| The Leon |
PlayStation.com headed to the home of one of rallying's greatest car manufacturers to witness the unveiling of Evolution Studios' sequel to the mighty WRC. Fancy coming along for the ride?
Deep in the lush, forest-laden environs of the northern English county of Cumbria lies Dovenby Hall Estate, a grand manor with a long and colourful history stretching all the way back to the 12th century, which includes being apparently haunted by deceased mental asylum inmates. However, behind these tranquil surroundings and charming rural constructs beats the roaring mechanical heart of Ford M-Sport, the high-tech birthplace of one of the WRC's newest and most successful car models, the Ford Focus RS. That's all well and good, but it's not the real reason that PlayStation.com has made this lengthy journey. It takes more than the promise of a trip to an ultra-high tech motor manufacturing plant to persuade us to get off our lazy behinds and leave the cosy confines of our south-easterly home. Not much more, granted, but when we were informed that the visit to Ford M-Sport would serve as a mere apéritif to the main event - the official unveiling of the sequel to WRC - we were Cumbria-bound before the train driver could even finish asking why we were in his cabin brandishing a roll of duct tape.
Once we'd narrowly avoided the grasp of the Cumbrian police force and ventured into our pleasant, Ford-owned safehouse, we found ourselves in the company of Martin Kenwright, CEO of Evolution Studios and extremely nervous man. Not that he's the usually the anxious type or anything, but when you're about to present an 8 hour-old build of a game you've spent a year's worth of blood, sweat and motor oil on creating to the bloodthirsty members of the European gaming press, you're bound to have at least a few dozen butterflies flapping around in your stomach. There really is a lot to play for here; the original WRC has now gone Platinum after enjoying European sales of over 750,000. More recently, it's received rave reviews from the US press and won a slot in the Japanese gaming top 10, so the pressure on the sequel to perform just as well if not better is pretty hefty to say the least.
We've only just got down to business when the first of Martin's presentation slides unceremoniously reveals the final title for the hotly anticipated sequel. From now on, the game will be known as WRC II Extreme. Smashing. "WRC was a shakedown", he announces proudly, referring to the rallying term for the test runs drivers make before they tackle a stage for real. WRC II Extreme, then, sees Evolution Studios finely tuned, fully warmed-up and ready to blow its competitors' times out of the mud. "We've rewritten the game completely; it's new technology, new experience, new game - it's all different. To underpin all of our vision, we had to have some of the best technology around and so we created a renderer which we call Shiny Shovel." We dare not repeat the full English expression that this name is partly paraphrased from, but let's just say that it refers to extreme slickness and speed. Indeed, it's claimed that the core rendering technology has been optimised by 900%, which equates to a staggering 150,000 polygons per frame running at a silky smooth 60 frames per second.
The sequel also addresses some of the game balance issues raised by fans of the original: "If we had one key criticism for WRC1, it was that the game was too easy. Unbeknownst to the public, we'd already been developing real physics systems with Prodrive (famed developers of technology-based solutions for the motorsport industry) that they were using to test real rally cars. It was so advanced and realistic, however, that it was too hard to use, so there was the irony; we had a physics system that the World Rally teams used that we couldn't use because it didn't feel like a game.
"So there's a funny little twist there in that we've now gone back to that to create new, advanced Professional and Expert modes which encompass all the things we worked closely with Prodrive on at the time. Now we can do a lot of things that we hinted at with the first WRC, like flicks, powerslides and handbrake moves." Impressive stuff, certainly, but what of the vehicles necessary to perform these dramatic manoeuvres on the track?
As expected, all seven teams are present and correct in hugely improved form and the real-time images on show serve as the first indication that the impressive stats that Martin is throwing about are far more than idle boasts. "Each car has 20,000 polygons; again this is way above anything that's on or coming to the market. We have very complex modelling with hundreds of different animations, different wheels, body parts and panels. There's also some dramatic environment mapping on all the cars, so the cars now look more like something from Gran Turismo than the original WRC, which is something we're very pleased with." The really big surprise, however, is that the game will also feature seven "very, very special" concept cars that have been created as a result of a unique collaboration with the lead designers from each WRC team. As if teasing us with this information wasn't cruel enough, Martin then proceeded to send our salivary glands into overdrive with an agonising shot of the entire septet of cars concealed under brightly-coloured sheets.
Perhaps sensing that we were about to leap at the screen and futilely attempt to tear the gaudy covers off the wall they were being projected onto, Martin swiftly moved on to another vital aspect of the rallying experience: smashing up your car. Fortunately, it doesn't look like we're going to be in the slightest bit disappointed in the destruction department. "The new damage system allows you to deform and destroy every part of the car. Panels don't just receive damage, they bend, rattle and receive minor dents and indentations depending on the severity of the impact. We can totally destroy cars. We have some great body physics, with cars barrel-rolling down mountainsides and bits exploding off. We're having to be careful, though, because we don't want to create something where all you'll want to do is crash off cliffs!"
One way he plans to ensure this is by making the pilot and co-driver under your control so scarily realistic that you'd feel an overwhelming sense of guilt for flinging them off the nearest precipice. Or at least that's what we reckon. Through a combination of inverse kinematics animation and Digimask facial technology, the drivers will not only pull a variety of facial expressions such as happiness, sadness and anger ("Three more than your average real WRC driver can muster", Martin dryly informs us), but their entire bodies will react to the action of the car. "Inverse kinematics means that we're going to get some frighteningly realistic animation for steering and braking; their whole bodies will move as they brace themselves for crashes and impacts."
So we have unbelievably detailed car models and disturbingly life-like drivers; now all we need is a tasty-looking track or two for them to tear around. True to current form, Martin doesn't disappoint: "We have over 800km of track spread across 115 stages, all built with high-res, photo-realistic textures and double the number of moving animated objects. There's four times the density of objects in the world and twice the draw distance - forests are now real forests and you can see for five or six kilometres without any fogging. All the tracks are built using satellite technology - you can see that we're not creating a claustrophobic 'glass corridor' effect - we're really going for it. Rallying is about the locations - why go all around the world if you're not going to interact with all the different scenery? We haven't just taken one track and changed it to green for grass and brown for the desert.
"We've got track resolution down to centimetre level, which means that a track about 4 metres across has different bumps and ruts every 20-30cm. This is about 10 times more detailed than any other rally game to date. We believe that this is the first product ever to model accurate ground interaction; there are bumps and ruts every several centimetres as opposed to big, smooth pieces of road that are just coloured in to look like a bumpy surface. The effect it gives you on the handling really makes it challenging when it comes to the likes of gravel rallies in Cyprus - you'll never go back to a game that claims to have a dirt track once you've been thrown around on this."
It's with relief that we discover that all this (admittedly impressive) effort hasn't been solely focused on making the game look prettier; Evolution knows, as any game designers worth their digital salt should do, that gameplay is king. As such, WRC II Extreme features a healthy 11 game modes which take in the usual single player WRC and Time Trial modes as well as multiplayer Custom Rally and Championship modes that allow up to four players to compete alternately or two players to go head-to-head in split-screen. Can we expect any significant drops in graphical quality if the PS2 is generating these highly optimised visuals twice simultaneously? "No, that's one of the strongest features of the game thanks to the new rendering engine. The distance we can draw, the speed of the framerate and the complexity of the graphics in split-screen is something we're very pleased with."
With all bases covered, a still-nervy Martin ("I've set myself up for a big fall here" ) leads the assembled crowd into a room where a still-warm burn of WRC II Extreme Alpha code sits in the PS2 disc tray, ready for a test run. The 15 minutes we're given with it is nowhere near enough time, but, unfortunately for us, we're about to whisked away to the Ford M-Sport test track and taken on an unforgettable real-life rallying experience. Honestly, there are days when I wonder why we put up with this job. However, our brief encounter with the 60% complete code is all the time we need to confirm that Martin Kenwright is a man of his word, even if he does visibly cringe at the occasional glitch. It's obvious that this project is extremely close to his heart and that he's not entirely happy to let judgmental hacks look at his baby in this unfinished state. However, he has no reason to be embarrassed - we have every confidence that the finished product will be nothing less than immaculate.
But even at this relatively early juncture, he's still incredibly keyed up. "Ooh, look at those mountains - aren't they lovely? Oh my god, I'm going to drive through them in a minute. That's what excites me - it's not cardboard cut-outs, it's all real. It does feel very real. We really think that we're out to set a benchmark with this. This is brand new, state-of-the-art PlayStation 2 technology - it's got a level of sophistication that, without trying to sound conceited or arrogant, gives us an opportunity to create THE rally game." And judging by the level of conviction in his voice, you can't help but believe that that's exactly what Evolution is going to do. |
