id's Hollenshead: Rage Choice Through Gameplay, Not Story

Author: by Staff

In Gamasutra's latest feature interview, id Software CEO Todd Hollenshead explains how "meaningful choice" in the post-apocalyptic Rage is driven more by gameplay than by story-based decisions. When asked by Gamasutra why the game uses player death to gate the environment, Hollenshead explains that Rage gameplay is "not like, 'just wander around,' and that's on purpose. I mean, the point of the game isn't to [wander around]. And in fact we looked at it as we were building the wastelands." "It's open, there are meaningful choices that you can make, in terms of what you want to do. There's not necessarily a predetermined order of, this is number one, this is number two, this is number three. You may have multiple missions that you can do at the same time, and the order in which you chose them is up to you. Now, it may be more or less challenging based on the way it was intended, but it's not necessarily dictated," says Hollenshead. The choices, then, in the game, are more driven by the kinds of gameplay advantages players might want to seek, he explains: "But the choices are more directed, I guess, at what players want to do. Do you want to collect stuff, or do you want to sell it? Do you want to sell it to get the gun, or do you want to spend your money on getting the better gun now, or do you want to hoard it and wait and get it later, or see if the game doesn't present it to you in some different way? Do you want to buy the fat boy bullets, or do you want to buy the steel rounds for your assault rifle?" "These things do impact how the game reacts to what you're doing in the game and will impact your experience," he says. The full interview, which seeks to understand the design of the id Software-developed game, out this week for PC, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3, is live now on Gamasutra.