Burnout: The Moon

Criterion have posted a list of features that sadly never made it the already fabulous Burnout Paradise. A great shame that these never made it in the form of DLC, read ‘em and weep people..

• The Moon – ‘The actual surface of the real Moon was modelled and it was drive-able. Lunar Challenges would have been totally unexpected – as would have been zero gravity Takedowns and Challenges. The idea was that we would have built a rocket pad on Big Surf. If you reached a certain Rank, or completed a number of specific challenges, you could drive there, press a button and the rocket would launch. Destination – Moon!’
• Time Travel – ‘On a certain day, a time portal would have opened on the Island. When you jumped through, you would have found yourself on Big Surf, at another point in history. Maybe the Wild West…you could have done some Challenges and then jumped back.’
• Motorcycles Versus Cars – ‘Whilst we would love to do it (some of us are die-hard ‘Road Rash’ 3DO fans) – we thought it best to keep them separate. Mixing Burnout with Road Rash – or Burnout VERSUS Road Rash as we saw it would have led to pandemonium. A bit like dogs and cats living together.’
• Planes – ‘It was really cool to be able to see Paradise City from the air. It did not happen because of the way the game world was built. The city was never meant to be seen from such viewpoints. Think of it like a film set, a very big film set – meant to be seen from certain camera angles and not others.’
• Helicopters – ‘Completely true. We wanted to have both Aerial Challenges and allow flying and driving players to work together. Players would be able to jump into containers swinging below hovering choppers. Even better, those hoops in the Airfield would have been able to be picked up by a heli and flown. That Freeburn Challenge involving jumping through a hoop would have been much more fun if a chopper was carrying it!’
• More Islands – ‘We did have ambitious plans for a series of Islands. One was going to be purely off-road based. Hence we created the ‘Dust Storm’ dune buggy in anticipation for that. Our original dreams for Paradise were to create a series of Islands, all connected to Paradise City and each would focus on a different style of racing game. One Island was going to be completely circuit based – and be all marked up like a modern Formula One circuit!’