id: "A dozen or so," sources inspired the look and feel of RAGE

RAGE design director Matt Hooper has said id Software chose the Wastelands as a setting for the game, because the environment's style was something the team had in common has far as individual tastes.

Speaking in an interview with Gamespot at TGS, Hooper said the inspiration for the game's locale didn't come from any one source specifically, but "a dozen or so."

"We watch the same movies, play the same games, and read the same books [at id], he said. "We sat down on a table and discussed about nothing but 'Wouldn't it be cool if we did this?' and if we like it, we put it in the world. We've been tethered with the Doom and Quake world, so it's fresh to start anew with the Rage universe.

"We get the Borderlands and Fallout parallels a lot, but when you sit down with the game for an amount of time, there's a lot more fidelity in there. Visually, people want to make a comparison because they haven't got their hands on it. Some of the other games have RPG with exposed stats and dialogue trees [that make for a] heavy experience. Or it's a game just about a million guns. We're still about trying a million things but paring it down to the ones we think work best and making sure everything has a lot of beats to it."

Hooper goes on to say the team is please with both the story and the way it unfolds for players along with the "open-ended nature of the world," which is a first for the studio.

"It's a lot different than what we've done in the past," he said. "People are always talking about it being postapocalyptic, but really, that's just a cool excuse to twist the world the way you want it. If we wanted to have a realistic game, that would be like GTA.

"We don't want to show something where you can just walk outside for it; we wanted a departure from reality."

RAGE is out the first part of October on PC, PS3, and Xbox 360.