Driver Chicago cancelled? | Forums

[PeaceMaker_101]

Speaking of driving games, I wonder what Forza Horizon will be like, with its mix of realistic/sim car handling and an open world. That hasn't been done before, with only more arcade racers having a whole city for you to explore. If it works out better than expected, then will more driving simulators (i.e. Gran Turismo, rFactor, etc.) also go open world? Will this incredibly boost its sales and possibly attract more arcade and more casual racing fans?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKAR8WCwf7A

Perhaps another question to ask is, will it make future games set in an open world more adaptable to offering more realistic driving gameplay, especially if the right people, who previously worked on sim racers, come into the picture? Like it or not, this may have a big impact on the future of open world games. Well, as long as not every driving game feels exactly the same, there should be enough variety for people to enjoy gravitating from one title to another, and not see it as just a cloned experience.

[J_Frumpleberg]

Well I don't play sim racers, but it doesn't sound like anything those guys would be clamoring for. Sim drivers don't want an open world, they want to race around closed circuits. Will there be traffic?

I wonder now if the next Driver would still be set in Chicago? Too many Chicago games? Set it in Rio, a nice tropical setting. Take the best features from past Drivers:
From DSF: Car Roster, handling, shift, traffic, police chases, multiplayer
DPL: two time periods, 70's and now, cheat codes
D3: On foot with guns, car crashes, secret cars and game modes, cheat codes, tight roads in some areas, controllable draw bridges (make them work better)
Stuntman: Car crashes (best of any Reflections game), park editor, stunt sequences
D2: Draw Bridges, secret car locations, Rio, Havana, Chicago
D1: Survival, cheat codes, occasionally wacky physics, turbo cops

While we're on the subject of developers being forced to work on other peoples projects, EA has done it again. The final nail in the coffin for Burnout, they're forcing Criterion games to work on, yet another Need for Speed. ****it children, stop buying that crap, you're ruining gaming!!! Burnout IS the best racing game ever concieved, and of course EA has locked Criterion up in their dungeons, forced to churn out recycled NFS games for eternity. **** YOU EA

[brok2]

That's both good and bad- bad if they're not making it, and good that they picked Chicago- I would always pick Chicago as the US' second best car chase city, second only to San Francisco.

It looks to me like Need for Speed: Most Wanted will probably be Driver's closest rival in the next few years. Did I hear somewhere that the TDU developer went out of business or have I got my wires crossed?

[J_Frumpleberg]

I hadn't heard anything about Test Drive. That would suck, even if I didn't like #2 all that much, it was a good concept. Never played the first TDU.

Yea I watched the trailer for NFSMW and it looks like an action version of DSF. It'll be as good as the last Criterion NFS, for those who like racing games

[tope1983]

I asked Reflections on their facebook profile directly
"Is it true, that watch_dogs was initially thought to be a new driver game? Shane Satterfield (EIC of GameTrailers.com) was informed about this. Any comment on that?"
and got the answer:
"Sorry Thomas, no comment on that one."

So I can just make a guess but I think the answer means "yes".
Otherwise they would have simply denied it.

[J_Frumpleberg]

I personally don't think so. Look at the character animations, definately not Reflections. Sure, they're all helping eachother out at Ubisoft, and the guys at Assassins Creed may have done those, but I don't think so. This looks way too in depth to be a Driver game, especially if you consider they were working on two games at the same time. Plus the whole electronics hacking angle is not like Driver at all.

I do hope though that future games in the Driver series let us control drawbridges, either via shift or by driving through a highlighted zone a block before the bridge to open/close it, whether that be free roam only or during missions too, I don't care

[PeaceMaker_101]

Well I don't play sim racers, but it doesn't sound like anything those guys would be clamoring for. Sim drivers don't want an open world, they want to race around closed circuits. Will there be traffic?

I wonder now if the next Driver would still be set in Chicago? Too many Chicago games? Set it in Rio, a nice tropical setting. Take the best features from past Drivers:
From DSF: Car Roster, handling, shift, traffic, police chases, multiplayer
DPL: two time periods, 70's and now, cheat codes
D3: On foot with guns, car crashes, secret cars and game modes, cheat codes, tight roads in some areas, controllable draw bridges (make them work better)
Stuntman: Car crashes (best of any Reflections game), park editor, stunt sequences
D2: Draw Bridges, secret car locations, Rio, Havana, Chicago
D1: Survival, cheat codes, occasionally wacky physics, turbo cops

While we're on the subject of developers being forced to work on other peoples projects, EA has done it again. The final nail in the coffin for Burnout, they're forcing Criterion games to work on, yet another Need for Speed. ****it children, stop buying that crap, you're ruining gaming!!! Burnout IS the best racing game ever concieved, and of course EA has locked Criterion up in their dungeons, forced to churn out recycled NFS games for eternity. **** YOU EA

I think that I've found after playing Dirt 3 that I'm much more confident in playing more realistic racing simulators, so I'm more eager to try out this game. Though, seeing as it's a spinoff of the Forza series and the first attempt of an open world game from Turn 10, I won't get my hopes up too high. And who's to say that people that like racing games in general don't want more variety, especially for the most realistic racing games out there? If anything, this is a nice break away from racing tracks. And it may draw more casual racing fans (to become more interested in racing as a whole) in by its direction, which I'm sure was the intention of Turn 10.

Not to sound insulting to more arcade racers or fans of arcade racers, but I find simulators more interesting because they're more challenging, thus requiring better skills on the part of the gamer. Besides, we've had countless arcade games taken in different directions, partly because it's easier to put together a driving engine that's highly modified and greatly different from reality than trying to perfect a very life-like representation of racing. And keeping it always closed-circuit is keeping the racing genre so stagnant, so I don't think most racing fans would want that.

If all goes well, then it might provide EA more incentive to try to take more risks with the racing genre, but under a different label than NFS, which has had far too many annual releases. It's definitely time for a change. In the end, maybe those developers of arcade racing games and those of racing simulators will learn from each other more about what works and what doesn't. I certainly wish we'd have more racing games like
Blur, Split Second, and Fuel, which were pretty distinct from the rest of the genre's offerings.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxiP5...feature=relmfu

[emmetmcl]

I really doubt they would just change a game half-way through, and anyway, the game is being developed mainly by Ubisoft Montreal.
If it was the case that this was originally a Driver game, surely Ubisoft Reflections would be the lead developer?

And as for Driver having poor sales, maybe the game didn't have poor sales but it certainly wasn't as popular as other Driver games.

[aimiami]

I highly doubt this....
Watch Dogs is nothing like Driver so im sure they had this planned and didnt change their mind in just a year.... I wouldnt be surprised if watch dogs was made for the next generation of consoles because the gameplay was on PC. Same goes for the (hopefully) upcoming driver. Theirs no point in rushing to make a game on the 360 when a new generation of consoles are coming out next year

[J_Frumpleberg]

interesting... where is the Montreal logo?