Live transmission: Driver San Francisco

Martin Edmondson, creative director, Driver San Francisco

360: What’s the technology behind the game?
Martin Edmondson: That’s the reason it’s taken so long, because it’s all proprietary technology and we don’t use anything from any other studio. We have internal Ubisoft studios helping us on tech, but we don’t use, for example, Havok physics or anything like that. We don’t use rendering engines from third parties… it’s all in-house at the moment.

360: Is there brand new tech for this game, or anything carried over from other Driver games?
ME: It’s all brand new for this game. And the reason why we’ve done that is because we wanted this game in 60fps, and we wanted a certain level of density of traffic. It’s no good running in 60Hz and having one or two cars driving past – that’s not the experience of cities. They’re densely populated, with lots of pedestrians jumping out of the way. If you’re going to go right to the edge of the machine’s ability, the only way to do that is with proprietary tech.

360: The story’s interesting. Tell us more about it…
ME: The idea of the story was that Driver is very much rooted in reality – as far as reality goes in Hollywood car chases – and we didn’t want anything that was too sci-fi, too surreal, too weird… so that’s where the idea of being in a coma came from. Also Driver’s always had a very strong storyline; it’s always been a driving game with a strong storyline, so we wanted something that gave Tanner a very interesting situation. A situation that was frightening to him, that the player would discover and try to get him out of and try to discover what was happening to him. Is Tanner going to pull out of this coma? How does reality affect his vision of events in his coma? How does his coma affect his attitude when he comes out of the coma, if he comes out it? There are all these interesting questions, and that’s what the coma idea allows us to do.

360: So these things have been in your head?
ME: Yeah, they have. We didn’t think of the idea because we’d watched Life On Mars – it didn’t happen that way round. The coma was a good way to make it work, but also, crucially, making the story interesting. You can imagine all sorts of things we could have done – it could have been a sci-fi helmet that he wears, or something that’s just stupid. There are stupid things you can do, and we wanted something that’s rooted in reality that people can relate to. They’d also be interested in the outcome. We now know Tanner’s in a coma, so we’re interested to know if he comes out of that coma. And what happens when he comes out, and where is he? It’s all discovered through the storytelling.

360: [Playing the demo chase sequence] Will this chase go differently every time?
ME: It depends which way you go. This particular chase, right here for demonstration, is happening pretty much the same just because we’ve scripted certain elements of it, like the guy in the street is usually there, but we’re running a real sort of traffic system here, so the positions of cars will always be different. But sometimes if we want a bit of drama at a certain moment, we’ll do something that’s scripted.

360: This is the first one with licensed vehicles in it. Did you always want those in previous titles, or is the first time you went for it?
ME: No, we wanted licensed vehicles all the way back in Driver 1, but there are certain things that were not lined up back in the day for licensed cars; manufacturers weren’t used to the concept of licensed cars in games.
It’s a hard negotiation, but they are allowing us to damage the cars, but then again we don’t do anything. We don’t kill anyone on the streets and it’s all sort of knockabout fun, but it’s also realistic as well. When we asked for the first game, it was all ‘Oh, no. What? You chase after cars? So you’d be breaking the speed limit? No, we can’t have that. You can use our cars if you’re wearing a helmet and it’s in a closed-track environment and there’s no damage’.

360: We’ve heard the space inside the car, its people and dialogue described as ‘life bubbles’ – can you elaborate?
ME: We’re not seeing that here, but what happens when you shift into the vehicle, you see the cop’s face. His deputy is there, and they’ll have the conversation they were having anyway. If Tanner wants to have a conversation, he’ll join in. It’s automated. It’s a bit of colour in the world, and it’s to hammer home that these are not just shells that you’re shifting into; there is a real person. If you shift into an ambulance, that ambulance will have a driver, and they might be off on a mission.

360: So if you jumped into a police car in the middle of his mission, do you carry it on or do your own one?
ME: You’d carry on. You must quit a mission to take his mission, unless you haven’t got one, but you can quit story missions and carry on with a new one at any time.

360: So, minute-to-minute, how will Shift be used in gameplay?
ME: It’s certainly required in certain missions. In one mission you have a fuel tanker and it’s caught on fire. So you drive past a fire engine, and this fire engine sprays water, so you Shift into the fire engine and you bring it to the burning tanker, so you’re using Shift to solve a mission. The right tool for the task.

Or, say you’re being chased by some cops, you could shift into a tow truck, slam the brakes on, the cop slams into the back of the tow truck and he’s connected to the tow truck. You can then drive that tow truck and drive the cop off. Do whatever – send him off down a different road, go into Shift, go back into your getaway car, and continue the chase that you were having before. It’s about quickly managing all these situations.

360: And you have to earn the Shift as you go? So it becomes more important?
ME: Yes. They become harder and require more use of Shift. That ability is earned by basically messing about. Fast overtaking in dense traffic areas, driving into oncoming traffic, big tailout slides, jumps, all that sort of thing. They’re all earning you the right to begin that Shift. And we’re not too precious with it – it’s not like the every last bullet scenario in some FPS where it’s really rationed, like the ammunition in the old days. But we don’t want players to be spending more time flying than driving, which I think is unlikely, because the driving is by far the most fun aspect of it. There are some missions where you’re not required to Shift at all, so you might choose not to.