RAGE Diary: Quests Disguised as Story

I really like RAGE as a shooter but I sometimes feel that the game developers at id Software were so focused on the mechanics of the game and on creating the post apocalyptic world that they forgot to create some actual motives for the main character.

Remember Doom? There the threat and the need for action was clear, with the player required to use an arsenal of weapons and various pick-ups in order to take out a demon horde that assaulted Earth.

Things do not get more urgent than that.

Modernity would never tolerate a shooter that skimps on plot, even though generally the writing in the genre is not stellar (apart from outliers like BioShock), so id Software created this fiction of an asteroid strike coupled with mutants, a mysterious central authority and some lovable renegades living on the fringes of the new world.

Unfortunately they failed to create actual motives for the main character and forgot to create story based barriers for him.

I understand why an Ark survivor would do the first couple of quests for his rescuer, helping him against some minor threats, but it makes no sense for me to accept to do anything for anyone past the 2 hours mark of RAGE.

I have weapons, I have a ride and I can probably do better out in the Wasteland on my own, finding out about the Ark and about why I am special, rather than helping groups that have little to actually offer in terms of reward.

Further down the story line (no spoilers here) the problem becomes even more clear and the quality of the game suffers because just as the narrative drops in quality the shooting gameplay becomes a bit repetitive.

The story serves here as little more than disguise for the delivery of quests and I sometimes wish that id Software would have created something as simple as the Doom concept to drive RAGE forward.