When Rage released nearly a decade ago, John Carmack’s vision had been straightforward: The man who coded Quake—the first mainstream 3D FPS—wanted to push the visual boundaries way out there one more time. While Idtech’s engine’s haven’t seen widespread industry use since the Idtech 3 days (and likely won’t after the Bethesda buyout), each new iteration of their engine is something to look forward to, showcasing as they do the majority of the technical highlights of their particular generation: You just need to have one look at 2016’s Doom to understand what we’re talking about: GPU particles, high-poly models, physically based rendering, and more—the entire gamut of 8th-gen AAA visual effects is served on a platter here. Rage 2 is a strange case. It’s ID Software IP, but wasn’t developed by ID. It borrows heavily from the Doom reboot’s gameplay oeuvre, but was built on the same engine as Just Cause 4, a title that’s the polar opposite of Doom in terms of hardware optimization. And its colour palette is as far as possible from the “brown shooter” aesthetic ID is infamous for. With Idtech 5 and Rage, John Carmack and co tried to revolutionize the industry with a unique tech—Megatexturing—that ultimately didn’t pan out as intended. A lack of focus elsewhere—in the lighting department, for instance, meant that at launch, Rage was in the peculiar position of looking both better and worse than its AAA counterparts at the same time. Rage 2, in fact, has ditched the Idtech engine entirely, having been built on Avalanche’s Apex engine of Just Cause fame. Why the big change, and especially with an IP ID had developed specifically to showcase a new engine back in 2011? And what makes Rage 2 tick at a technical level?
Let’s find out here. But first, let’s go back in history and have a look at the technical highlights of 2011’s Rage.
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