14 DAY TRIAL // The development team at Ubisoft might not be ready to offer an official launch date for the coming racing title, but the company is willing to reveal more information about some of the experiences that players will be able to enjoy when it finally arrives.
Julian Gerighty, the creative director working on The Crew, says that his studio is trying to create a very varied set of events in which players can take part and some of them will test both their driving skill and their stamina.
He is quoted by NeoGAF as saying that, “A coast to coast race in the game, in a high-speed performance car, sticking to the roads is about an hour and a half, but if you want to go off-road, it's about two hours and a half. We have one race, which is just for those maniacs, it's not on the main path or anything. It goes around the circumference of the country and it's a four hour race.”
It’s unclear whether there is any sort of option to suspend such a race after a portion of it is completed and simply pick it up at a later date.
Most modern gamers do not have the time to play such an event for four whole hours, but as long as Ubisoft positions it as something aimed at the hardcore racing crowd, it might add to the overall appeal of The Crew.
Julian Gerighty also says that his team aims to take advantage of the newly introduced social elements of the Xbox One from Microsoft and the PlayStation 4 from Sony in order to create an experience that encourages players to share their best moments.
He explains that, “I think this generation is all going to be about that shared experience, the seamless single-play and multiplayer experience, the living-world experience is what we like to call it. We're part of a handful of titles that have been announced and are doing that, but I'm sure...in a couple of years, it'll be the norm for most games.”
The Crew was initially set to be launched in late 2013, but Ubisoft announced that it was delaying it in order to make sure that the original concepts of the developers were polished enough.
At the moment, the publisher says that it plans to deliver the racing title before the end of the year on the Xbox One, the PlayStation 4 and the PC.