Does Blur have any hidden Easter eggs, like Geometry Wars in PGR2?
BW: Unfortunately there’s no Geometry Wars.
CD: The whole game is one giant Easter egg! That’s what I’d say.
BW: Quite honestly, we were so ambitious with Blur and we were so [dedicated] as a studio to do something new and creative, something that we didn’t have as much experience with before, we really pushed the boat out. We had to pull the entire studio together to finish up on the game. I think any other Easter egg or mini-game probably would have distracted us. Having a really good core experience is the most important thing. We’re not going to rule it out in the future.
With Activision putting out Modern Warfare 2 in the same month as Blur’s original launch window, did you fear another Halo 3 affair (PGR4 was released a week after the much hyped Xbox shooter in the US)?
BW: Hmm… I’m sure the bean counters at Activision did, yes. But for us it was just that the game wasn’t ready. It wasn’t good enough to put the Bizarre logo on it at that point. I don’t think that’s because we were necessarily doing anything wrong, I think it was just so ambitious that we underestimated how much time we’d need. Lucky Activision are a hell of a good publisher and they really made the point of saying: “You take the time to finish this game off.”
CD: They certainly gave us a generous amount of time in which to finish it.
BW: And it was worth it, because the review scores are coming in now and they’re on the whole very positive. I think it was a good gamble by them.
What improvements did the delay enable you to make?
CD: Cutting back on story I think. And just adding that extra longevity and replayability to the game. It made us really focus on the multiplayer. It gave us the extra time to balance the power-ups which is the core feature of the game. [We also] added Motor Mash, team events, lots of improvements to the visuals, navigation and racification round the track. All of that was put in.
BW: If it wasn’t born in that time, it was certainly polished to the point where it is now. We completed the game in last few months, whereas before it was a lot of desperate ideas that didn’t pull together as a full package.
Recently, some people have been unofficially pitting Blur and Black Rock’s Split/Second against each other. How do you feel about that?
BW: Oh, I think that’s inevitable and I think competition is a really good thing.
CD: It’s generating publicity for them and for us, so for that reason I don’t think it’s a particularly bad thing. In terms of from within, we were so busy with Blur we’d have a chance to see anything that [Black Rock] were putting out. It’s very difficult for us to comment on the same comparisons that people were putting out there prior to the release. Now that they are both released I would say that they are two very different games.
BW: Yeah. I think for serious gamers, especially serious racing gamers, they’re going to buy both anyway. So I think a lot of the conversation is a little bit irrelevant, because if you really like that particular brand of games then you’ll probably pick up both because each has its own merits. If you’re not as into games I hope you pick up Blur. I think you have to evaluate each on its own opinion. That’s why I think competitions good, because if they beat us this time, we’ll beat them next time. And I’m sure it’s vice versa.
CD: And completion is good for everybody, because it makes the people within that competition try harder, create better games and really push that quality bar higher than they’ve ever pushed it before. That can only be good for the general public that are buying it.
What racers have the team been playing during Blur’s development?
BW: We’ve played everything. Literally everything, from Mario Kart to Rollcage to Gotham to GRID.
That was at the start of the project and since then we’ve still played every [racing] game. It’s more of a culture thing at Bizarre. It’s not like [we] sit down and say “we’re doing research for Blur right now,” it’s that people really enjoy these games.
CD: Yeah. When Forza 3 came out, pretty much everyone that was on the Blur team went out and bought a copy of it, because we’re all racing game fans and hopefully that comes across in our games. [Forza is] a very, very different game to what we were making, but still everyone wants to see it and they want to play it.
Can you share anything on Bizarre’s next projects, like the rumoured James Bond racer?
BW: Nothing at all. We have two other projects in development. One of them has just started. The other one is quite mature and we will be talking about it soon, but unfortunately not yet.
Is one of them targeting next generation consoles though?
BW: No, not yet. I think this generation has still got legs.
CD: All the developers throughout the world are still pushing the boundaries of what the current consoles can do, so there’s plenty of legs left in them yet.
Do you think you could ever see yourselves integrating PlayStation Move or Natal into the games you make?
BW: Potentially. We’re not working on that at the moment, but I don’t see any reason why we wouldn’t in the future. We don’t have anything against, but I don’t see where it would integrate at the moment. I guess you could be driving a stressing wheel or something, but that functionality hasn’t been proven, accept in PR videos. We’ll certainly be investigating and I think if it turns into a legitimate gameplay experience-changing thing then we’ll get onboard with that for sure.
Aaron Lee
Tags: ben ward, bizarre creations, blur, chris downey, interview
