http://forum.turboduck.net/threads/31620-turboduck-Plays-The-Crew-aka-Climate-Change-of-Fish-Report?p=539699#post539699turboduck Plays 'The Crew'
On the 30th March, 2014 I was lucky enough to go on a trip to Ivory Tower Games Studio in Lyon, France, as a representative of turboduck (Thanks Diablo!). There I visited the studio where I along with a select group of other community muppets played their first and upcoming release 'The Crew'. In this report you will read about my experiences of the trip and I will tell you more about the game that has been dubbed the "second-coming of open-world driving Christ"... ok nobody has said that but it has been graced with "spiritual successor to Test Drive Unlimited" which is some mighty big words to live up to. Does it do it? Well sit back, relax, and now sit forward and don't slouch as I tell you.
Get ready because this is going to be a long read!
Day 1:
After an hour of flying in the sky from Amsterdam I arrived at Lyon airport in the afternoon, where after 20 minutes of waiting in the Arrivals terminal I found Soufyane (Community Developer at Ivory Tower and our guide to help us survive Lyon ). In a highly- professional standard he waited in the wrong terminal, but only because the info screen in the terminals were not showing the right flight information. When I met him, he told me that he was also waiting for the representative of the Reddit community who was coming in from Chicago. Wait what? How long is he going to be?! Well not long at all actually as thankfully he showed up only 10 minutes later and so we left the airport via a taxi and headed to the hotel. Arriving at the hotel, Soufyane said that he we would pick us up later that evening for dinner in a restaurant in the old part of Lyon and then sorted the keys for our hotel rooms. After spending 3 hours in the hotel I went to dinner with Soufyane, the guy from Reddit and also two others who were from the TDU-France community who had just arrived. At the restaurant I had a lovely dinner that was my first introduction to French food and after this we headed back to the hotel for the night because Soufyane had to pick up MadManCK of 'TDU Drive Time' and a representative of a VK.com community from the Airport.
Day 2:
The second day started with breakfast in the hotel, there we met a representative from TeamVVV who added to the ranks of our ever-growing group. After breakfast it was time to make our way to Ivory Tower. Soufyane was already there to greet us and paid for the taxi and we were then taken inside. We started off with a quick studio tour, first off meeting the person who played the game on stage at E3 2013 (that narrows it down Dan). We then continued with a short guide around the different departments of the studio and meeting those that are working on the game. Next we met Julian Gerighty (Creative Director) and Stephane Beley (Game Director) who gave us a short presentation about The Crew. After the presentation we went back to the work floor for a more detailed tour of the studio such as; Map Development, Car Modelling and Game Testing. Two of these departments gave us short presentations on what they are working on. After all this we left the studio for a lunch with Julian and Stephane at a nearby restaurant, where we were treated to some damn fine and delicious hamburgers. After munching these beef delights down it was then back to the studio for the playtest. After a thoroughly enjoyable four hours of play-testing we went back to the hotel. Later that evening a taxi picked us up for dinner, this time at a lovely steak restaurant with Soufyane and Stephane. Julian wasn't there because he had actually just come back that very day from a presentation in San Francisco and had understandably, immense jetlag. After dinner we returned back to the hotel for the night where we went night-nights.
Day 3:
On the last day, a taxi picked us up in the morning at the hotel and brought us again to the studio and in the studio breakfast was waiting for us. After a tasty breakfast it was time for more playing! A couple of hours had flown by playing and now it was lunch time, we went out this time for lunch at a Chinese restaurant nearby with Julian, Stephane and Soufyane. About an hour later we were able enough to sit up and so went back to the studio for yet more playing. When another number of hours had come and gone we all did an interview with the filming crew, who had been following us around during the whole trip as they were making a community video (hope you said nice things about us!). After the interview ended it was time for goodies! We took some pictures of the studio and we then left. Again it was back to the hotel for a couple of hours before we got picked up by yet another taxi for dinner. Instead of sitting in the hotel though, we decided to look around the city and take some pictures. A short while later we started making our way back to the hotel where our taxi was already there waiting to pick us up for dinner, which was this time taking place in an Italian restaurant. After another fantastic dinner, we went back to the hotel for the night because some of us were leaving early the next day.
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Alright folks, that was the report about the trip itself. Now it's time to talk more about The Crew: [finally!]
Main Presentation:
Julian and Stephane started the presentation by telling us more about the history of Ivory Tower and that The Crew has been in development for more than 6 years!! Along with info regarding the features of the game. The presentation was a bit like the one they did on the Ubisoft Press Event at E3 last year (2013). They told us that the games old name was "Route 66" before it was renamed to The Crew. They renamed it because in their opinion the name will fit better with the online gameplay with other players and the storyline of the game. We were then showed how big the map really is, and damn it's huge! We saw maps of Forza Horizon, GTA5, NFS Rivals and Skyrim as a comparison for scale, and believe it or not, those maps will fit in the The Crew's USA together multiple times. Yes it really is that huge! Julian said that tt takes more than four hours to drive around the map in an average car. It was then time for details about the storyline, it's made by the same person that wrote the stories for Grand Theft Auto 3, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (yay!) and Red Dead Redemption so there is certainly a lot of pedigree behind what it could well turn out to be. The storyline is bit like 'Fast and the Furious', but don't expect too much of it as the 'car is the character' after all they said. This presentation ended with a little Q&A. (Anything we should know from it?)
Developer Presentation (Map development):
The presentation started with showing us how they are creating the world. They complete one section at the time before they move to the next one. The devs of the map development went to 'Murica for site seeing and for taking pictures of the landmarks and infrastructure of the USA, they are also using things like Google Maps to help them creating a realistic world to play in. The dev that gave us the presentation told us that they can't use any real names on buildings due to licensing, they are creating everything their own like Rockstar does with GTA.
Developer Presentation (Car Development):
Every car in the game takes 6 months to complete, that's because the cars are being made completely with all working components such as; working engines, driveshafts, gearboxes etc. The developer that gave us the presentation showed us the Bentley Continental GT SS with its moving pistons, spinning gears in the gearbox and spinning driveshaft. It's all made for the tuning aspects of the car, for example; if you tune the gearbox, you will see the new part working in the gearbox. Other reasons for the long development are the car companies, they want to check the models for licensing, the dev also said that most car companies can be a pain in the ass to work with, so to get all the cars finished in time they are working together with other Ubisoft studios. The engine sounds for example are being made by Ubisoft Reflections (who are also doing the PS4 version too) and are recorded from real cars. The car physics are made by the same guy who did them for the original Test Drive Unlimited. The team have played many racing games to come up with a handling model that will work for anyone, they also have many different gaming wheels and pedals from Fanatec, Logitech, Thrustmaster and more for testing, because as you would expect from this bunch, wheel support is very important to them.
Playtest:
(I played the game for the most part on the PC with the 360 gamepad. I've only played with a wheel for 20 minutes because there was only one wheel in the room and it was always wanting used)
I started my playtest by playing from the beginning following the main storyline, the game opened with a Ford F-150 Raptor being chased by the Police, it was a cool way to start the game. After completing the opening, I went to pick up another car for the story, it was a modified Chevrolet Camaro. I needed this car to do the first real race in the streets which happens in Detroit. After this race there was some story driven items that I won't spoil for you guys. Now finally I had the option of buying my own car. There was a choice of; 2011 Ford Mustang, 2011 Dodge Challenger, 2010 Chevrolet Camaro or a Nissan 370Z. I went for the Nissan after test driving all of the cars, I drove it stock for around 15 minutes before I went to the tuning shop in Detroit as I needed to tune the car in order to continue the story. For an hour I played some missions before I went cruising. MadManCk was sitting next to me in the test room and was already cruising. We created a crew and started playing together. We first did some story missions to see how it all works when you play in a crew, and then after a while we just went driving and took a trip from Detroit to Chicago, it was a long drive but it was damn fun because the world feels so alive. We arrived in Chicago and discussed what our next destination should be. We decided to take the in-game plane to Las Vegas and then we drove back from there to Chicago, it was really an amazing trip driving through the cities and the multiple environments. After again arriving back in Chicago, it was time to stop playing and that was the end of Day 1.
On the second day Stephane asked us if we wanted to play the game with a more completed save game, We all said "yes" to this and started playing in our own way. I did not do any missions, I only went cruising with different cars. I drove through cities like New York, Los Angeles, Dallas, San Francisco and Miami. I also tested some of the race tracks that are in the game like: Sebring, Pikes Peak, and a couple of NASCAR tracks. (wait what...?)
Even after all this time of just driving around and doing essentially nothing I wanted to test more, but alas it was time for the interview.
Car Handling:
In the 10 hours of my playing I tried all the different types of handling with the gamepad; Arcade, Sport, Hardcore. I started off with 'Arcade' but I quickly found out that it just isn't for me, mainly because I couldn't do any good power-slides or drifts. So I switched to 'Hardcore' with all the assists turned off, and damn this is really something you have to learn because you will spin out easily if you take the corner too fast, or if you accelerate too fast out of a corner. Next up was 'Sport' and this really was the type of handling that I prefer, it's a bit in-between 'Arcade' and 'Hardcore' and you can still spin out if you accelerate too quickly, I just preferred it with the pad but that's not to say that 'Hardcore' can't be used with a pad, it can it will just take more from the player to do so (sounds good to me!). I played with the wheel for 20 minutes on 'Hardcore' and in my opinion it's the best way to play the game. I was REALLY loving the Force-feedback and taking corners with the wheel is just great! All the cars feel so good, you can really feel the difference between a big pick-up and a normal sportscar.
Gameplay:
There is really a lot to do in The Crew like races, sprints, drag-racing, time attacks and much more. They are fun to do but I didn't try all of them because I enjoyed cruising around too much. There are also random challenges (Skills?) a bit like the ones in Forza Horizon. I personally found them a bit annoying because I already did them a couple of times, but you can turn them off if you want to, in fact, you can turn everything off and just cruise around if you want to. Police chases are fun too and they are hard to get rid of. The only thing I didn't like much was the traffic, it had a fair amount of bugs, but that's something they're still working on so I can't gripe too much about it.
Presentation:
The world really feels alive with pedestrians walking around in the cities and animals crossing on the country roads. The environments in the different States are realistically made and I didn't see any real copy- pasting to be honest. Unfortunately there's no rain in the game, but there is snow in the snowy mountains and there are different skyboxes to give the impression of playing in a realistic world. To be honest I found the graphics not very next-gen, don't get me wrong for an open-world racer they are good but perhaps I was just expecting more. It also probably has to do with the power on the new consoles. I played the game with a locked 30fps on the dev kit PC, and 50fps (50 really?) on the PC with the wheel setup, both ran good. However as many a gamer will tell you great looking visuals doesn't automatically mean a stellar playing game, and so it's important to state that Ivory Tower is focusing more on the driving and creating a great world than just making shiny graphics. The car models look good and they all have dynamic damage like Forza, unfortunately they can't go all the way with extreme damage like "Next Car Game" due to licensing but for what they have it will make you cringe if you crash or hit things too often. There are also different types of dirt that will get thrown up on your cars depending on which environment you are in.
The Wrap-up:
It really was an amazing trip and I enjoyed every bit of it! I really like the people working at Ivory Tower, they are passionate people and I can't thank them enough for showing how the development of a game like The Crew actually takes shape and becomes.
Naturally the game still needs a bit of work with the modelling and licensing of cars. The map feels quite finished to me, it only needs some polishing. And the only bugs I found were the animals crossing the road and traffic that slipped away in the corners. The build I played was also missing anti-aliasing, but they are still working on that and still have months till they release in Autumn/Fall 2014.
Overall the game feels close to completion and I think that it will be ripe for picking!
A MASSIVE THANKS to Ubisoft and Ivory Tower for giving us this opportunity, our man thoroughly enjoyed himself and was like a kid at Christmas the day before he was due to fly out and on his return.
Note: You are completely free to copy, distribute and quote all or parts of this report providing you link back to this thread as the Source. Thanks!
