Rage

**OG_Monkey** · 09-17-2008, 12:24 AM

Rage Held Back By Xbox 360's Limits

http://xboxevolved.e-mpire.com/article/Rage/4769.html

- Id designer Tim Willits says significant content has been cut to cram game onto 360.

During his Austin Game Developers Conference discussion on storytelling and technology, id Software lead designer Tim Willits the developer is cutting back on the amount of content they would have liked to include in their upcoming shooter Rage. The main reason for limiting the game's content is the Xbox 360's limited disc storage, which allows about six to eight GB of data.

"The PC is limitless in the amount of data you can put on it," said Willits. "The PS3 has about 25GB. But the Xbox 360 roughly has 6 to 8 GB of data. We're hoping we can squeeze the game down to two discs for the 360 version."

According to Willits, the game was supposed to feature several wastelands for the player to explore. Because of the limitations of the Xbox 360's media, they had to cut down the wastelands to only two, which are themselves split into multiple instances. These changes have been made across all versions of Rage, not just the 360 port.

"I wouldn't say the overall story was changed in any way in order to fit on the Xbox 360 version," Willits said, "but how the player experiences Rage's story has been altered." Unfortunately, that means the experience has been altered across all platforms. This is one of the first signs we've received of the 360's older DVD media showing its age, but we expect some fans won't be terribly pleased that it's affecting other versions of the game as well.

***frosty*** · 09-17-2008, 05:23 AM

Sad...sad...sad. MS fucking my game all up....

And people didn't believe me when I said that 360's DVD drive limited the types of gameplay that could be played on it with it requiring HD graphics but not having enough storage space to handle it. The said "switching discs is fine.... It doesn't matter if I have to change the disc 4 times in a game, 360 is still the better system". Now, due to MS charging very high fees to include multiple discs so as to discourage developers from making their decision to go with DVD look bad, story lines are being altered, content being cut, and the experience I get (as well as the PC gamers) gets shit on as a result.

**JasonXe** · 09-17-2008, 06:11 AM

you didn't bring jax with you?

**seahorse** · 09-17-2008, 11:09 AM

maybe it'll turn out to be a better game

**Jay Gee** · 09-17-2008, 12:18 PM

I could've SWORN we've all been to this dance before, haven't we?

**Lucent Beam** · 09-17-2008, 02:19 PM

The real problem here is MS being an asshole about fees for an extra disc.

If they think the game is going to go good enough to sell and make profit from, why bother trying to cram it down to just 2 discs? Games like Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey have 4... It's incredibly lame to be cutting material across all 3 platforms because of size issues. If your content was good enough for you to seriously want to include in the first place, you'd find a way to include it. ...I guess unless you want to develop a game for Microsoft who's going to be a jerk about it.

Really annoying about the fees though. I'm sure they are only there to try to negate PS3's larger storage capacity by discouraging larger games that are multiplatform.. sad to see it working.

**r33hash** · 09-17-2008, 03:47 PM

Uhhh.... oops....

http://news.teamxbox.com/xbox/17597/...-360-Hardware/

During my talk today I mentioned that we originally wanted to have around 5 or 6 smaller wasteland environments but later decided instead to have 2 larger wastelands. Mostly because we were going to be shipping on two DVDs for the 360 and felt that it would play better with one large wasteland on each disc so there would be no loading between wastelands. Not loading levels while you drive around is a much better decision regardless of platform.

There was NO CONTENT removed from RAGE because of the 360--NONE AT ALL. Moving from multiple wastelands into fewer but larger wastelands was a far better decision and is actually giving us more gameplay in the game.

We feel the 360 is a great platform and will provide a fantastic Rage experience.

**seahorse** · 09-17-2008, 03:50 PM

lol

***D3adcell*** · 09-17-2008, 05:51 PM

Originally Posted by Lucent Beam

The real problem here is MS being an asshole about fees for an extra disc.

If they think the game is going to go good enough to sell and make profit from, why bother trying to cram it down to just 2 discs? Games like Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey have 4... It's incredibly lame to be cutting material across all 3 platforms because of size issues. If your content was good enough for you to seriously want to include in the first place, you'd find a way to include it. ...I guess unless you want to develop a game for Microsoft who's going to be a jerk about it.

Really annoying about the fees though. I'm sure they are only there to try to negate PS3's larger storage capacity by discouraging larger games that are multiplatform.. sad to see it working.

Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey were published by microsoft game studios, so they had no fee. I think the reason that the guy even said that is so iD can kind of push MS to waive the fee for multiple discs or something.

***frosty*** · 09-17-2008, 06:44 PM

"I wouldn't say the overall story was changed in any way in order to fit on the Xbox 360 version," Willits said, "but how the player experiences Rage's story has been altered."

Sounds to me like someone came to work with a little memo on their desk saying "Microsoft are pissed about what you said... take it back!".

The fact still remains that because of DVD, this game is now inferior. The way they had envisioned us experiencing their product has been held back because of a technical limitation on one of the platforms. That simply sucks, even if in this case it may not have been that drastic of a change. I want as few limitations as possible. Now it's obvious why Konami didn't even consider MGS4 on 360... they would have had to pay an arm and a leg to cram it on there.

Lucent, you are totally right. It isn't so much the actual physical limitation DVD has, since they very well could have an "insert disc 4" scenario, but the licensing fees involved. It is a trick to make devs water down their games so they don't look bad vs. the competition. What we end up with is a watered down game (on all systems) with inferior graphics on the 360 because they wouldn't allow the needed disc space (well, the worse gfx was also because of no standard hard drive, but that's beside the point).

During my talk today I mentioned that we originally wanted to have around 5 or 6 smaller wasteland environments but later decided instead to have 2 larger wastelands. Mostly because we were going to be shipping on two DVDs for the 360 and felt that it would play better with one large wasteland on each disc so there would be no loading between wastelands. Not loading levels while you drive around is a much better decision regardless of platform.

This is exactly what I was talking about when I said certain types of games wouldn't lend themselves well to swapping discs. In this case, they were able to find a way to cram it onto only 2 discs (which still sucks if you're in an open world), but even then they still come out and say "we're hoping we can do it". What happens if the next GTA spans more than one disc? Will they be forced to nix aircraft from all versions so the 360 version doesn't look inferior? After all, how annoying would it be to have to switch discs every 2 minutes while flying in a helicopter or jet? This is why MS needs to admit their shortsightedness with DVD, relax their restrictions on multiple discs, allow mandatory HDD installs (which would allow for a GTA game to span multiple discs while keeping the level from being chopped up onto multiple discs, they could just install the level data and use the discs for missions), and quit fucking up my games! I paid good money for a good system that doesn't have these restrictions, so it's rather annoying to see another companies' lack of foresight affecting my gameplay. Not just lack of foresight, but inability to admit it and going well out of their way to make sure others don't expose it either.

**Lucent Beam** · 09-17-2008, 07:11 PM

^frosty, you're completing misinterpreting his newly clarified statements.
Instead of 5 or 6 smaller wastelands, there are 2 larger ones. Instead of loading between5 or 6, there is only leading between 2. This translates to one per Xbox 360 disc. If anything, this improves the PS3 version because of having to load 4 or 5 times, you only have to load once.

The only part that sounds fishy is it still seems like something was cut, but now they're retracting it and saying it was a misunderstanding? Which is may be, since "how the player experiences it is altered" really means, moving between 2 large instead of 4 or 6 small... so according to him, it truly isn't a content issue at all and we're making too big of a deal. HOW we experience is different.. not WHAT we experience. So frosty, no storyline has been cut and neither has content... content is just arranged differently.

**woundingchaney** · 09-17-2008, 07:54 PM

Originally Posted by frosty

Sounds to me like someone came to work with a little memo on their desk saying "Microsoft are pissed about what you said... take it back!".

The fact still remains that because of DVD, this game is now inferior. The way they had envisioned us experiencing their product has been held back because of a technical limitation on one of the platforms. That simply sucks, even if in this case it may not have been that drastic of a change. I want as few limitations as possible. Now it's obvious why Konami didn't even consider MGS4 on 360... they would have had to pay an arm and a leg to cram it on there.

Lucent, you are totally right. It isn't so much the actual physical limitation DVD has, since they very well could have an "insert disc 4" scenario, but the licensing fees involved. It is a trick to make devs water down their games so they don't look bad vs. the competition. What we end up with is a watered down game (on all systems) with inferior graphics on the 360 because they wouldn't allow the needed disc space (well, the worse gfx was also because of no standard hard drive, but that's beside the point).

This is exactly what I was talking about when I said certain types of games wouldn't lend themselves well to swapping discs. In this case, they were able to find a way to cram it onto only 2 discs (which still sucks if you're in an open world), but even then they still come out and say "we're hoping we can do it". What happens if the next GTA spans more than one disc? Will they be forced to nix aircraft from all versions so the 360 version doesn't look inferior? After all, how annoying would it be to have to switch discs every 2 minutes while flying in a helicopter or jet? This is why MS needs to admit their shortsightedness with DVD, relax their restrictions on multiple discs, allow mandatory HDD installs (which would allow for a GTA game to span multiple discs while keeping the level from being chopped up onto multiple discs, they could just install the level data and use the discs for missions), and quit fucking up my games! I paid good money for a good system that doesn't have these restrictions, so it's rather annoying to see another companies' lack of foresight affecting my gameplay. Not just lack of foresight, but inability to admit it and going well out of their way to make sure others don't expose it either.

nonsense

Freeman_JI · 09-18-2008, 12:54 AM

Good news for 360 owners and other platforms.

***frosty*** · 09-18-2008, 05:38 AM

^frosty, you're completing misinterpreting his newly clarified statements.
Instead of 5 or 6 smaller wastelands, there are 2 larger ones. Instead of loading between5 or 6, there is only leading between 2. This translates to one per Xbox 360 disc. If anything, this improves the PS3 version because of having to load 4 or 5 times, you only have to load once.

The only part that sounds fishy is it still seems like something was cut, but now they're retracting it and saying it was a misunderstanding? Which is may be, since "how the player experiences it is altered" really means, moving between 2 large instead of 4 or 6 small... so according to him, it truly isn't a content issue at all and we're making too big of a deal. HOW we experience is different.. not WHAT we experience. So frosty, no storyline has been cut and neither has content... content is just arranged differently.

It still proves that, although in this case it didn't make much difference, MS is still limiting developers with their fees on multiple DVDs. What if combining the levels weren't an option (let's assume each of those 6 levels was a different location, instead of one wasteland area which couldn't be combined into one)?

nonsense

One word posts do nothing but waste space. At least give reasons for your stance.

**dork** · 09-18-2008, 09:12 AM

rofl @ this thread

so what exactly is rage anyways?

***masteratt*** · 09-18-2008, 11:35 AM

It's a fast food restaurant.
(

how can you rofl at this thread and still not know what RAGE is....)

Anyway I've posted my take on this somewhere else, probably in the PS3 section somewhere.
It basically said I was pissed off at what devs were doing but now that I read the longer explanation, it doesn't seem as bad....Not that I care, I was never going to get this game but it was worrying to see devs cutting down content for 360s sake which to be honest we always knew was happening (most devs just keep their mouth shut about it though.......*hint*GTA4*hint*).

**OG_Monkey** · 09-18-2008, 07:16 PM

Its hard to care about when you dont even care about the game. I say cancel the 360 version, fuck it, this game probably wont push that many units anyway.