LogFAQs > #921856296

Rage 2 is a fun game that makes me feel like garbage

Rage 2 uses my birth defect as a crude shorthand for mutant freak

Every time I begin to enjoy Rage 2, it finds a new way to treat me like shit.

Theres a lot of individual bits Ive liked in Bethesdas new post-apocalyptic shooter, created by the open-world geniuses at Avalanche Studios and the gunplay experts at id Software. And I have no doubt we will be unpacking what makes its open-world click in the coming days, if not weeks. But never has a game so personally, directly bummed me out.

I should have seen this coming.

Last summer, I had a chance to talk with id Software studio director Tim Willits about Rage 2. After a relatively straightforward interview running through the games grabbag of inspirations, the conversation shifted to something more personal: my birth defect and how the game presents it as a crude joke.

Rage 2s publisher Bethesda had just revealed a $119.99 collectors edition that would come with a talking, robotic bust of Ruckus the Crusher, one of the games many goliath mutants. Like all the other Crushers in the game, Ruckus has a gash running from the top of its upper lip through his nose, as if its face didnt fully form at birth.

The mutation, I explained to Willits, looks like an exaggerated cleft lip and cleft palate. The original Rage used similar imagery for its mutants, and I told Willits how disappointed I felt to see the sequel following that same path. Fiction has long associated clefts with both villainy and mental health disorders, and it appeared the Rage franchise would perpetuate this cruel, damaging misrepresentation to a broad audience.

Willits, to his credit, was receptive to the feedback. Heres the relevant portion of our interview:

Tim Willits: So you feel that its a little insensitive?

Plante: Yeah. It makes me a little uncomfortable when its always the bad guys that have the upper lip and nose removed, effectively.

Willits: You know, I never really thought of that. I mean, you know, we try to make you know, Kenneth Scott was our art director on Rage 1, and yeah, I mean I kind of feel bad now. Sometimes its hard when you you dont live in that world, so youre like, Oh, these guys So I apologize. And you know, yeah, Ill talk to the guys.

Plante: Sure. Are mutations normal for the heroes, too, in this version of the game?

Willits: Its mostly the bad guys. But we do have some the heroes in Rage 2 are not as pretty as the heroes in Rage 1. Someone did, like, the girls of Rage posters and stuff, so we are trying to be a little more balanced. And the Avalanche guys have been very good about being a little more sensitive. So I do think we have a better balance.

Ive now played a significant amount of Rage 2, and I have to wonder if Willits forgot to have that conversation. Or if that conversation was had, was it closer to a cost-benefit analysis: will enough potential players be upset to warrant the investment in improving these character designs?

I can now say with certainty that the Avalanche guys have not been very good about being a little more sensitive. Or perhaps Willits meant little more in a literal sense. As in they have made the smallest effort.

Rage 2s use of cleft lip and palate imagery in the final game is worse than I expected, and certainly worse than its predecessor. I already mentioned the The Crushers, who are both recurring bosses and environmental hazards, each of them with an identical facial design.