Black Bean “Not Scared About Gran Turismo”

The end of 2010 is looking either amazing or agonizing for driving game fans, depending on how big your piggy bank is. Of course, the daddy (and mummy, and possibly children) of them all – Gran Turismo 5 – is out in November, so surely all over driving games should head for the hills?

It appears not if World Rally Championship 2010 developer Black Bean’s attitude is anything to go by.  Fabio Paglianti and head of physics designer Irvin Zonca had the following to say;

“We are not scared about Gran Turismo.  No because our game is completely different to Gran Turismo.

It’s another kind of game. We give the players a completely different experience. It is based on the official license, which has been missing from the market for the last five years for PlayStation users and I don’t remember if there’s been a WRC game on Xbox and never on PC I think so it’s like a new kind of market in this sense.

It’s based on a different type of driving style because with a game like [Gran Turismo 5] you drive faster but like a real car in the road. In rally it’s completely different you have to understand; what is the ground, the grip, the speed? And then you can try and do a handbrake manoeuvre, you can try and do a counter-steering manoeuvre so it’s a completely different way of driving.”

Before everyone jumps up claiming Gran Turismo has rally races, according to Black Bean it’s far from the real deal;

“In Gran Turismo you don’t have the official 2010 cars. They are not updated.  For example, Tuscany is not a real location.

If you look at the way the graphics are polished, they’re really beautiful but the fact is that it’s not real because you have this wide circuit covered with dust, it’s a circuit with one type of gravel instead of the tarmac.

If we would have done Tuscany we would have had not a circuit but a starting point and an ending point, with a lot of fans, different terrains, different objects in the circuit. With Gran Turismo there are no trees and stones and bushes in the circuit, it’s like racing on a dirty track so it’s really really different.

A fan of WRC can find, finally, a WRC game for the console and for the PC. For someone who doesn’t know anything about WRC can taste the difference, which is the difference between WRC and all the other kind of games, because it’s a rally game – completely different.”

We think it’s great to have such faith and conviction in your product, but can WRC 2010 really overcome Gran Turismo’s ‘jack of all trade’ approach?  We shall see when WRC hits the shelves in October.

Source: CVG