When it comes to off-road racing, nobody does it better than the MotorStorm team, Evolution Studios. eu.playstation.com stepped inside its halls to see what it’s like to live with the brainchild of brutal off-road racing.
Dirt sprays, engines roar. The race is on and it's already claimed a couple of victims in its rage as a bike is rammed into a tree, sending its driver flying, which in turn forces an ATV into a sudden veering lurch to try and avoid the sprawling ex-biker. Not to spare the poor guy - it's just far easier to swerve from the racing line and let some other vehicle suffer the melee than deal with the slowing impact of a body on the windscreen. Ladies and gentlemen - welcome to the world of MotorStorm.
And yet... you wouldn't think this all came from a demure studio set in the rather quiet industrial town of Runcorn, in the North of England. In fact, you could almost be fooled into thinking you've accidently come to the home of some unassuming puzzle title instead of the birthplace of brutal off-road racing. That is, until you step inside...
The Evolution of MotorStorm
There's an excitable atmosphere in Evolution Studios. The modest, if surprisingly spacey office space crackles with energy and enthusiasm. The team working on MotorStorm: Pacific Rift consists of around 100 people, with three quarters of them being coders and artists, joining the remaining number of designers and support staff spread across the campus. And despite having a throng of visitors all eager to take a look at the progress of the anticipated sequel, there are smiles all round to accompany the genial feel, before a swift presentation kicks the day into gear.
MotorStorm: Pacific Rift opens with a beautiful vista shot of the island it's set on, showing you a serene and tranquil side that contrasts to the bass heavy mayhem that's soon to follow. Sure, the game's extravagant setting may be based on one of the most gorgeous islands on Earth - Hawaii - but no one is here for pretty cocktails and idle sun worship.
"We've kept all the elements from the first game and made it even more brutal, more aggressive," starts Paul Hollywood, Art Director for Evolution. "But this is not just MotorStorm in the jungle. It's MotorStorm on top of the world. It's MotorStorm on the edge of a volcano. And that's the main difference between the first game and this one - the environment. The environment is there to challenge you as well as the AI. It's all part of the rich tapestry of brutal off-road racing."
Monster (truck) expectations
In a room housing a massive High Definition TV and projector, the ever energetic Hollywood lets the game do some of the talking for him as it explodes into life. Even at only 60% complete, Pacific Rift is already looking utterly stunning, as sun reflects off pools of water, multiple vehicles violently bounce and scrape off each other, grass, vines and vegetation flex, break and flap in the fracas... and it all's so smooth you'd think the final code was already done and dusted.
Nigel Kershaw, the company's Game Director, is on hand to show some of Pacific Rift's flash and flare, picking up a Wireless Controller and performing a number of fancy manoeuvres in the game: ramming other racers, bunny-hopping his ATV, ducking the driver down to avoid dangerous branches and making extravagant hand gestures to anyone he overtakes in the playground of driving and destruction. None of which helps him when he gets a little overzealous in his attacks on a biker only to find himself flattened by the game's newest addition to the vehicle roster, a giant monster truck.
Undeterred, Kershaw gets his driver back into the race, deciding to crash straight through a massive wooden tower that turns into a splinter shower. Smiling, he pauses the game and goes into Photo Mode, saving his deliberate carnage. "Any moment can be captured in this mode, recorded and saved on to the PLAYSTATION 3's home menu... and then shared with others," says Kershaw.
Burning rubber
It's already apparent from both Kershaw and Hollywood - not to mention the display of industry awards won by MotorStorm - that there's a lot of pride put into Pacific Rift, equally expressed by the various development rooms which are a hub of activity. Walls are covered with artwork of vehicles and characters created for the game, which show off the increased emphasis on them this time around with more variety, selection and personalisation for players. In fact, each part of the studio has its own feel - one room's window looked out into what could have passed as the Island's jungle area, whereas another was markedly different... which is appropriate given the wide types of environment in Pacific Rift you'll be encountering.
"We try and capture the full range of experiences on the island," says Mark Radcliff, World Lead Developer. "There are lava pools on the top areas of the track, and all the fumes and sulphur in the air kills a lot of the vegetation. So we have this blend between life and lifelessness. The lava also heats up your vehicle's boost ability. The heavier vehicles are more robust and less prone to overheating and exploding, but the lighter vehicles have to be very wary about the boosts they can take."
All of these different surfaces, dirt, lava, grass, gravel and more create different handling aspects on each vehicle, adding to the numerous unpredictable elements of the game. The team goes through the painstaking test of each object in the environment for how it interacts with the vehicles (even the grass has various reactions to your machine depending on how you hit it), the way the AI reacts to your racing and creating multiple routes for each course based how much destruction you cause on each lap - bigger vehicles can plough right through some things, opening up new parts of the track to drive into, but should lighter ones try they may find themselves a little less successful.
MotorStorm goes to Hollywood
"Teamwork makes the dream work" beams a poster stuck on one of the walls where various coders and designers map out the game's look. It's a motto that seems to be prevalent in Evolution Studios, as Hollywood is more than happy to express. "We're very, very passionate about what we do. The passion comes from an excitement of working on games, but also that desire to be the best. Not only be the best in comparison to what's out there in the market, but be the best/better than our last game.
"Of course [there are disagreements] - there are always... creative discussions..." smiles Hollywood. "Nigel [Kershaw] and I, we have what we call friendly tension where we look at things in different ways but we're after the same goal, which is a quality product. It's very difficult to please everybody all the time, and we have such a cross section of people at work here, we believe if everybody is generally happy with the product that should ripple out to the community."
Lively and talkative, Hollywood is very much the epitome of the MotorStorm and Evolution Studios ethos. He's not afraid to express his enthusiasm and love for games, something which hasn't waned over an excess of 17 years in the industry as a founding member of studio. His message to what he wants players to experience in Pacific Rift is clear. "It's about putting a smile on players' faces. We want to entertain them and challenge them, so they want to keep coming back, they want to better themselves, they want to beat the AI racers, they want to keep playing it and improving. These are the core values we want to get through to the player."
The best Gag of all
Around Evolution Studios, personality is constantly apparent. Whether it's from the bubbly sparks of Kershaw, Hollywood and the team members, or the various aspects of Pacific Rift - the game is a shining mirror of the studio's effervescent character, and the Gag system, used in the first game, returns as a welcome example of this.
The system is a way of making the AI opponents appear more human, creating a number of behaviour patterns that switch and adjust as the race goes on. For example, a blocking Gag will make a racer hell-bent on obstructing you, an aggression one makes drivers much more hostile in their driving style, and so on. The Gag system is even smart enough to decide when AI wants to interact with obstacles and objects, just to make your (and others') race harder by smashing through things and creating a mess.
One Gag the team is particularly fond of is very comedy driven. "If one of the AI vehicles is performing particularly badly and racing from the back of the pack, they'll sometimes be taken out of the race and crash somewhere," explains Mike Humphrey, Designer. "When the player drives back around they can see the crashed vehicle along with the driver stumbling around outside of it." And the team already knows what you're going to ask next - yes, even outside of their cars these poor drivers have their own collision detection. Ouch.
Driving ambition
There are tons of nice little touches in MotorStorm: Pacific Rift that will be evident when you get to play it: the use of motion control to balance certain vehicles when it's teetering on two wheels, the ability to put up to ten AI vehicles in your offline split-screen race (for up to four players), custom soundtracks and more.
However, the principle thing Evolution Studios wants is that you enjoy the game as much as they enjoy working on it. Hollywood wants that same energy that comes out when he speaks, to come through Pacific Rift. "I'm lucky to work with some of the most talented, intellectual, gifted, developers in the world. And we're quite a close knit family, and we're really enthused about what we do.
"When you play any good game, it's the input the developers put into it, the sweat the tears, the tantrums, the laughter... a good game is one that's been loved from the start and I think you can feel that with MotorStorm," says Hollywood. "And hopefully you'll see that even more with Pacific Rift because obviously we've enjoyed the success of MotorStorm, but that drove us on to be even better, and now we have competition with people who are trying to match us with what we're doing now, which pushes us on even further.
"We're not going to stop, we're not going to slow down... we're going to keep going and going."
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Twenty-nine stunning MotorStorm Pacific Rift images
