Ready for Project Gotham Racing 5?

Sept 14, 2007

PGR 4 has gone gold and is heading to the shops - bikes, weather effects and all - next month.

But even though the latest entry has only just fallen onto the production line, lead designer Ged Talbert is already thinking about where he should take the series with the inevitable Project Gotham 5.

"Obviously Gotham 4's about to come out and we're really happy with it, but behind the scenes we've already started ripping our game to pieces," Talbert told CVG yesterday. "We know where we failed in certain areas; for instance we wanted more trackside damage, more particles and smoke effects, a bigger damage system - and all of these things are being stripped out in a post-mortem."

"Next time it's more on the detail. That's what we think; we think the devil's in the detail. Anyone can make a good looking game but the top games blow you away by being super-realistic, adding things that you didn't expect and surprising you."

We got to travel down to Bizarre Creations' sweet-smelling Liverpool offices yesterday to take the fourth instalment for a spin - and it's looking and playing brilliantly. Beyond PGR 4, Bizarre seems to be considering worlds outside of its roster of cities, and might even take the Kudos racing into the desert...

"I personally believe there's a lot we can do by taking our vehicles we've already got and putting them into different, more interesting environments," said Talbert. "It doesn't always mean outside of the city, it just means getting lets say more elevation - somewhere we can finally do big jumps."

"That's what we're looking for in the next game; going to deserts - that kind of stuff. Seeing how they affect the gameplay, see if we can get Kudos working there as well."

As for vehicles, the designer's got plenty of ideas beyond the bikes and cars of PGR 4: "We could bring cruisers in, we could bring ATV-type bikes in. None of these are definite," he said, "but there'sa whole world of things for us to do."

Look fora playable demo on Xbox Live Marketplace - shortly.