Fuel producer Phil Wright has boasted that the ambitious racer is ‘arguably’ the most open-world videogame ever conceived.
Speaking to VG247, Wright commented, “FUEL is arguably the most open-world game there is,” observing that it may take players a few hours to traverse one side of the landscape to the other.
“Apart from the artificial boundaries at the edges of the game world, the only impediments to going where you want are natural, be that water, a sheer rock-face, or using the wrong type of vehicle (for example, trying to drive a road car up a steep slope off-road).”
“It takes a few hours to drive from one edge of the landscape to another, but it can be done.”
Wright went on to detail the extensive amount of research applied by developer Asobo, which saw the team pouring over countless satellite images of various landscapes as well as embarking on a road trip through Wyoming.
“Asobo did a lot of research, using satellite image data of large areas of the more remote and wild parts of North America, including Mount Rainier, Crater Lake, Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon, to name a few,” said Wright.
“Some of the team also took a long road trip into Wyoming, travelling hundreds of miles through vast wilderness gathering video footage and photographs in an effort to capture the epic scale they wanted to put across in the game.”
“The resulting world in FUEL is a conglomeration of the more spectacular natural scenery from all of this data, a sort of ‘best of’ the North American wilderness.”
Fuel is scheduled for release on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 on May 31.