Aside from the sprite/texture work in
Doom and some of the monsters in
Quake, I think id has always had much better level designers than artists. Better architects than sculptors or painters, in other words.
But if you've followed the news about
Rage, you know that a big selling point of the id Tech 5 engine is the
MegaTexture technology that lets the artists layer textures
in-engine and in real time as if they were creating an image in Photoshop.
So, although I do think some of the environments are looking pretty cool already (I'm hoping for lots of unique touches like the graffiti in the fourth screenshot above), the technology makes me wonder how much more awesome this game would look if they hired the absolute best artists and let them go wild on the environments. It's promising tech, even if the game ends up mediocre.
