People don’t tend to associate Bizarre with story and characters. How have you found the process of adding such elements to Blur?
BW: To be perfectly honest we found it very difficult and it’s been scaled back a lot from what [we’ve presented in the past]. We focus tested the game, we had lots of different people play it [from] a big cross-section of gamers, and we literally picked on things that worked and things that didn’t and tweaked the game appropriately.
CD: We scaled back the story because being so fixed on a story cut down the longevity and the replayability of the game. So we feel that we’ve really scaled back on that for a good reason, to benefit the end user. There’s a lot more depth and different paths that you can take from beginning to end. With a story everything was quite linear and it almost seemed pointless to replay the events. Whereas, now what we’ve done with it, there’s things in there that would make you want to go back and play a race again and [have] a reason to do that.
BW: We looked at why we were even having the storyline and really it was to make associations on-track between who you were racing against. So it wasn’t like red car (number one), blue car (number three). It was like “I’m going to kick that guy’s ass because he beat me in the last race.” That’s the core essence of what we wanted and we kept that. We have this idea called bosses in the game now, so you play through each tier of levels and you eventually get the right to fight the boss of the tier. That boss is in all of the previous races and they’re always winning and muscling everyone else out the way…
CD: You eventually target them and then when you succeed in those boss battles you receive their car. Each of the bosses’ cars has a special ability. That might be greater shield capacity or [taking] less damage. Once you’ve beaten them you can then go back and use that car and use that mod with it.
Chris, what has moving from the strict realism of simulation racing to the relative freedom of arcade racing meant for you as an environment artist?
CD: It’s certainly been a lot more creative. We used to copy real world locations to the letter. We couldn’t do that in this game, because there’s too much going on and the real street networks just didn’t fit with this game. Because you’re concentrating on other things, the tracks needed to be more flowing – there are technical tracks – but, generally, they needed to be easier to navigate.
It meant a lot more creativity where we’ve taken bits that are real and good bits from elsewhere and brought it all together. In terms of challenges, I would say trying to make those hybrid cities still feel real and be believable.
Hackney is like that. Barcelona [is] a real hybrid mix of all sorts of interesting stuff that’s around the area. Tokyo is the same. LA Downtown, not quite so much. The central part of it is pretty much to the letter and everything else on the outskirts of that has been made more interesting.
But in terms of challenges, making it still look convincing and be believable that it still is that place, that it’s got that look and feel, that is actually a difficult thing to do. Secondly, we’ve got non-urban environments, rural locations in there, that was something that we hadn’t really done before. That presented different artistic challenges and new technical challenges of how we could get the best out of the tech that we had as well.
There’s a lot of light and a vivid art style to the game, what informed that decision?
CD: I think, initially, it was to make all of the effects and all of the power-ups really visible on-track. We’ve got all sorts of times of day in all the different cities and [they’re all] lit differently to give it a nice colour palette throughout all the environments. We needed something that made the important things on-track stand out – so the gameplay features stand out if you like. So all the racification [Bizarre’s interval lingo for describing chevrons and other on-track guides] and all the power-ups are bright neon and then the power-up effects are like this as well. But then gets tied in through all the menus as well. The menus all have that same look and feel about it. It’s just trying to keep that consistency throughout the whole of the game.
Split-screen gaming also seems to be making a welcome return with Blur and ModNation Racers. What do think of that?
BW: It’s awesome, really awesome.
CD: Sitting down with your mates with a few beers and a few elbows in the ribs. There’s nothing better is there.
BW: I think, again, the reason [developers] don’t do it is best it’s hard. It’s really difficult to render whatever you’re rendering once four times and still keep it looking good at a decent frame rate. But our tech guys are really, really good and really passionate about split-screen as well, so they know the value of it. And I think everyone appreciates the value of it. So we’ve got a lot of plans to really expand that area in the future.
CD: Yeah, and the cities, environments and cars that you see in split-screen are the same that you get in full screen as well. They’ve not been scaled back in any way for split-screen purposes, the experience is the same as if you were [playing] online multiplayer.
Read part two of our Blur interview. See our GameCityNights report for more on the making of Blur’s tracks.
Aaron Lee
Tags: ben ward, bizarre creations, blur, chris downey, interview
