Continuing our discussion with Paul Hollywood, Evolution Studios’ Creative Director, we were treated to a few great details on what gamers can expect to see in MotorStorm Pacific Rift as well as how the PlayStation 3 will bring about more than just mere graphical advances.
"One of the beauties of the PS3 is that you can do so much processing in parallel," remarked Hollywood. "Setting it up to do that requires careful planning of course, but it means you can really make it do some special things. What gamers will tend to notice most will be the graphical advances, but the power of the console goes deeper than that. The audio, the AI, the effects, all these things, and many more, have really come on for this game."
We then continued on to discuss Pacific Rift’s key improvements over the first MotorStorm. While the original was a brilliant game, a sequel is expected to be, well, bigger and better. Here’s what Hollywood had to say on the topic.
"The Island is obviously a big new aspect; it means we can have races in much more varied types of environments than before," explained Hollywood. "We’ve also added the monster truck as a new vehicle class, which presents the player with an entirely new aspect to the racing. If you’re driving one, you can have as much fun just driving over your competitors as you can using its immense power. If you’re racing against one instead, well you’d better have a good exit strategy."
"We’ve spent a lot of time on our multiplayer features too," he continued. "We got countless requests for splitscreen last time, so that’s been in since day one and is great. And we’ve also made our online play more robust and with more features to make it an easier, more friendly experience. But they’re just the tip of the iceberg really; you’ll have to play it to really understand that it’s all new, but with the same MotorStorm attitude."
MotorStorm Pacific Rift is set to release sometime this October, but stay tuned to PSU.com as we’ll have more coverage of Evolution Studios’ newest addition to the MotorStorm franchise soon.