Can you describe the new island setting in MotorStorm Pacific Rift?

The new setting is pretty much the pinnacle of what we want to achieve in MotorStorm Pacific Rift. The desert was brilliant for MotorStorm, it’s beautiful, it’s iconic, but it only did one thing: it was dry… with the odd bit of mud. What we really wanted to do with MotorStorm Pacific Rift was find a location that had all the elements to give us a much wider diversity of racing tracks but still feel plausible. Coming from our rally heritage, we’re not in the game of making racing titles with big Aztec heads that spit fire and things like that - we really wanted to have a lot of racing diversity in there, but make it in a plausible location.

Also, we tried looking up what we could do with the location. We’re really keen on ensuring that everything we put into the world has some kind of interactive element to it. Painting a beautiful picture is all well and good, but making it interactive is the really hard bit - so it’s not just a beautiful, diverse place but you also look at things like the vegetation, the water, the lava, all those kind of things and give feedback to the players in different ways and they get a real visceral, entertaining in-your-face experience.

How destructible is the environment?

As destructible as we can stretch it. You can’t destroy everything, but as much as we can let you destroy, you can.

Can you go into more detail about the new vehicles?

The monster truck is one of those things we were quite precious about in terms of the whole balance we had with MotorStorm, so there was a lot of science involved to make sure we had that fine balance. But we always wanted to have a monster truck in there, it was a natural thing to stick in because it’s big and fast and you can do stupid things. So we spent a long time prototyping the monster truck, where it would sit [in the game] and what it would do. And what we realised was what we didn’t have in MotorStorm was something that sat at the top of the food chain.

The monster truck isn’t about driving really fast or being really manoeuvrable or outperforming anyone - it’s basically about kicking the tar out of anything else on the track. The way we’ve developed it and the way they drive is that you can go very easily over other vehicles, or crush them or push them out of the way. And when you’re playing with the monster truck it’s quite a different experience because it’s all about hunting down those little weedy guys in the fast things and making sure they’re out of the competition.

What were the things you wanted to change from the original MotorStorm?

With the time that we got to develop the first game we did everything we could. But we want to refine it in every single area, and also move the whole thing on. It’s almost a new way of [approaching] racing games, in terms of multivehicle balance and stuff like that but we really want to take it to new places and do something different with it. Split screen is obviously the big one. That was one of the things we just physically couldn’t do with the technology at the time, so we went back to the drawing board with all our rendering techniques and really went to town on making sure that split screen forms an essential part of what this is all about. Online is still there for hardcore and for those who want to be the best, but when you just want to have a play around with a few buddies there’s nothing better [than playing split screen].

The online experience is also easy and accessible, we’ve got matchmaking, people can jump straight into a race with no waiting around, we’ve got a Time Attack from the start, completely re-written a lot of the low level stuff to make it run faster, more vehicles online, more vehicles on the track… all around [it’s] a much more refined and playable experience.

There’s much more to come on MotorStorm Pacific Rift, so keep checking this site as the game races towards its launch.

“We’ve started from scratch with a lot of this game. We learned a lot about the PS3 while making the first game… This time we can use that knowledge to get more out of the hardware, and work more efficiently. So that allows us to produce the more intensive environments that you’ll see on the Island. It really is a whole world away from Monument Valley, where MotorStorm was set.”

“But obviously we don’t want to just have the same game in a new place; that would be unfair to people who buy the new game,” Hollywood continued. “So we’ve gone back over pretty much all of the systems and cranked them up a notch or two. So we have a greater variety of vehicles, more tracks, better AI systems, a new game structure, better online capabilities – the works really.”

Q: What’s new in MotorStorm: Pacific Rift?

PH: Well, we’ve kept all the fun bits, and added to it. We didn’t want to break the core and, obviously, with MotorStorm, we were working for the PlayStation 3 launch, so there were going to be a few things we didn’t manage to get into the game. Like split-screen racing.

Q: Which I can see you have, with two players on the left and right of the screen?

PH: And we’ve got four-player split-screen, although we’re not showing it today. Split-screen racing is great, and I’ve got aspirations to make it a really good party mode.

Q: Another new feature which stood out was the influence of the vegetation and the environment. As you’ve made a virtual island, rather than recreated Monument Valley this time, did you find that liberating?

PH: It was a bit but, to be honest, we didn’t really create Monument Valley – it was still a MotorStorm track with a beautiful, iconic background. Pacific Rift is quintessentially Hawaii, but we’ve taken all the best bits and shoved away the things that we didn’t want like hula and Elvis. In any MotorStorm environment, we have a large amount of creative freedom to do what we want to do – to create the unique multi-route tracks that define the game.

Q: What’s the starting-point when you design a new track? Obviously, MotorStorm’s trademark is having tracks with very different characteristics.

PH: That’s right: we’ve elaborated on that even further. The first thing we wanted to do was put in a new location – Monument Valley was a bit of a passive location; it was just red rock. Which was good for us on a launch title, but now we think we can do so much more. So, in Pacific Rift, we’ve got 16 tracks, and those tracks have got loads of tension between them. You’ve got water tracks, vegetation tracks, high-altitude tracks and you’ve got volcanic ones. They’re not mutually exclusive – there are elements that are in all the tracks. As a starting-point, we picked an area when we went on the reference trip to Hawaii that we earmarked as ideal. We use that as our backdrop, then we start generating the different mechanics that the track is going to throw back at us, like the vegetation or the water. Then we start crafting our multi-route gameplay. That process takes months to get the balance right. A MotorStorm track is not just one track – it’s eight tracks in one.

Q: And, of course, it’s about the vehicle classes, with the bikes up top and the trucks down below. But now you’ve got monster trucks: what do they bring to the game?

PH: Monster trucks are cool, because you can completely destroy other vehicles by driving over them and crushing them.

Q: Can you drive over trucks in them?

PH: No, you can’t – the unstoppable big rig is still unstoppable. Each vehicle class has positive and negative characteristics – for example, the bike is fast but vulnerable. The monster truck is good in a straight line, not so good at taking the corners, but it’s really good at taking out other vehicles.

Q: And there are twice as many tracks in Pacific Rift?

PH: Yeah. We listened to the community and people said that there weren’t enough tracks in the first MotorStorm. Through downloadable content, we created 12 tracks for MotorStorm but, still, it was a console launch title, and we would have liked to have made more tracks. Starting on Pacific Rift we said: “Right, let’s have twice as many.” There are black volcanic tracks, deep jungle tracks and even a track set in an old abandoned sugar refinery – it’s like a first-person shooter.

Q: And presumably the physics engine will be in even fuller effect this time around?

PH: Oh yes – we give Havok a run for its money. We’ve improved every aspect: there are brand-new rag-dolls, brand-new physics collision stuff, improved driving models and a lot more destructible objects on the trucks. Those destructible objects help create danger and unpredictability.

Q: We saw in the demo a tower falling down on drivers.

PH: As you’re driving, we’ll fire a vehicle into the tower’s support, and it will come down across the track, so you’ll have to negotiate the debris. I don’t want to give too much away, but we also have an unexploded sea-mine on the beach, and as you drive past, we’ll fire one of the vehicles into it, so it explodes. If you’re driving past too close, you’ll get taken out.

Q: What’s the best aspect of making the second version of the game, given that you’ve got to grips with the technology and aren’t struggling to finish it in time for the PS3’s launch?

PH: It helps building on something that you already have. But I’ll tell you, when we started building MotorStorm: Pacific Rift, the first thing we wanted was split-screen racing. But our technology was all based on single-viewport, so we had to break everything to get the split-screen working. We learned our craft with MotorStorm, and now we’re perfecting it with MotorStorm: Pacific Rift.

Q: Will we see any new online modes?

PH: Yes.

Q: Any hints as to what they will be?

PH: Not yet – we’re keeping our powder dry at the moment.

Q: But Pacific Rift will be ready for Christmas?

PH: Yes. We are launching in Autumn 2008

16 new multi-route tracks
16 players can race head-to-head online
4-player split-screen mode