MAKING AN ENTRANCE
How Rage 2 picks up from the first game…
Having played the first game, we’ve got some burning questions about how the new one relates to it. We’re particularly keen to know more about our special abilities, and one returning group of baddies who we’re excited to see again. After all, the setting for Rage 2 may be anarchic, but we’re firmly on the side of the lore… OPM: Can you tell us more about the Ranger Suit your character wears? It reminds us of Doom’s Praetor Suit. Tim Willits:
[In the original] there was the Ark Suit. It allowed you to have your defib, your Ark Suit upgrades, and that was kind of integral [to Rage]. Magnus and I took that fiction and extended it. [...] The Rangers, they originally started as people that were in the Arks during the Authority War, so their suits were very important to them and it integrated well with their nanotrites. So because you’re a child of parents who had nanotrites you can wear this high-tech suit that has a lineage back to the original game. And at Id we love making armour suits, yes.
OPM: So what’s with the nanotrites in the blood? TW:
In the fiction they were injected to help the original people that were buried underground to survive hibernation, to help them heal themselves, to survive this wasteland world. But as we progress the game into the future the people have learned to weaponise those and we get the slam and the pound and stuff like that. So that’s kind of the evolution of the nanotrites in your body, which is kind of a symbiotic relationship with the suit.
OPM: What was the approach with reintroducing The Authority from the first game? Magnus Nedfors:
Well it’s a great enemy – that style of super-powered, high-tech military-style enemy faction is… it’s a traditional, classic great enemy. They were super-fun to play against in the first game. It was like “hey, let’s keep those guys” because it’s a nice setup. It’s part of the universe, they exist in this universe, it was part of the first game – the nice mix between wasteland and science fiction like that like post-apoc style but you also have these science fiction elements from The Authority that they bring into the world. That contrast is really nice. So when you go out from the broken world into an Authority base it’s very high-contrast, and a nice way to create two very different environment types to be in. And we never knew what happened to them in the first game, you never got to fight the main enemy at the end of that game. We felt like you need to meet that guy now.
TW: And they have a good juxtaposition in the wasteland because they’re like Magnus said – very high-tech, very sci-fi, very organised. Whereas the wasteland, you know, mutants and bandits, they’re very disorganised. [30 years on] they’re much more organised now – but their buildings are made out of recycled parts and old buildings, whereas The Authority’s tech is new.
“WE NEVER KNEW WHAT HAPPENED TO THE AUTHORITY IN RAGE.”