The Crew 'targeting 1080p/30fps on both consoles'

“We see The Crew as the Pokémon of racing games,” says creative director Julian Gerighty as we sit down to a hands-on version of The Crew near developer Ivory Tower’s HQ in Paris. “The Crew is a car game, yes, but it’s also and RPG. And an MMO. And what’s the most important thing in any MMO or RPG? It’s your character, right? And in The Crew, your character is your car.” At first we were dubious – we’re big fans of the RPG genre, along with all the intricacies in depth, the wealth of customisation and the consistent sense of progression it brings. ‘How could a car game bring those elements to life?’ we thought. ‘How can a racing game tap into what makes the RPG genre so compelling?’

At its grass roots, The Crew operates on a ‘class’ system, like all the best RPGs out there. But gone are the mainstay conventions of ‘mage’, ‘warrior’, ‘thief’ and ‘healer’ – the classes here are variation on the base car type. Each vehicle will suit different types of terrain, different missions and – ultimately – will affect the core gameplay itself. The first and most basic ‘class’ you’ll have access to is the ‘Full Stock’ car – the model you’d pick up straight from the dealer in real life. “It can be a dream car like a Lamborghini, or a little bit more like an everyday car like a Mini,” explains Gerighty. “But when it gets more interesting is when you transform that car in something else, by applying a different Spec to it. I like to think of the Specs like evolutions – like Pokemon, imagine driving your car from its level one form to its evolution; that’s the kind of progression we want in this kind of thing.”

We played a few races (against painful clichéd Ubisoft characters – all of the villains are textbook and the character designs look like something from a 90s morning cartoon) that took us through the back-end of the American wilderness – most notably, through the Bayou. While the graphics may not be the best we’ve seen running on next-gen hardware, the presentation of the various locales was incredible: the game is fully open-world, and the 20 or so ecosystems that make up Ivory Tower’s condensed America all combine to give a true sense of place as you travel around the great West. The game’s Babel engine procedurally generates the environments for the art team, allowing the designers to jump into the skeleton frameworks of each area and use their development time to apply greater detail to each specific environ. The result? A legitimate toy town reimagining of America that strips away the civilian aspect of the country and leaves you with noting but the cinematic vistas that establishing America as one of the premier road maps in the world.

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“For this game,” confirmed  Ivory Tower COO Ahmed Boukhelifa, “we are targeting 1080p and 30fps on both consoles.” No comment was made about the PC specs, but we imagine Ivory Tower will want to bump it up to 60fps for the PC release, considering the accuracy and fidelity hardcore racing gamers expect from their releases in the industry at the moment.

We were also told in our guided hands-on that The Crew is aiming for a launch during the ‘back to school’ period of 2014 – we assume this means early September.

The full preview of The Crew will be available in games™ issue 147, out 24th April.