"Wish I were there" is more like it, actually. All the work required to launch this here web site prevented us from gallivanting down to Texas for the annual idstravaganza, but that's cool; my never-having-gone-to-QuakeCon streak remains unbroken for another year.
Plenty of other outlets are laying it down in Dallas with QuakeCon coverage, though, and as usual, tech wizard John Carmack is providing the most newsworthy quotes. I'll read or listen to anything Carmack has to say (I used to hang on his every .plan update back in the early Quake days). The guy just calls it like he sees it, without any hint of ego or agenda, at least that I can detect. He's obviously got the track record to back up his mouth, anyway.
My favorite is this mea culpa on Doom 3's big issues, which makes me a little more hopeful that Rage won't be completely out of date in the design department. This is in regards to a canceled survival horror game id was working on (courtesy of Shacknews):
"We would have been keeping Doom 3's faults," said Carmack, who agreed that complaints of the "contrived nature of monsters hiding in closets" and overly dark environments of Doom 3 were "completely valid."
Carmack's also made no secret in the past of his preference for the Xbox 360's development environment, which sure did get under a lot of Sony fanboys' collective thin skin. Talking about multiplatform development with Brian Crecente over at Kotaku, though, id's CEO Todd Hollenshead says the PS3's higher storage capacity will not surprisingly make that version of Rage better:
"Today we are saying that Rage may look better on the PS3 than the 360," he pointed out.
While id may not be fans of the Playstation 3's architecture, they are fans of how future proof the console seems to be
Then there's this quote from Carmack on that nebulous, elusive concept of weapon "feel" in first-person shooters, which to me is triple-A number-one priority for making a fun first-person shooter. That's something that a lot of developers don't emphasize in their shooters. Whatever other flaws id's games may have, their weapons are always pretty bad-ass. I will fight anyone who argues that the Quake rocket launcher is not the best shooter weapon ever made. Shacknews again:
...weapons are still one of things that as you survey first person shooters, there's this clear distinction between the "A" titles, and the "B" titles that just don't do their weapons very well. They don't look good, they don't feel good--they just don't come off nearly as well. So we're definitely gonna make sure that that aspect of it--the tactical, low-level [aspect of] the weapons--will be cool. They'll have their punch, they'll be fun to shoot, and you will have fun as you go around firing your weapons at the bad guys.
Oh yeah, they threw out a couple of new Rage screenshots, too. Like every other time id has ever shown off a new game, it's basically the best-looking thing ever. Some games' CG work doesn't even look this good. Also, Rage will apparently star Sloth from The Goonies.
Sorry, here's the real shots.
Impressive, yes?