Is it just me or has the story always been boring in driver? undercover cop again YAWN. Even parallel lines had flaws in that the second half has only about killing.
So what I supose instead is a game with two main characters figthing against one another.
What I'd have is one undercover cop trying to bring down a gang and one undercover criminal who gets into the police force. The second of which being the playable character, the first being Tanner.
I think the hollywood movie look driver has should be kept and emphasised even more. I'd also bring old characters back, I earlier mentioned Tanner but why not bring back Jerrico or Solomon Caine as the gangs leaders. It doesn't matter if it conflicted with previous stories, Driver needs to re invent itself. I'd also bring back Slink, Ray and Jones.

This way you can create sides, the good and the bad.
Bad:
Solomon Caine (gang leader)
Jerrico (right hand man, could maybe be future partner for playable character)
Slink and Ray (small time crooks)
Good:
The crooked cop from parallel lines, can't remember his name.(he would appear to be on the good list but is actual on the bad
Tanner
Jones
and maybe some new characters

with this set up, more interesting missions could be set up. Being a crooked cop you could take bribes but then maybe change ur mind and rat them out. You could even do some extortion or illegal jobs. You could be like the head of a criminal crew, send them to do jobs but you still have to protect them from the law and of course u still need to be seen to be doing ur police duties. All of these things could give you BIG choices to make in the game which can later effect you. This way, the game could become more strategy.

You could even have a parallel lines style twist and get caught and sent to jail. You could then brake out and have to emigrate to survive, taking ur crew with you. What would this do with Caine? and Tanner would be chasing you? Maybe you don't have to brake out right away. You could control ur crime ring from the jail until its at its strongest point for u to escape. The story should feel almost neverending. This is just a rough idea but if it were to be scripted then it could become very gripping I think. The only issue is that, reflections would need to make sure that not to much of the gameplay is lost in all the strategy but i do think it would take the boring missions away such as, get to location X and pick up the package before the clock runs out. Thats just boring and unimmaginative.

Also customization should be a big thing. You should beable to customize your character to level the sims allows you to. You should beable to fix up cars to level need for speed allows you too. You should even beable to do up your safehouse as far as I'm concerned. Customization=replay value.

Also when it comes to the cities. They appear dead, this is not a hard thing to fix but reflections always fail on it. Having bright colours during day time and extrememly contrasting colours during the night keeps the game looking fresh and more interesting. Also, size is not everything I'd rather have a small city with cool little perks like buskers on the street than a big empty one with nothing to do. Even adding people walking their dog is immediately more interesting. More traffic to, it would also be good if the traffic wasn't so PAINFULLY slow. Why not have other criminals too. Why don't we see the police chasing somebody down the street who has stole a woman's handbag. Why can't WE do that. Why don't we see people holding up a shop keeper etc. There should be more advertising too, doesn't need to be real just mockups would probably be better as you could make them funny. Have these everywhere and why not a radio, or even just more sounds of the city. There should never be no noise. If there is a crowd of people, you hear them talking. Why is there not huge crowds of people, all on their mobiles, walking there dogs,carrying their shopping, even just talking to someone else! This is not hard but I believe is crucial in making a game feel worthwhile. Enviroment is EVERYTHING. Why is there not people with different accents, does everyone in a city even speak the same language nevermind use the same accent. Just the small touches, I think help.

I agree on the smaller cities with more to do. But don't make it too small either. DPL's New York was too big and boring, with few interesting places to drive, and nothing really going on around you.

It is a problem that has plagued all the Driver games, especially as they give you more freedom each game. But the answer is not to take away those freedoms, but make the game better.

Other drivers don't even react to you, they'll stop when you're in their way, but if you try to chase them and "bully" them, you get nothing.

But from experience people get all up in arms when you ask to incorporate fun ideas into Driver, saying its too much like GTA.

I think that the first two Driver games actually appealed to a lot more people than Driv3r and DPL did. That is the problem. In order to solve it, Ubisoft Reflections would need to rethink the direction of the Driver franchise, which I doubt that it has considered doing. If anything, the state of the Driver franchise pretty much the same as the Sonic franchise, which has been really torn apart since Sonic Adventure 2. I really don't see how it was smart at all for Ubisoft to purchase Reflections in the first place. Ubisoft probably did it because Driver has sold millions of copies and would like nothing better to do than just make itself lots of money. Greed is what determines how the world will run, especially in the media.

Hollywood, or rather cinema, has been dead for many decades. Its been nothing more but a way of manipulating the masses and getting them to watch the louziest, dumbest films one could ever see. That is also the case for the music industry and even the video games industry, even though there is still a little bit of creativity left within these industries. Instead, when looking at most of the things out there, we can certainly say "ignorance is bliss." People just love to be careless beings and that is very sad. This is precisely why more than 90% of every medium's (i.e. video games, music, film, literature, etc.) works does not amuse me at all.

I dunno, I always liked the cities, they left me wanting to explore in search mainly of glitches, but also for dynamic scenery to benifit little replays i was messing on with. With regard to the civilians acting more naturally to you, well, I just can't see that benefiting fun as surely it must feel scripted and repetitive. One thing I would hate to see would be civilians reacting to guns, violence and aggresion in a similar way to GTA or Saint's Row, ie the fear, panic and hysteric screams for pity that adds little bar a sick sadistic sadness , surely that can give no enjoyment !

Instead, I would welcome a return of the old style funk brought about via crazy cops, mad cheat codes and catastrophic crashes paired with some damned funny fails, you know the type, the little bugs that somehow make you smile like when your mate conjures a funny in an otherwise serious event! That and the film director is what kept me playing.

As far as i am concerned, in general games need to be a lot more terrestrial; less smooth, confident protagonist, more deep, weak individual struggling with the mad series of events that now constitute his life. I would like to see a young apprentice joining the ranks of a tough gang and soon getting in over his head, not feeling safe, not feeling part of it, not feeling anything he wants to feel. Then again, I say that because that is who I could relate to!

@ FutureVenturer2 surely that 90% exists so we can be smug about making intelligent decisions, supporting new and small artists and titles, safe in the knowledge we are going to get a lot out of them!

I can see why many people enjoy being sadistic in games. However, if I want to see a more realistic perspective of how choices are handled in reality, I can just go ahead and play a good-evil path game like Fable, or better yet, something more realistic like The Witcher. In The Witcher, every decision is not an easy one to make and it makes you really think, "which one of the choices that I've made was the best one, from an ethical perspective?" Games can make up for being sadistic by allowing greater amounts of consequences to be lifted upon players for committing acts of evil, and even sometimes, for doing good things.

Of course, making a game this non-linear, with all kinds of paths, is not cheap at all, so it is likely that most of the titles will remain pretty linear in their scopes, offering mostly sadistic actions for their players and nothing more.

Another way to make a game more interesting would be to not make the player feel powerful at all. Make them powerless. This was a very interesting topic of discussion that I've heard from another forums and from someone who criticizes certain aspects of games. He mentioned how games like Bioshock and many others make you feel so powerful that, by the end of the game, you really don't feel challenged or impressed at all by the game's presentation. It would be far more interesting to see games strip away many of your abilities or weapons and have you try to survive under the most dangerous conditions possible. Some games, like the Metal Gear Solid franchise, and Call of Cthulu: Dark Corners of the Earth actually manage to make you feel powerless sometimes.

At this point, games are a lot like comics, in that they cannot evoke many emotions, nor can they seek to explore really intelligent topics enough, like powerlessness or morality. I would really encourage you to watch the video about disempowerment in games because it is pretty interesting. You can find the link to it below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoK29EL2SU0

I'd have to agree with rmd8 on this whole artistic binge. If there wasn't crappy stuff, you'd have nothing to complain about, and if everything was the same, how would you tell what was better?

If there wasn't anything bad, you wouldn't be able to appreciate the good parts of life. So thank you Micheal Bay, for your horrible Transformers movies, thank you.

BACK TO DRIVER!!!!!!!

I too liked the glitches, like the first game getting smashed 50 feet into the air, or ramping off a flipped car for a quarter mile! Those were the good days. Not that there haven't been any good developments in the later games:

D2:
* curved road system for much more interesting looking city
* Ability to change cars, somewhat limited
* Film Director
* I think this one on let you replay missions? I always did free ride so no clue here

D3:
* Guns
* Physics allowed your car to flip and spin so much, it was really cool
* Best damage I think out of the entire series
* Timmy cheat codes were pretty cool, more would be nice though
* Film Director
* Semi trucks

DPL:
* High traffic
* High Speeds, unmodified most cars were kinda slow still
* Customization, somewhat limited and useless with damage rates

just a few off the top of my head

Yes, it definitely is true to say that life would be boring without any moral conflicts of any sort. However, even with that said, we should strive to make our lives as worthwhile as possible.

I actually have begun to consider opening my mind even more by studying ethics, which is all about teaching one to make the best decisions possible in life, while keeping in mind good and evil and right and wrong. Evil is a force which is full of nothing but lies and mistakes; without evil, how could we learn from our own mistakes? Life must be made as meaningful as possible, and that goes for every decision that we make in our lives.

Now, while I find it fine to realize that many things in the media are evil, that is not to say that we should just conform and live our lives entirely based upon what is considered normal. We should look beyond it and find out which norms are immoral and not worthy of being pursued. And there are many sadistic kinds of games out there that can be avoided for one's own good. Of course, not all people will agree and go ahead and avoid them. If one feels the need to be ignorant and forget about reality, whenever looking at the media, then do it. No one is forcing you how you should live your life.

DRIVER THE WHEELMAN, NOT THE GUNMAN WAS IT FIRST NAME


Hey. I have played Driver since the first one came out AND You guys are looking at the wrong way of Driver today, Driver is Not about hiting people whit the Car, it´s Not about shooting guns, it´s Not a violence game, and it´s not Lamboogins and 2-pac. That´s allso nice, but This is not the Chase, want That go and buy GTA.

THE GAME was And Should be Contined as
BLUES and Muscle cars that you are Drifting away from the cops in a bankrobbery in a nice bright town like Miami, or in a ruff Detroit Motor City.

Whises: I Wish, Driver Should Go back to what it use to be CARS. And you should be able to Buy/steale and Custominize your car in detalj. Not only in styling, in performence tunning even like Gran Turismo. You should think of every aspekt of the car when you modifie it, and you will se change when you do it. You should even have to think of passagers sit, how many can you get in (most of missions on person). And you should be able to take your car to any city that´s in the game.
Directors cut, you should be able to make your own mocies like use to.



My Carlist

1970 Cheavrolet malibu
1931 A-Ford 3w (hot rod)
1970 Plymouth Cuda Hemi
1969 Chevrolet Stingray
1959 Caddilac Deville
1963 Chevrolet Stingray
1971 Dodge Charger
1968 Dodge Charger
1955 Cheavrolet Bel Air.
1970 Plymouth Superbird

New Cars are nice to, but I think this isent the case, buy GTA. And It´s not a spellingcontest. Cheears mate, peace and love

I guess if your so commited, you should send that to the development team at ubisoft.