Rage similarities to Borderlands

I just played Borderlands today for the first time and I was amazed. There were so many elements the same as what I saw in Rage. Here`s few I`ve noticed:

• being set in future with post-apocalyptic look and american "wild west" feel
• bandits terrorizing people around their settlements and player getting missions to help them and fight for more safety
• getting paid for those missions and travelling around the land
• choosing what guns I carry and what I can use (not anymore in Borderlands2)
• gaining trust with locals by completing missions
• driving cars with boost speed-up
• slow recharge of shield (Nanotrites in Rage) and coming back to life after being killed
• weapon upgrades
• buy/sell credit system
• Job Board in town

What`s really nice is more information and control in this game and it feels like a more proper Role Playing Game. I liked how you easily set your character`s name and even colors. Also very detailed game engine settings compared to Rage. Being able to change detail of vegetation or having 3 levels of texture quality (Borderlands is using modified Unreal Engine 3). But what really got me was walking out from Dr.Ned`s shed and seeing a night sky! There is day and night here, something that is oddly missing in Rage (probably due to its baked textures, which was maybe to keep FPS high). There is also actual map! Something missing quite a lot in Rage, also horizonal compass with mission direction (genius idea). The whole game feels also more like a real world with more freedom and randomness. The comic book style look of the game is also something cool and unique.


Considering Borderlands was released around october 2009 I guess this is one of the sources where id software took inspiration. It feels like in Rage, they wanted to take similar approach, but simplify it. I need to say, the shooting in Rage is done the best from any games out there. I just get the feeling by going to open-world and RPG type of game, they split their efforts and abandoned the pure genre of first person shooter.
Let`s imagine they wouldn`t build all this Wasteland world with its bit confusing Authority and Mutants story plot... They could make just great action packed levels (maybe in Wasteland environment, why not), but also making the game bigger and longer to play. Hopefully there is Doom 4 soon with less RPG and more levels with great action. The release could also come sooner then in another 5 years or so. It`s about more focusing on the gameplay, but graphics could still use idTech5 - not trying to push the engine again with some idTech6. I mean more people could have the hardware to play it smooth in high detail.