In the footsteps of The Adventures of Captain Blood.
Talking about a sad fate last year “The Adventures of Captain Blood”, I mentioned Axle rage, another potential domestic hit that we never saw. Well, it seems that the time has come to talk about his difficult fate. And I would like to open the story with a quote from the book “Game Time!” Andrey Podshibyakin: “If the reason for the non-release of Captain Blood can be called the victory of business over gameplay, then in the case of Axle Rage the wording will be different, more prosaic and widespread: the victory of technology over dreams.”…
Race, Bat, Fight: Axle Rage We Lost
Mad Axel
Work on Axle Rage began around the same time as Captain Blood, in 2002. “Akella” then she was on horseback and could afford bold experiments. In one phrase, her new project could be described as follows: “The coolest game about bikers in the world.” The concept included an open world, and an unpredictable plot, and the development of the hero, and the pumping of his iron horse, and a shock dose of two-wheeled romance, and God knows what else. In different periods of life, the game combined elements of a wide variety of works: from “Mad Max” and Escape from New York before Cyberpunk 2077 and neo-noir Max payne…
The authors named the film as sources of inspiration. Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Cowboy and even Akiru
The futuristic metropolis of Neilsdale, where the events of Axle Rage were supposed to unfold, would have plugged Night City into the belt. And not so much in scale (development manager Andrei Belkin spoke in an interview about six to eight square kilometers), as interactivity. For example, it was assumed that much of it could be destroyed. True, I have little idea of how this can be implemented even today – let alone 2002. But it was also supposed to be a simulation of life: with cars, pedestrians and changing the time of day! And, of course, it would not have been possible without evil corporations, corrupt police and drug wars. How do you like that CD Projekt RED?
Moreover, “Akella” planned to do a thing that the Poles did not succeed in: normal driving. They promised to give a ride in cars, but the main entertainment, of course, was to be motorcycles. They were promised a lot: very different, from classic choppers to slick racing soap dishes, but equally well-designed. Of course, it would not have been without racing and all sorts of stunts like “wheelie” or blowing smoke from under the wheels.
The developers called the motorcycles in Axle Rage the same fetish as the ships in “Corsairs”… Accordingly, it was supposed to improve them in every possible way. And the analogue of sea battles was supposed to be battles on motorcycles – just like in Road rash, only cooler. For example, a normal fixation on the target would allow you to comfortably steer and shoot at the same time, and in addition to weapons, various improvised means like garbage cans would be used.
Moreover, it was assumed that it would be possible to knock out the brains of enemies both on foot and in the saddle not only with bare hands, but also with weapons (the baseball bat should have become the favorite of the protagonist), and indeed with any improvised objects. They promised to pay special attention to close combat. Dynamics – “somewhere in between Devil may cry, LotR and Dead to rights“. Several types of punches and kicks, throws, blocks, combinations, finishing moves, repetitions of especially cruel moments in a spectacular slo-mo … Of course, all this fit only in the Mature rating.
Moreover, the story was promised no less adult than the gameplay. The plot of it all was quite in the spirit of the series. Gta (or, if you like, Deus Ex). Everything revolved around a mysterious substance called “miro” – not some ordinary drug, but a real biocomputer, which endows the consumer with superpowers. The title biker Axel was supposed to become his dealer, who suddenly wondered where this world came from, what his catch was and how to make more money on it. Naturally, where illegal substances are, there are gangs of bikers. It was assumed that these factions will get complex relationships with each other, will fight for territory and periodically throw us tasks. In addition, the hero would receive his own No Dice gang, which was supposed to develop and then crush competitors. Sounds like a mixture San andreas and The lost and damned…
Only freedom was supposed to be less: at the level not GTA, but rather Mafia… The main feature, after all, was not supposed to be variability (although the plot forks were supposed to be), but a powerful main story.
The art was created by such artists as Andrei Ivanchenko, known under the pseudonym Anry (maybe you remember the covers for Nick Perumov’s novels from about the same time?) And Vadim Bakhlychev (aka Molotov). Before that, they had already worked on the “Corsairs”. And the soundtrack is a separate topic altogether, I highly recommend listening to it. Do you feel the scale? Yes, the beginning of the 2000s was something like that for the Russian gamedev – the time of “dream games”.
Tellingly, the developers did not use any 3D action, RPG with an open world or, at worst, a motorcycle simulator as a game reference. Nothing like this. According to Dmitry Arkhipov, vice president of Akella for development and development, Axle Rage was supposed to become … Full throttle in 3D.
I do not promise listening pleasure, but it helps to imbue the atmosphere
If you do not know what Full Throttle is and what it was for gamers of the nineties, then I will call you a happy person. After all, you can play a masterpiece LucasArts for the first time! Formally, this is an ordinary point’n’click quest. But this is formal. In fact, Full Throttle is dusty highways, chrome shine, skin crunching and the most masculine adventure in history. The notorious biker romance was above the roof, even for fights on motorcycles there was a place – not very interesting, but still. It was the combination of artistic style, good humor, harsh brutality, elaborate narrative and that elusive substance that is commonly called “atmosphere” that made Full Throttle what it was. In general, this game became a legend thanks not to technology (although for 1995, with this, Full Throttle was also in perfect order) – and for some reason we forgot about this. Devilishly unusual for a country where it is customary to rely on such ephemeral matters as “soul”, “atmosphere”, “love” and other braces, and not on cold dead polygons with godless shaders. And in the end it turned out that it was the technology that ate this game.
Where Dreams May Come
The point is this: now any schoolchild can master some free Unity 3D or Unreal Engineso, for most developers, the technology problem is not so acute. Self-written engines are used less and less often because their disadvantages often outweigh the possible benefits. But at the beginning of the 2000s, everything worked a little differently, and Axle Rage was done on its own motor … with which the programmers simply could not cope. The project had just a brilliant picture – the developers really did a great job on the graphics – but the engine simply could not chew it.
However, the team was not going to cancel the project and throw the work done in a landfill. Akella made a truly Solomon decision and licensed RenderWare from Criterion Studios, authors Burnout… On this engine, it was not just anything that worked, but, say, the second part of the already mentioned Max Payne, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3, Broken Sword: The Sleeping Dragon and almost forgotten The movies… But the main thing – as many as three Grand Theft Auto: numbered third part, Vice city and San Andreas. As you can imagine, it is difficult to find a more suitable engine for an action game with transport in an open world.
No wonder “Igromania” back in 2003 christened Axle Rage “our Gta 3“. Moreover, in a large preview, released a year later, it was said that “At the time of Akella’s decision to license RenderWare, no one had heard of GTA 3!” Although this, of course, is a controversial issue, because GTA 3 was released in 2001, and the active stage of development of Axle Rage did not begin until 2002 … Well, okay, let’s write it down to the enthusiastic style of the then game journalism.
At first, the working title for Russia was “Night Wolf”, and the first unadorned version was simply called “Biker” and was a combat motorcycle arena
One way or another, Akella’s programmers had to teach RenderWare physics on their own. They also created a model for the behavior of two-wheeled vehicles: in GTA 3, if you remember, there were no motorcycles at all, and then “At Rockstar it took 11 months just to introduce motorcycles to Vice City! Eleven!”, as the same Belkin happily reported.
Moreover, according to eyewitnesses, the game looked just fine, especially in the PC version: there were realistic fog, shadows, and high-resolution textures. And the motion capture technology and professional actors, whose movements were filmed at the base, were responsible for the reliability of the animation. Mosfilm…
Cover of “review Addiction” with Axle Rage
However, despite all the tricks of the developers, the engine was counting down for the ninth year, and in terms of technology, the game was hopelessly stuck in the past. This is apart from the fact that moving an almost finished game to a new engine always means actually restarting development and zeroing out most of the achievements.
The game was expected in 2004 (in March Axle Rage even appeared on the cover of Igromania). Then – in 2005. Then she changed her name to Rage Rider, moved to 2006 and underwent a conceptual transformation into a post-apocalyptic action RPG. The events of the game were transferred from a fictional metropolis to a completely ordinary Nevada, albeit ravaged by the war. It was no longer so much Cyberpunk 2077 as Days gone – with scattered settlements, motorized gangs of marauders and other anarchy on wheels. And even then, Rage Rider looked very, very old.
But outside the studio, time continued to run its course. The industry developed, game series were born and died, console generations were replaced. And it was the last fact that finally finished off Axle Rage. While working on the game, Akella, of course, did not forget about the PC, but it considered home game consoles as target platforms – it was even called “the first real multi-platform game project in Russia”.
The first minute of the video is a rare footage of Rage Rider gameplay in its second incarnation
In the early 2000s, the PlayStation 2 rules the world over: developer-friendly, inexpensive, and simply the best console ever. According to the authors, the console and PC versions of Axle Rage were developed in parallel, but it was on the PS2 that the release should have taken place earlier. If the game was created specifically for the second “curling iron”, then, most likely, it would still be born, albeit in a very premature form. Here is just known for her deceit Sony decided not to wait for the stupid gaijins to give birth to their opus magnum, and released the PlayStation 3. And that was already fatality: developing a game for a completely new platform, and even known for its whims, was like death.
Then, apparently in despair, the developers promised a release on the PSP. And in 2006, the project was completely closed – for reasons of expediency: the next restart cost the publisher too much. review addiction in material about promising games that never saw the light of day wrote literally the following: “Akella really wanted to release Axle Rage / Rage Rider on PS2. When Sony representatives came to watch the game … well, they never gave permission to release it on PS2. “ (No. 2 for 2007). I don’t know if this is true or just an artistic exaggeration of the authors, but it sounds quite plausible.
By the way, the Urban Dictionary defines the phrase “rage rider” as follows: “A bad ass motherfucker who will knock you out for pissing them off in the least bit”
Perhaps, if the game had a Western publisher, he would not let it drown in the production hell, the ambition of the developers and their self-pity. Something like THQ pulled out in due time “S.T.A.L.K.E.R .: Shadow of Chernobyl”, another long-term construction originally from the CIS noughties. But what happened happened: “Akella” never found a foreign savior. There was no one to pull the next hope of the Russian gamedev out of the swamp.
Dmitry Arkhipov in Podshibyakin’s book said the following about this: “The team just failed. They declared a big serious brand, mastered the money and got into a puddle “… A very capacious characteristic of the entire domestic gaming industry.
The decision to change the name of Axle Rage to Rage Rider “Akella” and 1C were made independently. Why it was needed is a mystery
In total, Axle Rage has been in agony for almost ten years. With her death, as Andrei Podshibyakin notes, “the romantic period of Russian game development” ended. The time of the dreamers is over – the time has come for the pragmatists with their session free-to-play MMOs and mobile, excuse me for being straightforward, milking machines.
And based on the developments of Axle Rage, they made “Shadow-boxing” and a lot of other trash, including the infamous Postal 3… Moreover, in the same “Fight with the shadow”, the fights (the central element of the gameplay in the game about boxing!) Have been screwed up so that you involuntarily ask yourself a question: maybe it’s good that Axle Rage never came out? Anyway, a beautiful legend is better than another lousy game with giant ambitions.
