Driveclub‘s delay from November 2013 was caused by “one important feature,” according to new game director Paul Rustchynsky.
Rustchynsky replaced Col Rodgers, who left Evolution to form his own studio, in February. “Your great support deserves us to be open with you. I know we have been quiet for a while since we made the decision to delay the game, so I wanted to take this opportunity to let you know exactly why the team felt that Driveclub needed more development,” he wrote on the PlayStation Blog. “We wanted to make sure we got one important feature right.”
That feature was the dynamic menu, which is described as “key to how much fun you’re going to get out of the game.” “Whenever you fire up the game; between every race you play, and when you log in to Driveclub on your phone or tablet, the dynamic menu has to be slick to ensure your experience is seamlessly connected,” he added. “Essentially it’s where you discover what to play, and who to play with.”
“It’s also absolutely vital to our ambition of growing a vibrant network of millions of connected clubs, who all share the excitement of driving amazing cars together. Whether they play just to have fun, or to complete every challenge and beat their rivals in every race, it’s this connected community who will keep the game fresh and enjoyable well after launch, so it makes sense for the connectivity to be perfect.”
However, the delay didn’t just mean that players will get to experience a better dynamic menu. Evolution has also used the extra development time to improve several other areas of the game:
Visuals – We’re constantly improving how stunning the game looks as we continue to optimize visuals and find new ways of pushing the PS4. You can see for yourself how it looks right now in the latest video we shared yesterday because all the footage was captured on PS4 from the game. It’ll look even better in October.
Audio – It’s absolutely state of the art. We’re continuing to refine the authentic sounds that we have for each and every car in the game and we’re going to put together videos that focus on this.
Driving – It already feels great to play and we’re continuing to add further layers to the physics to make it both more accessible for everybody and more sophisticated for experienced racers.
Clubs – We’re making it easier for you to keep up to speed with what’s going on in your club as part of the rework on the dynamic menus. We’ve also tweaked clubs to support up to 6 players instead of 12 (because the game is more fun with tightly-knit clubs and it paves the way for awesome 6 on 6 club races).
Tour – The difficulty curve for the campaign mode is becoming even smoother as we continue to optimize the vehicle handling and also refine the game’s AI for non-player racers.
Cars & Tracks – More time means more staggeringly detailed cars and exciting tracks too. If you haven’t already, check out the Ferrari in the video released yesterday. There are loads more exciting cars for us to reveal in the coming months.
Driveclub is set to launch October 7 exclusively on PlayStation 4.