or another. Wet, Call of Cthulu, Brink, Demons Forge and Rage. They should have just self financed their games as they have done and got a bigger pub to distribute as Valve does.

  • silver-jon #59 7 months ago

    I'm with the "Rage is bordering on great" crowd. (crowd ? ensemble.) I played Fallout until I got fed up with the fact that shooting someone in the face 6 times with a rifle wouldn't stop them from running towards you with a knife. Rage has similar RPG to Fallout but has a combat system that actually works - in this regard it's by far the more enjoyable game.
    I'm halfway through so far, and maybe I'm missing something but the tech seems solid - no tears or stutters on the framerate. Playing on the Xbox360 it looks really good whether in motion or standing still. Seriously - a couple of years ago Bioshock was regarded a 10/10 amazing game of the year. Rage knocks it into a cocked hat. Or a hatted cock.
    The only issue I have is when you're on a mission sometimes it isn't clear where you need to go to meet someone within a town (Meet Marshall in the Resistance HQ" - yes, but where is that ?). Personally, it's a 9/10 game for me. An RPG that's constantly fun and occasionally tense.

    As far as the article goes, the concern described issues with the project management. Which suggests there were behind-the-scenes issues which translated to front-of-shop issues in the reviews and sales. Quite what the issues were is clearly conjecture at the moment.

  • FanBoysSuck #60 7 months ago

    @oceanmotion : "Crysis 2 didn't have an online pass. "

    To play online on PC you needed to register a code on the mycrysis website. My account fucked up thus no multiplayer.

  • oceanmotion #61 7 months ago

    @fanboyssuck Oh, didn't know that. Fair do :)

  • Hellion83 #62 7 months ago

    Post deleted at 20:12:17 01-02-2012

  • zegerman1942 #63 7 months ago

    As a big fan of Doom i am sad about this. But as someone who has played and finished Rage, i am not surprised. less than 1 million sales to date for a game that was in development for 7 years and cost tons and generally is average at best - it's a safe thing to stop any production being done by id.

  • PixelPirate #64 7 months ago

    It would appear to me that id aren't that well managed internally (scope creep all the time there), which would give Zenimax cause for concern over ballooning budgets.

    Couple that with the recent reports that id aren't going to be licensing their engines anymore and it simply sounds to me like Zenimax are going to make id a pure engine developer for their games and Bethesda will build the games on idTech.

    But in order to get this right, all id games would be shelved/postponed to fit in with Bethesda's scheduling. In the meantime Zenimax can add proper structure to the processes at id so they begin to hit a few deadlines and get the engine in decent shape.

  • jablonski #65 7 months ago

    "Rage turned out to be good rather than great"

    So why didn't you give it 5/10 then?

    8/10 is great to me

  • FanBoysSuck #66 7 months ago

    @oceanmotion: no worries. As far as I know the issue was never resolved so there's a few of us who have the old accounts (ie those who had one from the first game) that can never do the multiplayer.

    The worst part was tech support, despite being a UK number it got me through to a guy in Texas, who started by calling me an idiot who has gone to the wrong site (I followed the hyperlink in the game menu?!?) followed by an hour of being passed around between people then a promise for a return call that never came.

    But at least I got to play the single player!

  • marblepuke #67 7 months ago

    What could be worse than zenimax closing the legendary Id studio and getting all Id's legendary IPs to misuse by itself? Maybe the game industry is heading for a crash course after all..

  • Feanor #68 7 months ago

    I guess the early sales for Rage aren't too good.

  • ThePissartist #69 7 months ago

    "while the console versions look great when paused, there's a lot of tearing and some really uncomfortable movement when the game is in full flow."

    This is simply not true at all. It's the best looking game this generation and plays like a dream.

  • havoc2011 #70 7 months ago

    So I'm the only one who thinks Rage is awesome? On PC at least.

  • Dogstar060763 #71 7 months ago

    @#68: I understood the game has sold well on consoles. I think this has far more to do with Bethesda/Zenimax being unwilling to see id now take the best part of another seven years to produce Doom4. There are some serious issues with the way id seem to work - a total shake-up of the production pipeline seems to be called for and it is actually the right of the parent company (Zenimax) to demand efficiencies before bankrolling the subsidiary company (id) to embark upon another project on their behalf.

  • ajaxpliskin #72 7 months ago

    Wtf is this company doing? They need to look at their routes and stop fannying around with mega textures and make an intense, fast paced gore fest, like they used to be good at. A true sequel to Doom 2, and a true sequel to Quake 1. PLEASE.

    I want a linear, dungeon tech world with flickering lights, 10-20 enemies per room, and I DON'T want a 'short sprint burst' button.

    I want the game to have a next level deathmatch mode too. Is this really too much to ask? You used to hammer these out with ease. You already have an engine! Maybe it's time to bring back Romero, seems his Designs are the only ones that still hold up today.

  • Xardan #73 7 months ago

    Poor Besthesda they arent doing very well with all these new IP's they have released lately. Brink, Demons Foge and now Rage.

  • deadstoned #74 7 months ago

    lol I like Bethesda's VP of PR and Marketing Pete Hines

  • wizlon #75 7 months ago

    Classic response.

  • SimonM7 #76 7 months ago

    id haven't been the guys who made Doom for a long, long, long while. If you couldn't see the soul leaving the engine tech-oriented body of Quake 2 already back when.. well.. when Quake 2 was coming out, you weren't looking hard enough.

    id have lost all sense of glee, all sense of humour. There was an infectious enthusiasm to their work prior to Quake 2 that they seem reluctant - or unable - to exploit these days. Brown, self serious, mechanically unambitious and seemingly unexcited to be a game - if anything, Rage is exactly the kind of game you'd expect from modern id.

    I know many gamers these days feel betrayed, all the way up to emotionally raped if a game doesn't seem to take itself seriously, but I think id need to get back to having fun with their games. They need to be able to make design decisions - gameplay oriented and otherwise - based on their slightly mad whims instead of playing things so hopelessly within the framework of a tired, regurgitated sci fi story that you'd fall asleep if it wasn't for the shooty bits.

    Offshoots of the Doom era of games used to be - and still are - bold and fun and charismatic. It's ironic then that id's own trajectory veered towards the utter opposite on all accounts.

  • frou #77 7 months ago

    The EG front page reads like "Bethesda suspends Doom 4 for being complete bollocks"

  • asphaltcowboy #78 7 months ago

    Re: Update

    Woohoo!

  • FogHeart #79 7 months ago

    Well! I'm glad I didn't spend half the day speculating on a rumour.

    But can we please stop using that video in Rage stories? The still pic for it makes me think I'm about to be sneezed on.

  • curryking3 #80 7 months ago

    Thank jeebus for the update! I wanted to cry after the postponing rumour... phew!

  • obidanshinobi #81 7 months ago

    Current gen graphics, last gen game mechanics.
    Probably the best looking console game I've seen but some of the gameplay is just pants !
    Driving soon becomes a chore and I find myself just boosting past any threat just to get to the next objective as car combat quickly turns boring.
    Shooting is ok though seems rather old school with you just waiting til a mutant gets close enough for you to blast with the shotgun, and as for the Mutant Bash TV, meh. Spider bots are cool and at least you can employ some kind of tactics when it comes to fighting the Authority but in general this game feels 10 years old (though it certainly doesn't look it). 7 out of 10 at best.
    Just got to Subway City and if I havn't completed it by Sunday I'll be getting Batman AC for 99p from HMV regardless.

    sorry guys, rant over !

  • Dogstar060763 #82 7 months ago

    I think after that denial from Bethesda we can confidently expect an announcement several weeks from now that Doom 4 has been cancelled. It's how these things usually work, isn't it? Who didn't get the memo..?

  • StolenGlory #83 7 months ago

    Ok now THAT is what I call a denial.

  • StooMonster #84 7 months ago

    Haloboy: AMD's preview three driver sorted rages performance and glitches out for me some two weeks after launch.

    I thought the notes with preview three driver said the Rage fixes were exactly the same as preview two?

    @CatalystCreator: Cat 11.10 V3 preview only includes additional Rage fixes from V2

    @CatalystCreator: Developers are working very hard on further updates for Rage; as soon as it's ready it will be made available.

  • Haloboy #85 7 months ago

    @StooMonster

    Preview 2 plus patch = no go f*cking mess.
    Preview 3 plus patch = playable but still crashes.

    Go figure.

  • StooMonster #86 7 months ago

    Who knows with AMD Catalyst drivers mate.

  • ToAks #87 7 months ago

    If Id software had done what Sensible Soccer did (quit .. sadly) then we would have remeber'd Id for beeing the guys with epic humor and games.

    come to think of it.. no one would never dare to do a whizkid game theese days :D...sadly

  • darkmorgado #88 7 months ago

    Lol, you can't really get much clearer than that as a response from a company.

    Refreshing change from the normal "we dont comment on rumour and speculation" bollocks.

  • SheffAl #89 7 months ago

    It's deffo true then.

  • vizzini #90 7 months ago

    Haloboy: AMD's preview three driver sorted rages performance and glitches out for me some two weeks after launch. But now the game crashes every single time I try to leave or enter an area and it drives me completely insane. I can only put so much blame at AMD's feet for this whole shit fest.

    Have you tried running Windows XP instead with the same hardware, as what you are describing sounds an awful lot like the marshalling DirectX windowing manager (introduced in Vista/Windows 7) that abstracts all OpenGL applications killing Rage because it exceeded the 2sec frame render delay limit when you enter a new area.

    Windows is nolonger a suitable environment for OpenGL(imo). Apparently, according to someone tweeting Carmack, Rage runs perfectly fine on Linux through the Window's API emulation wrapper Wine.

    Maybe the problems with Rage on PC is just Windows doesn't like OpenGL now.
    Edited by vizzini at 21/10/11 @ 21:45

  • silver-jon #91 7 months ago

    Addendum to earlier post. I finished Rage last night, with a 20-second cutscene and a sense of stunned disappointment. Finished it on "Hard" setting, and didn't die once during the final assault. I am not a great FPS gamer by any stretch so it was hardly a worthy finale. In fact the finale was a real anti-climax. Downgrade my score from 9/10 to 8/10. EG once again proven right. IMO.

  • karstux #92 7 months ago

    @vizzini: "Maybe the problems with Rage on PC is just Windows doesn't like OpenGL now."

    It's more like AMD's OpenGL drivers are shit. I've been playing with weeks-old nVidia drivers (current WHQL driver version, not even the recent betas) and the performance is great. Not a single crash in 15 hours of play-time. No noticeable texture pop-in with the 'official' commandline tweaks.