Preview - The Crew
You have to admire The Crew for what it's trying to achieve. An online, seamless driving experience taking place across a huge open world (maybe the biggest seen in a videogame?) filled with activities to lose yourself in. As far as design briefs go, it's a pretty daunting one to meet. Can The Crew live up to the billing? From what we've seen so far it's going to have a pretty good go at it.
The Crew is all about the "shared-world experience", with other players jumping into and out of your game seamlessly while you're cruising around or even if you're attempting a mission. The entire campaign can be played cooperatively with friends, which is a nice touch, and teaming up to complete the various missions is much more enjoyable than playing solo.
It's easy to access that social side, too. With just a few clicks of the controller you can invite friends to join you, and from there you can go on road trips, races or even team up against the AI in certain missions. With such an emphasis placed on sharing your experience, is there a danger The Crew could feel a bit lonely if you're going it alone?
"Every activity can be played in solo, from missions, to skills, to exploration or even participating in the faction wars," game director Stéphane Beley told us. "And even when you're playing alone, you'll still meet other players on the road, randomly driving into them and creating your own stories whenever you feel like it.
"Playing with your friends will of course be a lot of fun but you can still find a lot to enjoy when they're not around. In fact, you'll never drive alone."
That's still to be seen, but so far we're impressed with the cooperative elements of The Crew, which is one of the features that makes it stand out against its competition. The other central selling point? The chance to drive across the entirety of the United States, from east coast to west coast. Okay, so maybe not the entirety as its a reduced scale version, but nonetheless it's a significant achievement.
It's definitely one of the biggest open worlds we've ever come across in a game, and just bringing up the map will have you going blurry-eyed as you struggle to take in the sheer size of it all. Developer Ivory Tower didn't just want to focus on getting in as many square miles as possible, it also wanted to create several diverse landscapes that actually made a difference
"The size of the map was never the main concern," Beley responded when asked about the resources needed to create the United States. "Our vision for The Crew was always to provide the most diverse and rich driving experience. In order to do so, we chose to set the game in a country that would give us that opportunity and the USA just happened to be the perfect playground. When you think of it, it's got everything, from snowy mountains to swamps, from deserts to megalopolis.
"Our second focus was on making this world alive, filling it with activities and enough life events to make everything look real and give players enough to enjoy for hundreds of hours. Once this goal was achieved we scaled the graphics to match those constraints."
Visually you can definitely see the differences between this and other racing games, such as Forza Horizon 2 and DriveClub. Car models aren't as shiny, edges are a bit more jagged and the scenery isn't quite as jaw dropping. But while it lacks the beauty, Ivory Tower is trying to make up for that with things to do. It's no coincidence this is being dubbed a 'racing MMO'.
Nearly every vehicle in the game is licensed, while every one is customisable. You can also take your car and provide it with different specifications to tailor it to certain event types. For instance there's the Street Spec, which is - surprisingly - a good choice for street racing. Or there's the Perf Spec, great for speed and long stretches of highway, or the Circuit Spec, ideal for the technical racing around the track.
As for how those cars handle, they can seem a bit lightweight when compared to other games, which could make turning those corners a bit of a nightmare for the uninitiated. But it doesn't take too much practice to get used to and before long we were able to get to grips with it all.
Guiding you on your journey will be the campaign, which is around 20 hours long and is made up of around 70 missions. As far as narrative goes, we're told not to expect anything Shakespearean but to see something that's better than most other racing games. The main point of the campaign will be to steer players in the right direction, so that they don't feel overwhelmed after being dropped into this huge map.
"The main story will drive player's progression from one region to another, introducing them to the different gameplay mechanics as well as the different specs of vehicles they'll be able to use throughout their road trip," added Beley. "Also as you already know, the game is an RPG where you can change every part of your car to upgrade it and tune it to fit your own style. Story missions will be one of your main sources for those, as you'll need to complete them to progress through the game."
There'll also be landmarks to find, collectables to pick up and skill challenges to take on if you want to take a break from the story or the online stuff. There's definitely not going to be a lack of things to do. My only worry is that the gigantic world might seem a bit empty if you're playing through solo, and the car mechanics won't be able to make up for that loss of atmosphere in single-player. But for now we'll have to wait and see, because if The Crew gets it right this could be one of the surprising hits of the year.