Q&As// SEGA Driving Studio Director: Guy Wilday
We felt we needed to add something to the series
Guy Wilday:: One of the aspects that people remember so well about the original SEGA Rally arcade games was the closely fought races. The balancing was perfect – if you won a race you felt like you were the king, but if you lost you always felt that you had it in you to win it the next time.
That’s obviously very important to us for this version of SEGA Rally and we’re making every effort to ensure that the AI is as perfectly balanced as everyone remembers.
SPOnG: What multiplayer features can we expect in SEGA Rally? Will there be an online mode for XBOX 360 and PlayStation 3?
Guy Wilday:: There will be online for both PS3 and XB360. Can’t go into too many details now, but we’ll certainly have online races.
SPOnG: What features will be in place to increase longevity in the game? Could we see a Career Mode ala Virtua Tennis?
Guy Wilday:: Good question, but we’ll be revealing more about this at a later date I’m afraid.
SPOnG: How have you balanced SEGA Rally in terms of the series – have you attempted to make the action as close to the original game as possible, or did you feel it was appropriate to change the gameplay slightly to keep it fresh?
Guy Wilday:: We felt we needed to add something to the series, you can’t continually keep doing the same thing, but on the other hand you can’t just add something new for the sake of it, which is why the new deformation technology fits in so well – the gameplay feels the same, but has exciting new elements.
SPOnG: How difficult has it been to try and combine arcade-style action with gameplay mechanics that are more like a driving simulation?
We found it easy to come up with environments that looked brilliant, but just weren’t ‘SEGA’ enough and that’s one area that we had to work really hard at. However, we’re confident we’ve got it now – it was all about making the skies bluer [smiles].
SPOnG: What has been most rewarding about working on SEGA Rally so far?
Guy Wilday:: Showing it to the press for the very first time and seeing their very positive reaction towards it.
SPOnG: And impressed we really were. Thanks for your time, Guy. SEGA Rally is being released on XBOX 360, PlayStation 3 and PC later this year.
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Comments
RiseFromYourGrave 26 Apr 2007 21:38
1/4
the track deformation, complete with water placement is sweet. they may overdo it, but done properly, it should become standard!
ive been beaten by primary school kids on art of fighting in jilly's in manchester. i was on some s**t
ive been beaten by primary school kids on art of fighting in jilly's in manchester. i was on some s**t
Absinthe-Review.net 29 Apr 2007 13:03
2/4
Ah, when I heard the first details of this new Sega Rally it made me so nostalgic that I busted out the ol Saturn and ran a couple races of Daytona USA, complete with official Sega racing wheel.:) By that time I couldn't help myself and ended-up playing Darius Gaiden and Virtua Fighter Remix...couldn't find my copy of Sega Rally, though!
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Roareye Black 12 May 2007 11:08
3/4
I've downloaded the demo of Forza 2, but was left feeling it lacked. It had a similar graphical ability to PGR3, except it had better vehicle damage, and played much the same. Add to this the lack of frentic action throughout and I found the game a little tedius.
I love PGR3, but I only really play it in the summer cos it's a great chill-out title. Stick some urban music, or techno or rock on your hard drive (Cos the in-game music is s**t) and play away. Unfortunately that left me gagging during winter.
I got Need for Speed Carbon: Collectors Edition and had the most tremendous time a few months back. Seat-of-your-pants action, some nice features and a cool customisation mode.
However SEGA Rally is something else. It's not just got tiny little feature, it's not just PGR plus damage. Hell I wonder if PGR4 will be much improved over PGR3, I'm hoping it is (2D illusionist trees have been around since Ganbare Goeman on the N64, give it a rest already -__-) but SEGA Rally looks the real nuts. Sure it doesn't look 200% better graphically than PGR3 (That'd be hard enough to do anyway), and yes the track deformation may or may not be a huge improvement, and I can get my thrill ride from NFS:C. But it's the fact that it appears to be a racing game that grabs the best elements from these three titles and massages it with a traditional SEGA look and feel to make what looks to be the next best Racing game.
Having SEGA Rally and an official Saturn wheel on my Saturn (Obviously), I can safely say that out of all the Saturn racers I own (Andretti Racing, Daytona USA, Daytona CCE, Sega Rally, SEGA Touring Car Championship and Virtua Racing) Sega Rally was easily the most fun. Yes it was amazingly short, and the fourth secret level (Lakeside) was nails, but you could just hit "Retry" over and over and over and not get bored. I hope this game has the same element of "just one more" the original had. It sounds like they have the right idea anyway, tense bumper-to-bumper action over hyper-realism. PGR and Forza are already doing the realism thing, it's good to see SEGA sticking to it's roots to make a game that's easily more accessible.
Only one small concern is the online mode. If the game is interacting with polygons 17 times more than any other racer, will this not most likely cause a huge amount of slowdown or lag during online play as everyone's tracks will have to deform accordingly? I hope SEGA have thought of that too and are actively making a solution to what could be a huge unfortunate problem.
Roareye Black.
I love PGR3, but I only really play it in the summer cos it's a great chill-out title. Stick some urban music, or techno or rock on your hard drive (Cos the in-game music is s**t) and play away. Unfortunately that left me gagging during winter.
I got Need for Speed Carbon: Collectors Edition and had the most tremendous time a few months back. Seat-of-your-pants action, some nice features and a cool customisation mode.
However SEGA Rally is something else. It's not just got tiny little feature, it's not just PGR plus damage. Hell I wonder if PGR4 will be much improved over PGR3, I'm hoping it is (2D illusionist trees have been around since Ganbare Goeman on the N64, give it a rest already -__-) but SEGA Rally looks the real nuts. Sure it doesn't look 200% better graphically than PGR3 (That'd be hard enough to do anyway), and yes the track deformation may or may not be a huge improvement, and I can get my thrill ride from NFS:C. But it's the fact that it appears to be a racing game that grabs the best elements from these three titles and massages it with a traditional SEGA look and feel to make what looks to be the next best Racing game.
Having SEGA Rally and an official Saturn wheel on my Saturn (Obviously), I can safely say that out of all the Saturn racers I own (Andretti Racing, Daytona USA, Daytona CCE, Sega Rally, SEGA Touring Car Championship and Virtua Racing) Sega Rally was easily the most fun. Yes it was amazingly short, and the fourth secret level (Lakeside) was nails, but you could just hit "Retry" over and over and over and not get bored. I hope this game has the same element of "just one more" the original had. It sounds like they have the right idea anyway, tense bumper-to-bumper action over hyper-realism. PGR and Forza are already doing the realism thing, it's good to see SEGA sticking to it's roots to make a game that's easily more accessible.
Only one small concern is the online mode. If the game is interacting with polygons 17 times more than any other racer, will this not most likely cause a huge amount of slowdown or lag during online play as everyone's tracks will have to deform accordingly? I hope SEGA have thought of that too and are actively making a solution to what could be a huge unfortunate problem.
Roareye Black.
rgdfhgd 25 May 2007 12:47
4/4
[25 May 2007, 14:07: Message edited by 'TimSpong']A large slab of Spam related.