Rallisport Challenge Preview

Microsoft and Digital Illusions have gathered their strength to put forth a new Xbox rally game, titled Rallisport Challenge. But, then you all probably already know that. As you'll find out bellow, this particular game was made to appeal to both hardcore rally fans, and people who simply enjoy all kinds of racing games. There's even a multiplayer mode included, that gives you a chance to try the game out against three "live" opponents.

The game offers four different types of races, which are as follows: World Rally Championship, RallyCross, hill climb, and, the most challenging, ice race. Opponents were revealed as ruthless and tough competitors, so you better be careful out there on those hazardous roads. Each completed race awards the players with special points, thanks to which they may upgrade their vehicles, thus enhancing their performance.

Tracks and environments are taken from the real world, there will be an impressive particle effect system, enriched with some cool weather effects, and many more juicy features.

As it happens, the crew at Digital Illusions have been extremely busy in the past few months - however, we did manage to sneak a few questions through to the Digital Illusions' RalliSport Challenge producer Tobias Andersson.

Action Trip: What can you stress as being the main challenge in creating a racing game?

Tobias Andersson: It's an area where the competition is hard, but at the same time nothing really new happens, gameplay wise. The challenge is to create a rally game that everyone enjoys; casual gamer, rally fanatics, all ages of players etc.

AT: Is there anything you plan to include in the game to make the driving seem even more authentic (things like adjusting car parts, fixing engines, applying different types of tires etc. etc.)?

TA: The cars of course behave differently depending on the kind of ground or material you happen to be driving on, this makes it necessary to have different wheel types for example. As players usually have a bit different, feelings about how the cars should behave there are ways to tweak them.

AT: Next to a commendable variety of vehicles (25 licensed cars from Audi, Citroen, Lancia, Ford, Subaru, and Mitsubishi), RSC has a neat set of exciting features that await the players. What was most impressive to us was the progressive damage (plus, visible mud and dust on the car's chassis). Explain more about these features.

TA: The main focus we had when creating this game was that the driving experience should be the best ever! It's a lot about the physics of the car and the control of it, but not only! As you can both see and hear a car, we need to appeal to these senses as well. The sound is very important but not many people think about it. Thanks to the great sound support on the Xbox, you will really hear how your car gets in worse condition when you crash it a lot. If you only hear it, though, it would be weird so lights and windows breaks and the car body get its buckles.

AT: And as you can drive on everything from dusty desert roads to mud, ice, deep snow the car get different kinds of dirt. The more you drive, the dirtier it gets.

TA: Actually, it's with games as with movies - you'll never notice the best special effects as they are looking so good and natural.

AT: From what we've seen thus far, everything looks great; environmental details, track variety, fabulous looking car models, and so on. Specify more of these graphic "delicacies" we'll get to see, when the game arrives.

TA: If you think the screenshots look good you will go crazy when you see the swaying grass and trees. It's like watching a still screen from a movie; you just want it to roll again to see the action. I think there is a lot of things players will not notice the first time, like for example all the animals we have on the tracks. We wanted them and the spectators to look as natural as possible so we did them as 3D objects and not just flat textures. Since we have very experienced artists that were previously involved in a lot of different games, we got a very good base for doing various interesting effects in the environment, such as animated animals, houses, very nice trees, highly-detailed track textures etc. Same thing here as with special effects, I'm not sure how many people will actually notice that the cows move their heads and look at the cars passing by.

AT: In the past few months, a lot racing titles were unveiled. However, they all seem to force the atmosphere of intense and intricate city racing (Project Gotham, Wreckless, Test Drive, and so on). I'm glad to see your team chose to develop an off-road racing game. Tell us more about the diversity of tracks in RSC.

TA: We have a lot of different environments; Mediterranean, African style and more classic rally stretches where you drive one car against the clock. We wanted to offer more fun driving and added rally-cross and ice racing which is two kinds of circuit tracks where you race against other cars for several laps. Rally-cross has two different surfaces, whereas ice racing is driven mostly on frozen lake beads with a mixture of packed snow and ice. We didn't stop there. One of the most exciting kinds of road racing is hill climb and we really wanted to include that as well. It's extremely challenging to race up a mountain road, where the slightest mistake can make your car go over a cliff. We think the hill climb tracks are awesome to race and it feels great to add some new elements to the racing genre.

AT: As we've learned, Rallisport Challenge is on its way to hit the market during the Xbox European launch in March. Can you give us an exact date perhaps?

TA: It will be released in conjunction with the European launch of the Xbox. You can pick it from the shelves March 14. Be sure to reserve your copy today! :-)

AT: Now a slight detour if you will. It's been a while since our readers learned how the development of your WWII-inspired game Battlefield 1942 is coming along. When can we expect it? It's been a busy year for you guys. Do you have any other game-projects in mind?

TA: Battlefield is coming along nicely without going into details. You can expect it later this spring. We're working on many other projects, but they're all top secret and we can't tell you! Watch this space.