It’s been more than ten years since id, the creators of Wolfenstein 3D, Quake and Doom (the inventors of the first-person shooter), have released a new intellectual property. Rage will break that drought.

At E3 this year producer Jason Kim invited us to inspect their progress.

Most importantly, the game introduces the next generation of id’s proprietary engine, the id tech 5. Running at a constant 60 Hz, Rage is without a doubt a deep and satisfying potato sack of eye candy.

 

For all that it was the fastest-selling LucasArts title of all time and featured an award-winning narrative (from the Writers Guild of America, no less), the original Star Wars: The Force Unleashed pulled up short in the gameplay department.

The game was plagued by elementary flaws such as knock-down locks, poorly implemented mini-game additions (the woeful and much-hyped Star Destroyer sequence, for one) and an unpredictable difficulty curve.

The Force Unleashed II faces two very significant development challenges, then. Not only must it address the first’s numerous gameplay flaws, it must match or exceed the storytelling on display in the original.

LucasArts briefly skimmed over the premise for this second dip into the era between Star Wars movies III and IV. Codename Star Killer – Darth Vader’s secret Sith apprentice – sacrificed himself at the end of the original game so that the Rebellion might have a chance. The first thing this game must address is how to tell a story when the lead character is dead.

Turns out they’ve wheeled out the old “clone” device. The Force Unleashed II sees players take on the role of a Star Killer clone (“or is he!?”) as he escapes from Vader’s laboratory. It’s hardly inspiring and perhaps a little worrying. That said, the wending narrative in the first was a pleasant surprise, so we're already preparing to make a hasty retraction.

The more pressing gameplay concerns are where LucasArts invested the lions’ share of Gameplanet’s eyes-on presentation. Most immediately, Star Killer now has two lightsabers, turning his already-impressive penchant for flashing swordplay into a veritable dervish of neon lights and fan-like audio samples. And detached limbs: Now, Star Killer can decapitate and dismember legions of Storm Troopers as he cuts his way through what still appears to be a largely linear experience (nothing wrong with that).

 

Humility is a rare trait among game developers. More and more, studio heads and industry figures are playing a game of one-upmanship in the “outrageous sound bytes” stakes in order to develop cults of personality; in order to be heard over the “140 characters or less” din that increasingly composes the daily flow of gaming news.

David Jaffe is “so fucking sick” of “artsy fartsy” attitudes in this business. Gears of War design director Cliff Blezsinski assures a handful of Kiwi press that the Locust and humanity will never join forces to fight the Lambent because “that would be gay.” They’re all bankable quotes sure to get an inch or two of copy, and none of them really matter.

So when United Front Games invites Gameplanet to sit down and humbly proffers something akin to an apology for their individual mistakes in the past, pens cease their scribbling.