Willits admitted that some of the early marketing for Rage (before this week's release of the new trailer) perhaps didn't do the game justice, saying, "Some of the early trailers struggled with what the game was about." That certainly became more clear as we and other reporters (and soon thousands of QuakeCon attendees) got to see the live gameplay demo for themselves. Indeed Hooper told us that their demo, which lasts about an hour, was designed specifically to be that long so everyone could get what Rage is about. He told us, "You can't get that in a five minute E3 demo."

Setting the game after a global disaster certainly isn't unique; it's been done many different times in games, movies and TV shows. When it came time to creating the visual look of Rage, Martiniere told us he had several different artistic influences. Ultimately they decided to make the game have a "old fashioned pulp magazine style; very hot and colorful." That's certainly evident in many of the sequences, especially the Bash TV arena-style of gameplay where the player goes through a twisted version of a fun house.

Another part of Rage's design that hasn't been done in an id game before is a sense of exploration. Sure there have been hidden levels and areas in previous id games but they were designed mostly as Easter Eggs. Hooper said that players "can explore if they want to" and that they could find areas that are "really cool and totally different" from the main areas and storyline.

Another aspect of Rage is the various human characters that people talk to in the game's wasteland. Hooper said that they wanted to make chatting with the various NPCs to be easy and not be a burden. "You don't want to click through dialog" he told us. Also, don't expect to see the same person saying the same thing over and over again in the game. Hooper told us, "Every character is unique."