The Unmitigated Disappointment of What Comes After: Rage - An Introspection

Rage is ID Software’s latest game, one that spent years in the making, and that I was incredibly excited for. Graphically, it looked stunning. From a gameplay standpoint, it promised something new, something exciting. It looked to reinvent both the idea of the modern shooter, and the almost tired post-apocalyptic setting it fashioned for itself. In theory, it was an amazing concept. In practice, it panned out to something remarkably less. After playing through the game, it quickly took a spot at the back of my mind, and there remained. Until recently, when I looked over my library of games to see if there was anything I wanted to get rid of, to help put money toward something else new, something else that gives me the same feeling of anticipation I once had for Rage. And there it was, near the bottom of my stack of games, forgotten. Most times, when I decide to trade a game in, I do so with little hesitation: if I’ve played it, and finished with it, and forgotten about it, there is no longer any sense in keeping it around. Something was different with Rage, though. Something compelled me to put it back in one more time, to play it once more, to try and figure out why I hadn’t gotten rid of it already. Into the console it went, and I began the game anew.


And instantly remembered why I had kept it.

Image source: dotTech

Emerging from your Ark for the first time in one-hundred-and-six years, blinking against the blinding glare of the sun, you find an indeterminable desert where once your home existed. It is bleak, lifeless. Around you, there are only the vague remnants of once-proud structures. Yet there is a strange kind of beauty to this world: a naturalistic sense of identity. The absence of pronounced human existence has let the land take back what it will, and it obliges with fervour. But it is not enough to lift your spirit. The wind whistling by you is the only sound, a melancholy reminder of one simple fact: the others who took to the Ark with you have died, and there are no immediate signs that human life managed to persevere after the asteroid’s collision with earth. Here, at your moment of rebirth, you are entirely alone. You were given one goal, one purpose: to aid in the rebuilding of human civilization when you awoke. It is not a task that can be undertaken by a single man. There is naught you can do except begin to traverse this dry, seemingly post-human wasteland, in hopes of finding others like you. You take your first tentative steps into this new world, this new existence.


And your life nearly ends. In one brief moment that seems to last for an eternity, the question of continued human existence is answered. Struck to the ground by a savage man wielding a makeshift club, you raise your hands to your face in a feeble attempt to protect yourself from the blow he is readying, while behind him, his companion watches with excitement. Then the savage is thrown sideways from your prone figure as a bullet strikes him dead. His companion barely has time to turn before he, too, is shot down.


In this first flurried moment, Rage showcases both what makes it great, and what will be its ultimate downfall. The game is about the complete, unmitigated disappointment of what comes after, in a very complete sense. In game, you see the havoc wreaked upon the earth by the asteroid: as a player, you progress through the game, and begin to realize that there will not be a connection made between all the events you precipitate throughout the game: that what comes after will never be as good as what came before. And all that can be seen in that first moment.  


There is an unquestionable fluidity to the movements made: from the murderous sneer of the bandit about to end your life, to the collapse of his companion as the bullet extinguishes his life. There is a satisfaction to the kill in this game: an unquestionable weight to each round fired from your weapon, and a clearly visible effect as it pierces the blood and meat and bone of your enemy. There is death inherent in this game, but there is also a life, a history each character gives, expressed through their very movement. From the Ghost clan, who rely on surprise and acrobatics to take down their prey, to the Gearheads, who let their machinery do the talking, to the Authority themselves, whose possession of technological advancements clearly grants them the edge. No group of enemies choose to attack you in the same way, and there are any number of ways you can choose to clear each room during your quest, each with its own merits and problems, each imparting a different reaction from your enemies. This is the story of Rage: a story told through the motion of the characters, and the weight of your weapon. And this tells a better tale than the writing in the game ever could.


Ultimately, this is not a full story in itself. From start to finish, it reeks of an introduction: a way to familiarize the player with this world ID has created without bestowing upon them a reason behind their actions. The motivations granted you are thin: you are asked to stop the Authority before you even see the Authority: asked to believe blindly that they are a power that needs removal. But there is a disconnect between your actions and the sparse narrative given. There is never the sense that your actions truly hold weight in the world. You are almost a placeholder, a figure told to make certain changes to this world you have been thrown into so that someday, eventually, the real battle can take place. In a way, you have no more purpose than you had when you initially emerged from the Ark. After ten hours in this desert wasteland that is all that remains of earth, you have no sense of importance. There are narrative twists that drop, suggesting that there is a greater story to be experienced, but you are not a part of it. You are not the Hero of Rage. You are the Wasteland’s Protagonist: a means to an end, simply a tool, like the weapons you carry, to shape this world into something that can be properly used later.


There is, perhaps, merit to this method of storytelling. The player does not always need to be the grand hero. There can be a lesser narrative occurring at a parallel to the epic quest the hero is undertaking, but there has to be an ultimate goal, a way to gauge success or failure. Your choices must have consequences; your actions must have impact.


ID did an unquestionably excellent job at creating the world of Rage. The desert, with its bleak beauty, and the bandit clans, with their complex, murderous methods, all speak of a greater plan. But the story they chose to tell in this world was ultimately one without reason. There was no climax, no dénouement. There was a wink, and a calm ‘trust me,’ as though the developer knows a secret the player has been left out of. There is a tale to this wasteland, but it is not that of the Ark Survivor in Rage: it is one that has yet to be told, and that is why I hold on to this game: so that when the first chapter is finally written, I can say with certainty that I’ve lived the introduction.