14 DAY TRIAL // The development team at Codemasters believes that the most recent entries in the racing game genre are lacking soul, and is planning to remedy that situation with its upcoming GRID 2 title, to be launched later during the year.
Clove Moody, the executive producer working on GRID 2, tells VG247 that “They can be quite a dry experience, and so we’re trying to pull this together into something that’s a little bit more interesting, a little bit more compelling, and actually gets away from that grind of doing event after event or collecting cars. It gives some sense of purpose to it.”
The game will feature a central character who will act as a mentor to the player, pushing him to perform better than unite the fractious racing clubs from around the world by winning events on three continents.
Codemasters wants to make sure that all GRID 2 players understand the essence of racing and play the game in order to discover something deeper about the sport and the philosophy behind it.
In order to achieve this goal, the development team is using a blend of presentation and mechanics.
Moody adds, “It’s really important to us that we set this in a world that feels believable. We want to have the credibility of reality. As you see now, we’ve got a partnership with ESPN. We’re really happy to have those guys on board, because they’re the world leader in television sports presentation.”
GRID 2 will look better than previous installments in the series and gamers will get both a spectacle and important information from the user interface.
In the racing department, Codemasters wants to make the game appealing to newcomers to the genre but also to deliver the depth that long-term fans are expecting.
GRID 2 will be offered on the Xbox 360, the PlayStation 3 and the PC in late May.