Doom 3: BFG Edition is set to launch on PS3 in October of 2012, bringing with it the first two games in the iconic series. It means you’ll be able to play the entire Doom series on PS3 for the first time and see for yourself why many consider these games to be some of the most influential shooters of all time.

We caught up with Eric Webb, producer from game developer id Software, at E3 2012 to talk about how the game has been buffed up for PS3.

PlayStation.Blog: How do you think all three games stand up today on PS3?

Eric Webb, Producer, Doom 3: BFG Edition: I think they all stand up really well. One of the first things we did when we first started work on it was pay attention to how the controls feel. There’s something about the DualShock 3 controller and its dual analog sticks that feels really good when you’re holding it in a game like this. It gives it a different life and almost makes it an entirely new experience. So I think it’s really cool on PS3.

PSB: What does stereoscopic 3D bring to the game?

EW: We were really surprised when we first had a look at it in 3D. John [Carmack, co-creator of the Doom series] went through quite a few different iterations of the game to help us figure out how best to fit the technology in. Just like adding DualShock 3 controls to the original Doom, 3D really brings Doom 3 to life. It’s interesting when you’re playing; you almost lose all of your peripheral vision and get sucked into the experience. I’d go so far as to say it’s the best implementation of stereoscopic 3D I’ve seen in a game so far. It really does draw you in.

PSB: Did you ever talk about PlayStation Move functionality?

EW: No. We didn’t really want to touch the core mechanics of the game. PlayStation Move is really cool technology but we’d have had to fundamentally change how the game works and we wanted to keep it as close to the classic experience as we could.

PSB: How about the first two games – was anything tweaked there for PS3?

EW: They are pretty much straight ports, but I will say that they run really fast at 60 frames per second, even with four-player split screen play going on. If you’ve got a big TV that’s really going to stand out. The guys basically wrote it from scratch to get it working on PS3.

PSB: What would you say attracts players to Doom 3 over games like UNCHARTED and the Call of Duty series?

EW: Working in the art department back when we made the original the version of Doom 3, one of the things that I’m really proud of personally is the fact that id Software was one of the first studios to bring in a film animator to add that movie aesthetic to games. I think we see other games coming out that are maybe a little bit derivative of that kind of thing – people are co-operating now between film and games and bringing that same type of look to it.

I think the game feels fresh. It was very modern and very aggressive, and you had to have a very high end PC to run it back in the day whereas now it’s running happily on PS3 in 720p high resolution. It’s really the best conversion we could have done for the game, I’m confident to say. It has good gameplay, good art, good style. It just lasts.

PSB: So there’s the addition of the mounted flashlight to the game. Has anything else been modified for PS3?

EW: We’re making textural improvements to the characters and demons. We’ve completely rewritten the network code so that multiplayer is a better experience. In addition there’s also the Lost Mission Pack, containing seven new levels. They pick up from a certain part of the story line in the main game – without giving too much away, it’ll all make sense when you play it. You’re a different guy in a different part of the base but it’s the same world.

PSB: The Doom games are the formative experience for many shooter fans. What’s been the reaction to this version?

EW: We’ve been incredibly surprised with the feedback from the show floor. Doom is obviously very important to us and we feel very passionate about it, but you never really know until you bring it to an event like E3 what the reaction is going to be. We were convinced it was a good idea to rework the game like this, and it was great that John [Carmack] was so passionate about the 3D stuff – because that added some new tech and got the team’s creative engine running again, so to speak – but you just never know. So the response has been really humbling.

It’s funny. You start to hear really interesting stories about people’s first experiences with the games. The first time I played the original Doom, my dad brought it home on a floppy disc. That told me two things: first, my dad was cooler than me at that point; second, I didn’t know how they were doing it but I had to get involved with it.

PSB: Much of the team who worked on the futuristic shooter, Rage, contributed to this. What do you think they brought to Doom 3: BFG Edition?

EW: Those guys learned a lot of lessons about how to work with AI and craft it into something really believable. When they came across to work on Doom 3: BFG Edition they had this incredible toolkit at their disposal, and they could focus more on making the experience great as opposed to fighting the technical hurdles on the way to finishing the game.

PSB: How do you balance staying true to the original game with making improvements?

EW: Your first inclination is to make big sweeping changes because it’s something that you’ve looked at for a long time, so it doesn’t feel fresh anymore. We’ve really focused on keeping the core experience there. From talking to people on the show floor, a lot of them weren’t too happy with the idea of the flashlight as something separate. So integrating the flashlight into your main weapon seemed like a no-brainer, yet even then we still had people say they wanted to play the original way.

Another piece of feedback we had was that the game was too dark, so we’ve lit it some more here and there and tried to lead the player’s eye a little more. So there’ll be two modes – the original, unchanged version of Doom 3 and the updated one.

PSB: And trophy support must have been a fun feature to implement…

EW: Yeah, we sat down with the design team and really just let them riff. It was a little tricky adding trophies to a game that’s so well established, but I think fans will be impressed.

Afterwards, we spoke with id Software President Todd Hollenshead to discuss what made the legendary DOOM developer shift gears to a story-driven, open-world playground — and to learn more about the mysteries lurking in that sprawling wasteland.

Todd Hollenshead, President, id Software: “You have to sort of experience it, it’s very difficult to explain. The megatextures allow us to make the entire world unique. It’s all painted and modeled and because we’re streaming the textures, we’re not really constrained by system memory. We can have completely unique elements throughout the world without costing us performance.”

Sid Shuman, PlayStation.Blog: Any hands-on discussion of Rage must begin with its stunning visuals. Rage is easily among the best-looking first-person shooters I’ve seen this console generation — suddenly, Carmack’s Tweet about players mistaking the PS3 version for a high-end PC doesn’t sound so crazy. The sheer detail is staggering, with the shattered environments positively dripping detail: In my two hours of play I saw whirlwind of tribal etchings, battered street signs, skulls. Despite the visual fidelity and the large scale of the outdoor environments, Rage miraculously runs at 60 frames per second with no screen tearing. That’s an impressive graphical accomplishment.

Jeff Rubenstein, PlayStation.Blog: We’ve seen no shortage of end-of-days gunplay in recent years – Fallout 3 and Borderlands spring immediately to mind – but Rage establishes its own visual style from the opening moments. Considering the fact that a good chunk of Rage takes place in a devastated wasteland, the game is quite colorful: The outdoor sections are brightly lit and set beneath a brilliant blue sky. It’s evident that id Software took extreme care in crafting this detailed world. Everything wears the patina of age, looking grimy and worn-in. Like you said, it all scrolls by incredibly smoothly, which is especially important when the gameplay relies on aiming, shooting, and high-speed driving.

Todd Hollenshead: “You hear about The Authority early in the game, but you don’t know what it is. But they’re making high-tech weapons, energy weapons…my favorite weapon is the rocket launcher. It’s a staple of id weapons, but this one has a subtle little feature that you won’t see unless you get distracted for a while. If you let your aiming screen idle, it goes into a DOOM screen.”

Sid: id Software’s games have hardly pushed the boundaries of storytelling. But with Rage, it feels like the developer is out to dispel that reputation once and for all. During the opening credits, the asteroid Aphophis screams towards a fatal collision course with Earth. You are part of an elite group tasked with resurrecting humanity once the devastation subsides, and your group sleeps the decades away buried in a high-tech sarcophagus — an Ark. When you finally wake up, you find the Ark lies in ruin and your comrades are dessicated corpses. You exit the Ark, stumble into the blinding light…and are promptly attacked by roving mutants. Luckily, you get a helping hand from a passing wastelands traveler named Dan Hagar…who sounded a lot like John Goodman, didn’t you think?

Jeff: Turns out that it is John Goodman! Dan Hagar rescues you out of kindness, but he knows that an able-bodied Ark survivor is a useful asset for his rag-tag outpost. He presents you with a handgun and some coin, then sends you back into the breach to clear out the mutants who saw you escape. Since we were playing alongside each other, I noticed you jumped right onto an ATV and headed back out into the wastes, but I stayed behind to poke around Hagar’s makeshift town and speak with the townsfolk. A local woman trained me in the art of the Wingstick – a silent, lethal boomerang weapon – and gave me five of them as a reward. Next, I dropped by the local merchant’s hovel, where I picked up some grenades and a monocular, which turns your piddly hand cannon into an accurate, long-range firearm. By this point I was eager to try out the ordnance, and sped off towards the mutant den. How’d you fare with the default loadout?

Todd Hollenshead: “We didn’t feel like a deathmatch-style multiplayer mode fit with what we were doing. We wanted the multiplayer to be as unique as the single-player…doing deathmatch like DOOM or Quake would feel like we’re giving up a little bit, creatively. For multiplayer we have the vehicular Road Rage mode. We also have a cooperative mode that runs parallel to — but not on top of — the single-player experience. It’s a bit like Modern Warfare 2’s Spec Ops: same game, familiar environments, but remixed for co-op experiences.”

Sid: I was eager to dive into combat…perhaps a little too eager. Once I found the den of evil, I trudged through the gloom and picked off bandits using my low-powered Settler’s Pistol. The firefights were classic id: vivid, visceral, and deeply immersive. It didn’t take long before I learned how to revive myself upon death by solving a brief coordination puzzle; the better my performance, the more health I earn and the bigger the shockwave I released upon reviving. Inside the hotel, the Ghost Clan foes I encountered moved expressively, clutching at their wounds when shot, scrabbling across obstacles, and lunging at me with ferocious kicks. At one point I gut-shot a bandit and he dropped like a rock, then squirmed on the ground while defiantly squeezing off a few more shots. I also noted the game’s skin-crawling audio design: ghouls hissed “over there!” and “I see him!” while I tried to slink through the shadows. The entire experience was unsettling and deeply primal.

Jeff: And they conversed with such charming Cockney accents! But if the mutants sounded like English punters, they moved in a more simian fashion, closing in for the kill through a combination of tumbles and dives… one even swung along the ceiling. In many ways, I was reminded of BioShock’s Splicers: acrobatic and dangerous – and this is before I started running into another clan that was armed with assault rifles. These “muties” weren’t as nimble, but they were tough. It took more than one headshot to ship them off to dreamland. Later, I acquired powerful “Fat Boy” slugs, which turned the basic Settler Pistol into a one-hit kill cannon. Once the hotel floor was littered with corpses, I made the rounds, looting money, ammunition, and scrap items from the fallen. Though broadly reminiscent of Fallout 3, the inventory system in Rage is significantly streamlined; there’s no concern over hitting a weight limit. As the game progressed, I learned how to craft useless junk into useful tools like first-aid bandages and lock grinders. The whole process is simple and straight to the point – about what you’d expect from id’s first inventory system.

Sid: You definitely won’t be confusing Rage with a stat-heavy RPG, that’s for sure. But the open-world mission structure and detailed fictional universe give Rage a heft that’s rarely felt in first-person shooter campaigns. In addition to the main single-player quest, the final game will ship with racing challenges and optional side quests, while a vehicle-based competitive mode and a series of cooperative-tailored missions called “Legends of the Wasteland” round out the online multiplayer options.

Have questions about our experiences with Rage? Drop them in the comments and we’ll do our best to answer them!

When id Software releases a new IP, it’s more than a big deal — it’s an event. The veteran development studio behind classics such as Doom and Quake is preparing to unleash its next big shooter, Rage, this October. And at E3 2011, the storied studio presented a wildly diverse group of missions from the post-apocalyptic adventure to try out on the PS3 version of the game.

First things first: Rage looks fantastic. As id Software’s graphics guru John Carmack recently stated on Twitter, Rage may very well surprise gamers who expect the PS3 version to play second-fiddle to the PC version. Rage is one of the sharpest-looking games I’ve seen in a long time, with the developer’s new id Tech 5 engine really stealing the show. Walking around Rage’s post-apocalyptic wasteland should seem like a gloomy experience, but the game’s slick visuals and smooth-as-butter animations and framerate incite awe more than anything else.

Throughout Rage’s expansive single-player environments, players can talk to many characters in order to take on new missions. The first mission I checked out was called “The Missing Parts,” and it begins with the player character in an outrigger settlement (one of many disparate groups in the wasteland) searching for buggy parts that were stolen by bandits. This eventually leads to the bandit hideout, where Rage’s gunplay takes the spotlight. Players can equip a number of weapons and augment these weapons with special ammo types found throughout the game. The bandits stood no chance against my pistol’s “fat boy” slugs, but equipping a modified shotgun for close-range combat proved equally effective.

Played on the DualShock 3, Rage ‘s control setup will be intuitive to anyone who’s played a PS3 shooter. Zoom and Fire buttons are naturally mapped to the L2 and R2 buttons, respectively, and players can quickly scroll through their weapons cache with a click of the square button (UPDATE: You can also re-map these to L1 and R1). Navigating the in-game inventory is a breeze, making ammo modification and inventory management practically painless. Sub-weapons like grenades and a deadly throwing knife (the “Wingstick”) are easy to handle, and the equipping the grenade even adds a visual arc (a la UNCHARTED 2) so players can accurately aim their deadly explosives.

Rage also sports some rowdy vehicular gameplay where players can hop into a dune buggy to traverse the wasteland or take part in combat races. The E3 demo race featured a fairly straightforward track design littered with booster packs and weapon pickups. Buggy races look to be a fun diversion from the more shooter-centric gameplay that forms Rage’s core experience.

There was a ton of Rage to see at E3, including a sadistic fun-house meets Running Man-esque TV show called “Mutant Bash TV,” as well as an encounter with a Cloverfield-sized monster in the sprawling Dead City section district, but to give too much away would spoil the surprises awaiting gamers when the game hits the PS3 this October.