Star Wars: Galactic Racer, Fuse Games’ take on offroad speeder rushes in a galaxy far, far, away, sounds more and more up my alley every time I hear about it. That’s no different in a freshly published interview with Fuse founder Matt Webster and creative director Kieran Crimmins, which sees the pair chat about boost mechanics which sound a lot like the environmental temperature-sensitive system from PS3 racer Motorstorm: Pacific Rift.
The pair also made some interesting points when asked why they went for a more traditional track racer rather than an open world one with this game, and whether the latter’s reached a point where it’s a bit of a stale concept.
Speaking to IGN, Fuse creative director Kieran Crimmins argued that ascribing any nostalgic push back towards more traditional track/level-based racers players might feel can’t just be chalked up to open world racers being fairly common nowadays.
“I don’t think it’s as simple as that overall,” the developer said. “I think there’s great fun, innovation and things to do in both of those spaces…it is weird, I can’t remember who wrote it but there was an article about ‘why aren’t racing games like shooters, why is the innovation different?’ I think it’s because racers, you just need more stuff to do in the race in the second-to-second. We talked about the tactical layer of [Galactic Racer’s] ramjet system and how that works with the boost, but I think that goes across the board with the whole genre.
“It used to be a very, very innovative genre, but it’s hard to push innovation in a space where your cognitive load is fairly small because you’re in a kind of dynamic system of where you’re moving around. Getting that right is a lot harder than other games. I just like to see really, really great experiences that really tighten focus.
Crimmins went on to outline that in Galactic Racer’s case, the studio opted for a more traditional racer because they wanted “replayability” and the evolution that comes from running a track until you totally nail it to be a key factor. The pair also emphasised that the approach is a more natural one when setting up the game’s Galactic League as a sporting league with its own characters and contenders, allowing them to also tell a Star Wars story through the racing action. Open world racers, meanwhile, Crimmins argued shine in offering a sprawling “kind of ‘play with the toys’ experience”. Player freedom’s the draw, often with a characterless player facsimile behind the wheel, as you get in the likes of Forza Horizon or Burnout Paradise.
The developer’s comments about the need to nail the moment-to-moment intangibles making it tougher for racing games to focus on innovating in the macro. You could argue that current arcade behemoth flagbearer Horizon is set to innovate a bit in its immiment next instalment, Horizon 6, via the addition of more spaces in which players can customise and build. However, that’s more along the lines of pulling base and track building mechanics across from other games than it is trying something truly new.
The other side of the coin, though, is that innovation always risks disrupting the established beloved elements of a genre or series – it’s not a racing game, but Civ 7 comes to mind. Those are, of course, risks studios need to be comfortable taking in order to avoid every new game just being iterative, but the current state of the industry in terms of job security and the relentless pursuit of bigger profits is likely pushing things in the opposite direction. That’s possibly even more true in a genre like the arcade racer, which has well-established expectations and is dominated at the top end these days by massive juggernauts like Horizon and even GTA Online, with long-time frontrunners like Need For Speed, Burnout and Midnight Club having been put out to pasture or paused.
Thankfully, there are still plenty of indie racers both pushing the envelope and delivering nostalgia hits folks can’t get elsewhere. I certainly have to agree with Crimmins on at least one point though – all of the games I’d count among the best racers have their second-to-second action nailed.
