Project Gotham Racing 4 Interview

Kikizo talks exclusively to Bizarre Creations & Microsoft about what's new - and what's next - in this brand new, in-depth look at the next big racing game for Xbox 360.

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Naturally, Bizarre and Microsoft have pulled out all the stops when it comes to vehicles this time. As well as including the much-publicised option to race with bikes as well as cars, there's some pretty cool new additions, in general. "We have over 120 vehicles," says Kovach. "We took a different approach this time. We really focused on delivering iconic vehicles, or vehicles that have made an impact in the automotive industry. So we have some of the classic cars like the Austin Mini Cooper, we've got the De Lorean in there which is not a great racing car because it's so heavy, but it's so iconic; people love it and they can recognise it." Not good for racing? Come on, we thought the De Lorean flies like in Back to the Future - any chance we can fly it in PGR? "No," is the stern answer. But he does say what else they have: "We've got the supercars in there, the Spyke, the Enzo Ferrari, Lamborghinis and so on, we've got some muscle cars in there. And PGR's going green - we've got the Tesla all-electric sports car in there. Plus some concept cars, and some other really exciting stuff."

So what do bikes really add to the formula? "When we thought about the motorcycles we wanted to make sure from a design philosophy that just like PGR's heritage, it's easy to pick up and easy to play, but hard to master - the same thing happens here in PGR4; you don't need to be a motorcycle expert to pick it up, but it's very easy to play. To the stunts and tricks take a little bit of skill; you can't just pull back on the stick and expect to do stuff, but the interaction and attitude is all in there - you can do a series of taunts, get the crowd going, start 'dissing' other players online, and really have a fun experience."

And the coexistence of cars and bikes in the same race has changed the design of the game as well. "Notice the track design," Kovach points out, "it's intentional to have these really narrow sections of the street and these wide long sections, because we thought about how the cars and the bikes work: cars have a more powerful top speed, but where motorcycles have the advantage is that they are quicker off the line, and they're more agile. So as we get to a tight corner, there's going to be a lot of back and forth racing action."

Next, we wanted to talk more about graphics - a major part of the series. "If you remember in PGR3, we really were one of the first titles that brought high-definition gaming into the marketplace, but we cheated a little bit with PGR3," admits Kovach, referring to the not-actually-HD resolution that PGR3 ran at. "This time we are full 720p, but what is more important is that the Xbox 360 can upscale to 1080p; the upscaler chip will work in there and get you that extra resolution."

In a stormy Shanghai race, the visual flare of the game with its neon light against the dramatic lightning backdrop, is impressive to look at. "But we've put more detail into the game itself; you can see all these gages and grid stuff," he explains, going into an in-car view - something PGR3 did remarkably well. We look out of the window to the left of the driver as we're driving at high speed and it's pouring with rain - the rain droplets are streaking across the window, and it looks great. "This is what happens when we have time to work on the hardware; we're not fighting it now, we're optimising for it so we can get all of this technology built into the game."

Unfortunately, the efforts of this optimisation won't mean we get a 60 frames per second Gotham experience - at least not until PGR5. We asked Bizarre whether it was still of the view that 60fps doesn't 'matter' - after all, Forza pulled it off. "Yeah, 60 frames per second looked great in Forza," says Kovach. "But if you look at the visual fidelity of PGR4 - the motion blur and all the particle effects, everything that we've put on the screen to make sure it looks visually stunning, and that it's really a rich experience - not just a simulation experience - there's a capacity for 30fps right now. We looked for a long time between 30 and 60, and we decided we don't want to lose the detail and the motion blur, the texturing, the particle and smoke effects. So we made a decision that having all that at 30fps was more important."

But we've heard all these excuses before, and we don't like hearing them. We pointed out that Forza 2 actually kind of offered the gamer a choice - not an explicit one, because in-game it was 60, but in replays, you actually had additional effects not present in-game, like motion blur, at 30 - it showed potential for graphics flexibility in a Microsoft racing game, we thought. Why wouldn't Bizarre now consider making it an option of some kind? Kovach focussed on the point that Forza only offered this trade-off in replays. "We want to give them the real experience right away, we don't want to do it in a replay. I always hear this debate, people saying 60fps is far better, and we hear you, but from an artistic standpoint, we'd rather put more stuff on the screen and give you that really rich fidelity, than going in at 60fps."

But he went on, and told us: "One of these days we'll figure out how to get both, - sixty frames per second, and all the effects," he said, enticingly. "This is a second generation game for us, when we look at a third generation game as we get more familiar with the hardware, I think you will definitely see more.

Mealor added: "A lot of time has been spent optimising the cities - doing work under the hood - so they run at a solid frame rate with our new lighting and weather effects."

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