All the RAGE: A Franchise Retrospective

Remembering the time Rage showed up in Breaking Bad as a light gun rail shooter to show Jesse dealing with the guilt of murdering someone.

Hearing "the emptiest open world I ever played" from someone who played No Mans Sky at launch is one hell of a critical indictment.

Noah’s most kinetic and electrifying intro yet

My favourite part about Noah's analyses is that he'll sometimes cover a game or series completely out of left field. Something like his Homefront or Quake campaign video, and then treat it with the same amount of respect you'd see for the usual video essay topics, like Dark Souls. Like, was anyone out here thinking about Rage? Not until this very second but now I am locked the hell in. Primary monitor type content

To quote an id dev we met when leaking Doom 4 "If Rage feels unfinished, it's because it is" As soon as Zenimax acquired Id they basically told them to scrap the version of Doom 4 that was being made and to finish Rage by 2011 So it was rushed basically

“You could watch every leprechaun movie ever made and still have a better time” is one of the funniest but also brutally demeaning insults I’ve ever heard.

One thing you missed talking about Rage 1 is that when it came out the new 'megatexture' tech didn't work very well for most people. Extreme pop in and blurry, smeared textures were common complaints. I think this is the reason that a lot of its artistic accomplishments didn't get much credit, because it only consistently displays them on more modern hardware.

Between Quake, Diablo, and now RAGE, Noah is in his "retrospectives of franchises with minimal story but a ton of incidental lore" phase.

Nothing better than Noah making analysis videos on mediocre shooters the length of feature films

37:50 that coupon story is definitely from experience LMFAO

Rage 2 was notable for one of the strangest ad campaigns I've ever seen: A series of rapidly-edited images of pudgy, middle-aged biker men and women being splashed with pink powder while acting "rebellious" (yelling, sticking out their tongues, etc.) for the camera. I guess somebody in the Zenimax marketing department thought it was edgy and cool. It was what caused gamers to associate Rage 2 with the color pink.

You know, I think generally speaking, the optimal way to play Rage 2 is in the endgame after you've gotten all of the upgrades and are left with nothing but combat arenas. You know, when you're extremely powerful and you get the opportunity to play for maybe 20, 30 minutes at a time. And you know, that's really when Rage 2 is at its best - when you don't have to play it for very long.

That short little aside about the Leprechaun franchise came out of nowhere, but it was fucking hilarious

That shadow of the erdtree analysis is gonna go crazy in 8 months

noah's delivery on the intro to the rage 2 section is truly incredible

one of my favourite gaming moments ever was in rage 1 when you find yourself in a locked apartment, there's a shotgun on the table, and then you get swarmed by imp mutants and just blast them all to hell in close quarters for five minutes. amazing.

I might be the only person with this opinion, but I loved RAGE and it even jumpstarted a love into game design where I actually ended up studying under one of the creative leads of the game for a semester. Ever since I played it multiple times on the XBOX, I loved the gameplay, the style and the look were beautiful and unique (to me, at least), and even the unpopulated multiplayer was so fun when I got a chance to play. Many of my future concept art projects would draw inspiration from the world and the animated characters who populated it. I often used RAGE concept art as references or for moodboards, and when a teacher told me that he was part of the team as a lead I saw him as a hero or an inspiration. It's so crazy because I loved that game back then and still talk about it to people. I remember that same teacher saying that one of the issues with the development of RAGE was that it was made up of extremely talented artists (and it shows!) but all the artists could not cooperate and they were all very stubborn. The direction of the style had to change often because they couldn't agree on so many things and this was a reason why this same person respected less talented artists; "They aren't as bratty as the good ones."

“I hope this retrospective critique saves someone the hours I put in” is so real. Can’t wait.

The transition into Rage 2 is chefs kiss

Rage 1 was a victim of id’s 90s-ass “when it’s done” policy, and finally declared “done” by their then-new Bethesda overlords. When it started development, the ideas they had were relatively original, but as John Carmack said, “the world changed around us.” I have my own theory regarding Rage 2: it was a test for features that would make it into Doom Eternal. So many of the abilities in that game made their way over into Eternal in a more refined form, and the ones that were terrible didn’t. I genuinely don’t believe it was expected to be a big seller, but a commercial combat gameplay prototype with an open world to glue it all together and an IP to make it recognisable. The fact that the open world stuff was outsourced I think backs me up on that.