A 15-second pre-roll for the Rage 2 launch trailer was leaked onto YouTube late yesterday. While the pre-roll has been since removed, it has been hinted that the trailer will make its official debut today.
Recently, Walmart Canada posted a bunch of listings for unreleased and unannounced games on their website, a discovery made by Twitter user Wario64:
One of these postings received a response from the long-dead official Twitter account for Rage, which made fun of the placeholder cover for Rage 2, consisting of a completely black cover with some white text:
Over the past few days, the official Bethesda Twitter has been posting a variety of pictures that all have references to the number or date 5/14, heavily implying a big announcement today. It seems the surprise has been ruined, however, as YouTube added a fifteen-second pre-roll for Rage 2 to their advertisement slot. The pre-roll has since been removed from the advertisements, and Bethesda, naturally, has removed the clip from any public accounts that re-uploaded the clip.
It’s a little surprising to see Rage getting a sequel after all these years. Back in 2011, it was billed as one of the most ambitious shooters of all time. It was going to feature new graphics technology and put players in a massive, fully realized environment. Instead, players got a decent shooter game and a small, linear world with megatextured gray rocks. And don’t get players started on the story, which is one part exposition on things that happened, one part being ordered around to do things by various characters, and two parts disappointing ending that offers little to no resolution when you finally do something that seems important. We’ll have to see what Bethesda has planned for the sequel and wonder if it can redeem the lukewarm reception the first game received.