Despite a strong start in the PS1 era, it's fair to say that later games in the Driver series faltered somewhat; first critically, and then commercially. After the departure of Reflections studio head Martin Edmondson in 2004 and the subsequent poor reception of Driver: Parallel Lines two years later, it seemed as though the series might be drawing down to a natural close. However, some five years later, following a change of publisher (from Atari to Ubisoft) and the return of Edmondson, Reflections are almost ready to release their sixth game in the Driver series. TVG spoke with Senior Designer Jean-Sebastien Decant, and Producer Marie-Jo Leroux to find out exactly why we've had to wait so long.
TVG: Why have we had to wait so long for a new Driver game?
JSD: I think Ubisoft and Martin [Edmondson] wanted to come back strong with Driver. Driver has been a milestone on the PlayStation alongside Resident Evil, Tomb Raider and stuff like that, so trying to get back now on this generation of consoles, with the first game for Reflections with this current hardware, we wanted to come back strong; and as Martin said we used proprietary tech to create that crazy dream of having this huge city, and the ability to just jump out and fly over the city and just jump in...
MJL: At 60 frames, without loading - that took a lot of tech.
JSD: Yes. And then also to merge the Shift mechanic with the driving, and to merge Shift with the cop story... So this took a lot of time.
TVG: Is it the same game that was in development back at Atari, or have things changed a lot since then?
JSD: I think, if I remember, this is a pure creation from Ubisoft and Reflections.
TVG: So you've obviously scaled back the mechanics a lot and focused on the driving in this game. Why did you decide to do that?
JSD: I think the core of Driver 1 was its unique handling, and its Hollywood chase feel, and that was the thing we want to bring back with this current generation. We wanted to get back to what made Driver work so well, but at the same time we wanted an open world, so we had to find something, and this is how we came to Shift.
MJL: Shift was initially a mechanic that would allow us to jump seamlessly from car to car to be able to focus on the driving more. But, of course, we invested a lot of time developing it and making sure that it worked really well and was very fluid, and felt good. It became an ingredient to create new types of missions - especially in multiplayer - that didn't exist before in Driver. But, the focus has always been - the vision has always been - coming back to the roots of Driver; making it the best driving experience it could be. However, of course we exploited the mechanic of Shift a lot, created a lot of different types of missions that we've never had anywhere else, especially in multiplayer.
TVG: So Shift is sort of a way of streamlining all of those other mechanics? So you don't have to get out of the car, and you don't have to use guns; you can just instantly grab another car, right?
MJL: Yes.
JSD: Yes.
TVG: So, what was the inspiration behind that? I mean, I've heard that it was Google Earth...
JSD: Yeah. Basically, yeah. Having the ability to see some kind of a Google Map interface and just being able to dive in and jump into any car, that's the point of origin I would say.
MJL: That was the dream, yeah. And after that came the way of justifying it with the coma. The reason why we went with that is that we were trying to do something as real as possible. I mean it is a kind of a fantastic ability, and we didn't want to go Sci-Fi with it and justify it in some weird paranormal way, so coma seemed the most grounded in reality that we could make it. And at the same time, we seem to have hit a current that's very strong right now, with movies like Inception, Sucker Punch and Source Code, where you have these different layers. That's another thing that took quite a while to develop, a story that takes place on several different levels - Inception style - but also an interesting police investigation, because it's almost a buddy chase movie feel to it that we're looking for.
TVG: So in terms of the Shift ability, is there something stopping you from Shifting into say, the bad guy's car and just crashing him directly?
JSD: I think the most challenging part, game design-wise with this game was to find the right balance to properly use the Shift, to make it fun and compelling, but not game-breaking. So yeah, we worked a lot, and no, you cannot get into the bad guy; you have to get them down, with any car, so you can use new tactics maybe, but not actually get into them.
TVG: So far I've had a look at some of the city missions. Is the structure of the game very much: you do a few city missions and then that unlocks the next story mission... etc.?
JSD: Yes, that's that. As Martin said we're still working on some bits of the game, so you can assume that some of the cut-scenes are not finished. The idea that we are working on right now is that in order to get back to his own body, Tanner must help around, a bit like a super-hero, help the others to help yourself, and that's what we are trying to convey; that's the structure.
MJL: As the game goes on, as you notice, you Shift into a life and you interrupt their conversation. As the game goes on more and more of that conversation is particularly concerned with what's going on with the manhunt, with Jericho. So it's more and more tied to the investigation and to Tanner's main quest. But yes, initially, he's just helping the city, he's getting his bearings, he's getting a feel for it, and that feeds him the help to get better and better and wake up eventually, which is the second big quest.
JSD: And it's a bit like, you have this main thread, which is going through the game, and you have side missions, and these side missions are like spin-offs; the hero goes on a side-quest.
TVG: There seem to be many different personalities in the cars that you possess. How many are there?
JSD: We have 30,000 lines I think, and there are more than 200 people I think, and they are spread out throughout the game, so you won't have them all at the beginning.
TVG: So is every car you go into going to have someone in it?
JSD: If there is a passenger, yes. And there is a high probability that there will be a passenger.
TVG: Okay, and how much speech did you record for each person?
MJL: It's like he said, 32,000 lines of dialogue or something like that...
JSD: that's just for lives in the level - I think there are fifty or sixty thousand in total - so totally huge.