Studios, the Just Cause developer which simply had the
better technology for making open worlds – an admission
you could never imagine id making in Carmack’s day.
Studio creative director Tim Willits would regularly sit
down with Avalanche’s designers, in sessions the team
dubbed ‘Willits University’, to impart id’s wisdom on level
building and pacing. He taught that a shotgun shouldn’t
sound like a shotgun – it needs to boom like a cannon.
You can feel id Software’s influence in the calm,
female tannoy that tells you when all hostiles have been
eliminated from an area,
and thus the doors can
unlock. You can hear it in
the guitar amp hum of your
car when it’s nearby. But
it’s most apparent in the
combat, which pushes you
to close the gap on enemies
for extra health; of all
Doom 2016’s innovations, the least appreciated is that it
has made melee irresistible in first-person.
The key resource in Rage 2’s world is named ‘feltrite’,
and that pun is a pithy summary of id Software’s guiding
philosophy. Though the studio didn’t touch Rage 2’s code
directly, the game’s battles are imbued with Doom-feel. It’s
proof that id’s magic can be taught – that its power now
lies in collective knowledge and company best practice,
not the hands of a few precious individuals.
Jeremy PeelLEFT: Rage 2’s
vehicular exploration
is oddly reminiscent
of Brütal Legend.ETERNAL ONLY WENT FURTHER,
TURNING DOOM INTO A CONSTANT
FIGHT FOR RESOURCESundeniably exciting. But inevitably, the graphics have
faded, and the game’s shadow doesn’t loom quite so
large these days.
ALL-SEEING EYE
The problem became more profound by the time Rage
launched in 2011. For id’s ambitious Mad Max tribute,
Carmack invented a texture streaming system that would
enable every surface in the game to look unique – but
players without high-end hardware understandably
complained when textures failed to load in on time,
compromising the complete first-person immersion
that had once made Doom so alluring.
When Carmack ultimately left to head up technology
at Oculus – pursuing the same holodeck dream that had
powered his obsession with 3D engines in the ’90s – it
turned out to be a mercy. With the last big ego out of
the building, id was finally free to remould itself as a
collaborative studio for the modern age – where triple-A
shooters are made by teams of hundreds, not individuals.
Doom 2016 was the result of that soul-searching: a
rebirth which reclaimed the speed and ferocity of
Romero-era id, yet freed itself from the compulsion to
push technology forward. The new Doom looked good,
of course, but it had no
headline innovation that
might sell new graphics
cards. Instead, the genius
was all design: the way id
reimagined the combat
arena as a spinning
whirlpool, with you right in
the centre, fighting to keep
your head above water. Eternal only went further, turning
Doom into a constant fight for resources, in which
enemies were as much food as they were foe. Where once
id was accused of creating dumb fun, it now asked for
mind-frying concentration.
RAW FURY
The game that exemplifies contemporary id Software is
one not entirely its own. For Rage 2, the company
relinquished day-to-day development duties to Avalanche
DNA Tracing