Remember The Crew? It was one of the standout presentations at E3 last year. It was quietly delayed to take advantage of next-gen systems, then it just sort of disappeared.
Well, now we know more!
“We can confirm that performance parts can be unlocked through progression as well as microtransactions,” a Ubisoft representative told VideoGamer.com. “All content can be unlocked through progression, but for busy gamers who want to save some time, they will have the opportunity to buy some items in-game.”
“Everything in the game has got this dual currency approach,” creative director Julian Gerighty told us during a recent press tour. “We’re not going to stop you from progressing [if you don’t spend money], but it’ll be more time.”
Oh, thank goodness! Finally someone will give us the opportunity to buy our way through a game. Whew!
“I think it’s going to kick you out of the race,” Gerighty said, discussing what happens when the player’s connection drops. “It’s one of those things that the game needs to work with an internet connection so I think you’re going to lose the race you’re in.”
Asked to clarify where the player would be sent should they lose their connection, Gerighty replied: “Probably [the] title screen.”
“It’s not the most elegant of solutions,” he continued. "It’s not good news, I’m afraid, but it’s just part and parcel of… You know, you’re doing an instance on World of Warcraft, you lose your internet connection and that’s it.
The PC version won’t differ too much from the console versions, either, he says, adding that Ivory Tower is “really trying to get parity across all versions, so it’s something that’s important to us not to branch out and not do individual things for individual platforms.”
Somehow he thinks saying that is good? Because it sounds to me as “we won’t waste time in doing proper per-platform optimization and customization of the experience to each control system, extra services, etc”.
This isn’t the first game where a big publishers tries to tie in the concepts of “online game” (like BF, WoW, or DOTA) with “racing game”. But… I don’t think the genre meshes well with the idea of online game. Not because it can’t be played online, but because it’s very easy to make single player content on the same base, with time trials, AI (make it simple and rubberbanding, it’s not like everyone else doesn’t do it) and taddaa, you have easily the same experience, but without having to be a online only game.
They are just about to start an official in game stream of The Crew on Twitch. Check out the game listing, or look for the thecrewgame stream. Should be interesting to see how it plays.
The final game will run in 1080p with 30 frames per second on Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC, and will support up to 5760*1080p on PC for triple screen set-ups. Right now the team is focusing on providing an optimal experience for all players," Valentin wrote, before acknowledging the ability to up the frame-rate within the game files - but at players’ own risk.
“You can unlock it in the file you’ve found, but it may affect the game’s performances. Your call.”
On PC, you can manually modify a file to get up to 60fps. Ubi won’t support that, but it sounds like the people that did it last time didn’t have any issues.
