GRID Legends, the Codemasters game is told in our interview

GRID Legends

Not long ago on the pages of sportsgaming.win we published the review of GRID Legends, the latest addition to the well-known Codemasters arcade racing game series. Between winning choices for the future, some doubts about AI and an ambitious story mode, but perhaps a little too linear, we had the pleasure of interviewing Gero Micciché, Development Director of GRID Legends on behalf of EA and Codemasters, who gave us told in detail what was breathed in the development phase, the greatest difficulties and the greatest successes, in the face of the first post-release balance of the game.

The evolution of the series

Gero Micciché on LinkedIN GRID represents the typical arcade racing game in the videogame panorama: when you approached development, what were the main aspects that you wanted to introduce in the face of the past of the series?

The first intent was to honor what is the whole saga and it is already a difficult challenge if you think about it. It all started with Colin McRae, followed by TOCA Racing to land at Race Driver GRID in 2008 which is a milestone. In these cases, it is a question of grasping a complex history, honoring it, remaining coherent but at the same time innovating. We have kept a few cornerstones intact including the flashback system, which was GRID's great innovation, but which has been further refined in Legends from a code point of view.

While the previous GRID had artificial intelligence based on the performance of a human player, Legends for the first time uses machine learning. It is the artificial intelligence that learns and this helps to give color to the Nemesis System. Each AI has its own set of statistics, there are those who are more aggressive, those who are faster, those who react more to certain impacts. What we wanted, to give more strength to the story, especially in career mode was that the AI ​​could learn and create a sort of memory of the player over the course of the races. In career mode, this evolution is seen from race to race and is another aspect that we really like.

The third pillar is variety. In GRID Legends we wanted to bring many machines, paths, we wanted to give a lot of choice to the player so that even in the race creation phase he had infinite solutions and then we wanted to create a Social Living World; we have called it so internally, that is, a world where players can compete with each other and can do so in a flexible and dynamic way. I believe that multiplayer as it is conceived today is, along with the story which is an innovation, one of the really fresh elements of the GRID series. It features new features such as the hop in, which allows you to quickly get behind the wheel and compete with other real players. You can sign a lot of races, you can really do a lot of things in the multiplayer arena and currently it is the element that is giving us the most satisfaction. And I add, EA has helped us a lot from this point of view; it was extraordinary, also because we wanted to do it all in cross-platform, we wanted to ensure crossplay and the goal was achieved.

We tried to review the principles of the series to give a very precise form, a identity to GRID Legends. The principles on which this game is based could be summarized in the following pillars: the first is the concept of fans, conveyed through dynamism and energy. GRID Legends is an overflowing game, which is based on spectacle and on the concept of extremely dynamic fun. You can see it right from the trailers that show crashes, crazy speeds and amazing jumps. function ready (fn) {if (document.readyState! = 'loading') {fn ()} else {document.addEventListener ('DOMContentLoaded', fn)}} ready (function () {window.addEventListener ('message', function (event) {let target_origin = 'https://aff.netaddiction.it'; if (event.origin! == target_origin) return; if (typeof event.data == "object" && event.data.hasOwnProperty ( "type") && event.data.type == "embaff") {let embed_id = event.data.embed_id; if (embed_id == '616') {document.querySelector ('#_ aff_embed_616'). setAttribute ('height ', event.data.embed_size);}}}, false);}) Another was to take advantage of a narrative like never before seen in any other game in the series. We know that the McCain have a history behind them, indeed, let's say that Ryan McCain was in the past a character very close to the player. There was the desire to embark on the challenge, to even propose two McCain as villain of the plot. Also on this the basis of the story was built, a mode that should not have remained independent from the not strictly narrative ones such as the Career.

At the end of the story, the player realizes that the Career Mode is the natural sequel to the plot and it also does it in a way that is not necessarily linear, because as far as possible it creates relationships with the characters belonging to both.

Codemasters

Codemasters' studies For purely aspects racing Codemasters has an ancient history and therefore the know-how of the studio, in general, is enormous. I work with professionals next to them who are monstrous, I don't even want to put myself in this bed of people who have this encyclopedic knowledge: like the director Christopher Smith, who is the former lead designer of various Forza Motorsport, Steven Brand who is our lead designer , which has a crazy racing game culture, but also from a technical point of view.

On history we found ourselves in a double situation, because while the US and British press have appreciated on average, we Italians have not done it in the same way. I am convinced that we are differently attentive to narrative, it is something that I among other things, from my point of view, not only appreciate, but that I understand well because maybe they are in the same perspective, but I will show you that of the developer.

A sunset from Grid Legends On the one hand you had to make a story that could be told visually in the rhythm of a Netflix series, since the main reference is Formula 1: Drive to Survive. It had to have that dynamism, that rhythm. It had to be reflected in a low-frills and very tight story. It was quite a challenge.

This is the first type of story that Codemaster brings to the screen with a virtual production, like the one used for The Mandalorian and with well-known actors, such as Ncuti Gatwa of Sex Education. It was a difficult mix: a great challenge. We had to tell this story for users of the racing world and a broad audience, because our game is aimed at as many people as possible. There are other more simulation games, which are more geared towards hardcore gamers. We, on the other hand, wanted to welcome all those who can have a sense of the fan in Racing. For us GRID is an action racing: it is a game of its own that must go to set up a story that was also accessible to everyone.

One of the writers of Ghost of Tsushima worked with us, most of the dialogues they were directed by Oliver Johnson, who is a historical figure at Codemasters and is already thinking about how to do even better in the future. Always nice to collect feedback that is useful and constructive and then improve. I liked it as an experiment and I hope we can continue to do similar ones in the future, because I really believe in fiction, even in this kind of games.

The future of multiplayer

Multiplayer hop in of GRID Legends offers a new perspective to the mode Given that the multiplayer has been so successful, given the effort but above all the feedback received, it is by chance in your interest to make GRID more and more multiplayer and maybe think about a future of the series with a chapter totally devoted to this modality?

At the moment no. At the moment multiplayer is a pillar, a very strong pillar. Going vertically only in that direction, however, is not in our plans. What we want to ensure is an absolute variety, from the choice of means and settings but also of modes.We think that investing in multiplayer is fine in a setting in which the other parts of the game are not penalized. There are currently no plans for the future. In the sense, we are working on additional content for GRID Legends and for now we are focused on these. Moving on to the technical aspect, the technological evolution has always allowed the gameplay to unlock new features and realize new visions of game-design, especially in a genre like racing strongly linked to reality.

The technical improvement of GRID Legends

Much of the technical work was done on the lighting of the tracks. Is there an aspect of GRID that you would have liked to improve but failed due to current technical limitations?

If we wanted to, we could have pushed even more in the technical field, because we have the technology to do it. The point is one, this game had the need, wanting to address a wide audience, to shoot in a worthy, performing way on many platforms. And we are currently continuing to work on the optimization front. Now the latest generation consoles and the most recent PCs in general have really fast loading, but there is still room for improvement on PS4 and Xbox One.

Then there are other improvements we want to make, but the level of graphics achieved at this time were absolutely in the desired. Among the various aspects of rendering, lighting is the one that has made the biggest steps forward, but always keeping an eye on the balance with performance.

The relationship with the new publisher

A Grid Legends supercar How was the support of the EA publisher in general, in which aspects was it most useful?

What I like about working in a corporate setting, in a multinational setting, is the fact that you have a universe of other firms available outside your internal team to support you. I had already tested it in the past in Gameloft, where I worked for more than two years. You have a central team in the place where you work and you receive different supports from the other studios. With EA we have received direct help in the network and multiplayer field, but also in terms of user feedback, customer experience, compliance control, or all those procedures that allow you to have a linear and smooth submission. EA's experience in these aspects is enormous compared to what a company like Codemasters could have had from his.

When I took this job last year I was curious about the impact of EA's acquisition of Codemasters and what I was delighted with was that EA consistently recognizes a group which has acquired all the weight of the know-how and of the history it carries with it. There is total freedom from a creative point of view. The premise is: "you are the experts in the Racing field, we can support you as much as possible for what you need, but you are the games, the ones who are good at them" and that is why EA has acquired a company like Codemasters that has a very specific know-how.

The difficulties of a new production straddling a pandemic

A racing car on the finish line of Grid Legends In the story mode there was a challenge , a difficulty linked to an anecdote that you remember and that you want to share with us, or in general what were the elements of greatest difficulty during its development?

Apart from the initial question I told you, that is, how to make a fictional story in a racing game, which was a crucial, debated point, there were many other factors of difficulty. with the actors he was very articulate and this is a part that interested me a lot because I come from TV, an area in which I spent ten years working before coming to video games. Another big problem was having to manage the previous complexity coupled with virtual production during a pandemic. Sometimes there were actors who had to leave, you didn't know when to schedule the shooting and for a production of this kind these can be no small problems.

It was also the first time we approached virtual production, among other things with the techniques used by The Mandalorian that have allowed to expand the visual universe even more. The shots were in the studio, but a depth of field had to be developed where car garages, tracks and everything else are reproduced in a very realistic and very faithful way. Even there we gradually realized how important the individual stage props were and learning all these technical aspects was an extraordinary learning experience.

Did you notice any errors?