Geschiedenis
The Legendary Meeting
Long, long ago, before even goatee beards or faded jeans were invented, a little team at Bizarre Creations worked on a game for another console. Unfortunately, the console wasn’t doing well, and the game, although critically acclaimed, sold very few copies.
Bizarre Creations still believed in it, though. So, one day, at the end of the ECTS show in London, a group of Bizarre people met with a group of Microsoft people in an oak-panelled meeting room in London. Much complaining was done about not being able to find a decent burger in London. But eventually, the talk turned to games.
Bizarre said: “We’ve got this game, and we hear you’re doing a console.†Microsoft said: “We like it – can you do us an entire game, including a whole new city, in just 12 months on this new hardware that you haven’t even seen yet, please?†And Bizarre (strangely enough!) said yes. And that’s how it all started….
Time to Panic!
In retrospect, saying yes was the best thing that we could have done for the game and for Bizarre Creations, but not for our sanity! Even with artwork to start from, twelve months is a ridiculously small amount of time for developing a game. And that’s without the fact that we only had a small team and needed to expand to an Xbox generation team size! Quick! Get the recruitment adverts up!
Oh, and then we needed to add a whole new city. That’s fine – we chose New York because the artists wanted a shopping trip. And we needed to add some new cars, which was fine. But seeing as the console had far more power, we had to redo all the old cars. And all the old cities, because they weren’t matching the detail of New York – hang on, we’re talking a whole new set of artwork here!
And of course we wouldn’t have been happy if the game wasn’t totally revamped and expanded to give the consumer a whole new experience. Cue a complete game code rewrite. But there’s a new console in there to think about too, and the technical coders had to start from scratch. Help! It’s a whole new game!
Surely we can just port across the audio and save some stress? No way, not with our audio team! Give them a new machine with a fantastic audio system and they throw away everything from before and start again! So this meant all new car recordings, all new music, all new audio programming… What had we let ourselves in for?!
Features
Bizarre Creation’s own Nick Davies was shipped out to Japan to give the press some info on PGR3. Nick outlined some further details on Project Gotham Racing 3 at Xbox Japan Summit 2005.
Some points that were covered at the summit:
- Design your own tracks with the new Route Creator and share them online over Xbox Live.
- Drive any car, at any time. Buy your favorite super car at the beginning of your career then use it right through to the completion of the game, if you wish.
- Drive the most desirable collection of super cars ever featured in a game, such as the Ferrari 430, Lamborghini Gallardo, and the McLaren F1 LM. Pick from 80 high-powered automobiles that are featured in PGR3.
- Fully motion captured 3D crowds react to your racing. They cheer the cars that race past and move away from the barriers if you crash.
- PGR3’s new sound engine uses 30 individual samples—three times more than in PGR2.
- Each car is rendered using 80,000 polygons; approximately 40,000 for the interior and 40,000 for the exterior. PGR2 used only 10,000 polygons per car.
- The Brooklyn Bridge structure uses the same number of polygons as an entire city in PGR1.
Screenshots & Video's
Screenshots:
Bekijk PGR3 screenshots op: officiële site
Bekijk PGR3 screenshots op: IGN.com
Bekijk PGR3 screenshots op: GameSpot.com
Bekijk PGR3 screenshots op: TeamXbox
Bekijk PGR3 screenshots op: InsideGamer
Video's:
Ingame videobeelden. Absolute must-see's. Voor cockpit view ziet er geweldig uit. Het 'vieze' raam geeft zo'n realisme.
http://www.xbox360news.com/movies/pgr3-02.aspx
http://www.xbox360news.com/movies/pgr3-03.aspx
http://www.xbox360news.com/movies/pgr3-04.aspx
http://files.filefront.com/pgr3gp1wmv/;4196789;;/fileinfo.html
http://files.filefront.com/pgr3gp2wmv/;4196846;;/fileinfo.html
http://files.filefront.com/pgr3gp3wmv/;4196890;;/fileinfo.html
http://xboxworldmagazine.blogspot.com/2005/09/exclusive-pgr3-video-here-now.html
Overige informatie
Voorlopige releasedata:
USA: 22 november 2005
EUR: 2 december 2005
JAP: N.n.b.
Achter de schermen:
Meet the Team! - The Bizarre team introduces themselves and throws in some pictures too!
Being a Producer - Learn what all goes into producing a video game.
Tools - Learn what tools do and why it takes every spare PC in the company!
It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad Time!- What happens in the final stages of a project like PGR3?
Links:
Officiële website
Microsoft Xbox 360
Microsoft Game Studios