we spoke to Alex Ward, Creative Manager at Criterion, about how the game's development is proceeding.
GS: Who is working on it?
AW: The core development team here at Criterion Games Limited in Guildford, UK is the same core Burnout team that developed the previous two versions of the game. But this time the team is much bigger because the game this time is also much bigger.
GS: How are you approaching the third entry in the series?
AW: The bar is always getting raised, so we're always out to push ourselves harder than ever before. We were all really happy with what we did in the second game, but there are always new elements to improve on. We pushed the PS2 pretty hard last time, but after a good look inside [the hardware], we've found a whole heap of new ways to increase performance, so you'll see that all over the place. The worlds are much more detailed than ever before, the cars look way better than ever before, the environment mapping on the cars is incredible, and the crashes have gone in a new direction just like pretty much the whole experience.
The first time around was all about racing on the busy streets. The game was very tough, so it was very hardcore, very driven by all of the influences from the old Sega driving games. Tough but enjoyable.
The second game was a refinement of the first. Still very pure, but very accessible. We made sure everyone knew how to play the game from the start. It was all about being able to chain the boost all the way around the course. And just when you think you've mastered that, then there's crash mode.
Believable traffic is the key to making Burnout 3's gameplay work.
For the third game, well, we decided from day one that network play was very important. We wanted to deliver a solid Burnout experience online. And the key here was traffic. No other online racing game was featuring traffic because it's tough to do online--there can be all sorts of problems. So we spent a lot of time at the start working out how to handle this because Burnout has always been about racing in traffic. And looking closely at online play helped give us a new direction. We all know that people like to misbehave online and we didn't want the offline and online play experiences to be different. I could be chaining a burnout around the track, and then see three guys blocking the road ahead just trying to mess it up for me. So we began thinking about making the game much more aggressive.
So in Burnout 3 it's not about racing through traffic anymore, it's about fighting through the traffic. It's a lowdown dirty race to the finish line, and you'll be rewarded in both boost and points for ramming your opponents off the road. So the race is not so much about a taking a beautiful racing line, but more like a bareknuckle fist fight. We knew this is what people would be doing all the time online, so we thought we may as well get everyone ready for that in the offline game. You have to take first place and win by any means necessary. Pushing, shoving, ramming, shunting--in most other games that would be bad. In Burnout 3, we want you to do that. You'll have to just to survive.
GS: What do you feel needs to be added?
AW: We always get letters asking us to show the driver going through the windscreen, but somehow I don't think we'll be doing that.
GS: What graphics engine will it be using? An entirely new one or a tweaked version of the existing one?
AW: It's all new. I've been reading some of the early reaction to a few screens that have appeared on the internet and some people seem to think that the last game looks better. Well, I think they may well change their mind when the see the game running for themselves. Burnout 3 blows Burnout 2 clean out of the water.
That made the PS2 version a lil 'squarish-boxy' in comparison.
