Id Software game director Tim Willits is fond of saying that "you can drive anything" in Rage 2, so when we talk at QuakeCon I ask him about the mech being piloted by a enemy faction boss in the gameplay trailer.
"Oh yes, yeah," Willits says. "That guy's awesome."
"Is that something I can drive, too?" I ask. "Can I defeat him and jump in his mech?"
"That's funny you said that!" he says. "Because we were talking about that. And someone said, 'You know a journalist is going to ask you if [players] could drive that', and I said 'No one's gonna ask us that!' It doesn't have wheels. 'Someone's gonna ask you.'"
I guess that someone is me, though Willits still won't give me an answer. "We have talked about it," says Willits. "But that's all I'm gonna say. We have talked about it."
You know that at id Software we're big into mods, so we know it's important, we just haven't figured out that roadmap yet.
Tim Willits
I do get a couple of clear answers. Firstly, Rage 2 "will not support modding out of the gate", but that doesn't mean it never will. "You know that at id Software we're big into mods, so we know it's important, we just haven't figured out that roadmap yet," says Willits.
And after the revelation that Doom Eternal will offer an invasion mode, where player-controlled demons can enter another player's singleplayer campaign, I asked if there were any similar plans for multiplayer features like co-op in Rage 2. But it will remain a singleplayer-only game, Willits says.
"Obviously everyone always discusses it," Willits says, "but looking at what we want to do and what we want to accomplish, and what we're offering and with the emergent gameplay and the open-world aspect of it, and our post-launch plans, we felt that we were creating a good offering."
Despite the lack of proper multiplayer, Rage 2 will have "social components" designed to "connect" players, Willits told Eurogamer yesterday—although he didn't elaborate on how that would work in-game.
As far as all the other, non-mech vehicles that we know you can drive, I ask if we'll get to do more than just jump in and drive them, but also collect and keep them.
"So, um... not to give away too much, but yes, you will be incentivized to jump in vehicles," Willits said. "That's one of the things that bothered me with [Mad Max]. I always wanted some reward for grabbing vehicles."
I ask if that reward is something like a garage to keep the stolen vehicles in.
"Well, we'll see."
"You can't talk about it?"
"Yes. We have some stuff. But we want to incentivize you, yes."
To recap, here's what we've learned: maybe we can drive the mech (they're talking about it), something happens when you get into a car, mod support is a possibility, but not at launch, and Rage 2 will definitely be singleplayer-only (but with some kind of social element). For everything else we know, check out the QuakeCon gameplay footage (embedded above) and our Rage 2 hub.
