id Software's Tim Willits: RAGE is "Basically Done"

id Software creative director Tim Willits admitted to CVG's Xbox World 360 magazine that the team is excited about being at the last stages of RAGE's development. The studio's latest shooter – and the first in an all-new IP – is slated to hit the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Windows PC on October 7. The development has taken just over four years, and there's no doubt that the team is feeling a mixture of both anxiety and excitement as the Gone Gold date closes in.

"The game is basically done," he said in the latest issue of the magazine. "It's going to be available this fall so we are in the polish and refinement stage which is a great place to be. Now we have all the content done and played through the game and got a real sense for it."

"I'll be honest with you, it's exciting," he added. "It's different from DOOM, Quake and Wolfenstein. It has so much to offer: the vehicle combat, the weapons, the ammo types, the items, the story. It really is the best game."

Part of the polishing process, according to Willits, involves smoothing out the graphics on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. He said that he's confident John Carmack will have everything smoothed out by the time the game is ready to be sent off for publishing.

"[Console is] different to PC in that most of the data is read from the disc; we have the texture page in the texture cache," he said. "At times you will see some stuff in the distance loading in... of course, John [Carmack] is working on getting that as final as possible."

As it stands now, the team has around two months remaining if it wants to meet the October 7 ship date. But as we've seen with prior titles, ship dates aren't etched in stone, and will be pushed back if the developer needs more time to spit-shine their product. At this point, id can take as long as it needs save for extending out into Duke Nukem forever territory. No more decade developments, please.