Recently, Aeropause was invited to participate in a conference session with Nick Baynes, one of the game developers for Disney Interactive Studios upcoming arcade racing title, Split Second.  Over the course of an hour, we were able to get answers to a handful of questions posed to Nick and learn a bit more about Split Second and all of its game modes.  If you want to read more about this new title, continue reading below.

Forging Ahead in a New Direction

The first thing that was asked of Nick was why head into a new IP when Black Rock Studios had a previous hit title on their hands with Pure, the off-road arcade racing title.  I mean, it seems that recent developer trends are focused on creating a new brand and then adding in new sequels, not branching off into new IPs.  Nick stated that Black Rock has always had two internal development teams, and that while Pure hit shelves first, Split Second had been in development for some time with another development team.  Also, there was a feel that while they could have just gone back to the well for another Pure, Black Rock wanted to do something new and different, and Split Second was the result of that decision.

The development of Split Second had been kicking around at Black Rock Studios for some time, but the biggest hurdle in the beginning was assessing whether the current tech would handle what the development team was planning for the title.  Once the development team got their hands around the tech with the development of Pure, they knew that Split Second could become a reality.  But the other challenge was finding a new way to look at the arcade racing genre, and the one thing that Nick and his team found was that most arcade racers looked at the cars as the main point of the game, so they decided that the tracks would be their focus.  No one had ever made the track the star of the show, and with Split Second, the idea of deforming tracks became the hook that the team needed to make the title stand out in a crowded marketplace.

What if Michael Bay Made a Racing Game?

With the track idea in place, Nick also explained why they went with the idea of setting up Split Second as a television show.    The goal was to make the show larger than life and television and movies tend to make events happen this way.  Huge explosions and car destruction just fit into something you would find in a big budget action movie or television show.  Yes, the development team fed off of action movies as an inspiration for Split Second.  The best way they could explain this was to imagine what would happen if you took a big action movie director like Michael Bay and let him direct a NASCAR race for one weekend.  They mayhem that would ensue is what Black Rock has brought to life in Split Second.

The presentation style extends beyond the race, to include next episode hooks similar to a show like “24” or “Lost”.   That sounded a bit crazy, until Nick explained how someone may finish a race, and at the end, when the credits roll, you get a “Next on Split Second” tag, which is followed up with a clip of an explosive event that can occur on the next track you are to race.  This kind of quick hook is meant to suck the player into that mode of, “well, just one more race, and then I will go to bed”, thought process.

Big action movie references are also thrown out from time to time, with some of the inspirations coming from movies like the aqueduct chase in “Terminator 2”, the car carrier chase in “Bad Boys 2” and even the crazy downtown car chase in “The Island”.  One of the game modes, Survival, looks to have been directly inspired by the destructive big rig that was featured in the recent “Death Race” remake from a few years ago.

Hitting the Race Circuit

As most have seen in the trailers that have been released, Split Second focuses on creating fun race tracks that will change over the course of a race.  One lap will have you racing around an airport terminal, but a racer might trigger an event that will divert you from the normal track on to the runway.  Another event might send you through the actual terminal.    This becomes a hook to bring players back to the single player mode many times, as you can revisit a track days or weeks later and maybe find a new route that you never noticed the first few times you have played that track. 

It also helps that Split Second offers up several different modes of gameplay to keep the game fresh to players.  Beyond just the normal season mode that offers a ton of circuit tracks that can be deformed with each lap, you also have the aforementioned Survival mode where explosive barrels fall from big rig trucks, and you have to avoid them to rack up points.  There is also the addition of a new game mode called air raid where you are avoiding missiles that are launched from a helicopter, with points being accumulated for the missiles you avoid.

It was noted that the tracks in the game come from places that we normally think of as being harmless in normal day driving, like an airport, a downtown  area, or even a power plant, which begged the question of why pick these places for your tracks.  Instead of going with the idea that the safety of these places contrasted to the dangers that the developers created, Nick just stated that each of the environments were selected because they offered huge set pieces that could be triggered in explosive ways.  He pointed to the control tower that could be brought down to divert racers on to a new part of the track in the Airport scene as one of these examples.

Not Everything Needs to Blow Up

One of the things that some of us noted was that while the tracks are deformable to form new paths, that these events only happen at certain points.  You cannot trigger track deformations anywhere but these points, to which Nick replied that you have to pick your points just for the sheer playability.  If you allow for track changes to happen anywhere on the racetrack, you might end up with a scenario where you make the track completely closed off, rendering the race unplayable.  Also, you have to take into account the calculations that would have to happen in the hardware to continuously monitor all the track changes that are occurring on the track.  This is a feat that is just above and beyond what current generation consoles are up to the task of performing at this time.

This design philosophy seems to have extended to the choice of locations as well.  It was mentioned that some locations had been scrapped for development.  A specific example was the idea of a Las Vegas themed raceway, where you would be racing through casinos and culminating with a huge one armed bandit machine that you would race underneath.  The bandit would have even had huge explosive barrels shoot out of it when an event was triggered by a racer.  This whole concept was scrapped when it just did not test well in development.  However, some of the elements from that track made it into other areas like the downtown level for example.

It was also said that it was pitched at one point to set Split Second in the future, but the more developers thought about that idea, the felt it had been done in the past by other studios.  They wanted to keep their idea rooted in the present, to give it a more original feel than other titles.

Making Things Difficult but Fun is the Biggest Challenge

A lot has been done to make sure that Split Second is fun for gamers to play, but never too difficult or easy.  The last thing you want is a game that uses rubber-banding to help the AI catch up, because gamers will just walk away if they never seem to be able to capture first place.  The flip side of that argument is making the race so easy that the gamer never feels a challenge from the title.  A lot of time went into balancing the race difficulty levels, as well in engineering the power plays.

Power Plays are the events that gamers can trigger as they run through the world.  They can be explosions from items on the side of the track, to complete changes in the landscape of the track.  Power Plays can be triggered at any point during the race, as long as players have boosted up their power meter.  While power plays can be a lot of fun, Nick was asked if these events can become the “blue shell” of Split Second.  His response showed that the team was well aware of this phenomenon in that cart racing title, which shall remain unnamed, as they only allow you to trigger power plays on cars that are in your plain sight and have icons over their cars.  This is a godsend to those that have been up front in that same unmentioned cart game, only to be sent back several spaces because of that damned blue shell.

The other thing that mixes into this idea is that first place cannot trigger any of the power play events.  At first, I was a bit upset to hear this, but it made more sense when the logic was explained.  The thought process was that you do not want a player in the lead to trigger all the events, thereby allowing no one behind him a chance to take him out with one of those power plays.  Being up front makes you a prime target by the guy in second place, and it will require a lot of skill to avoid their destructive advances.  Each track will also have 13-14 big power play events on average, with multiple smaller ones as well.

Hitting the Other Details

As we closed up on our conference call, there were a few other points to note that were mentioned.  In multiplayer mode, you will earn decals that can be attached to the sides of your car, which will let other know what you have done in prior races.  The same thing goes for your car number, which if I understood it correctly, will have some references to how many races you have won.  Multiplayer will also host up to eight players in a race.

For those that like to know the number of cars, we were told that there would be 25 cars in total, some available right from the start, and others that have to be unlocked in certain ways.  The cars will be from three different classes: muscle cars, exotics and trucks.  There will not be any customization of the cars outside of the decals that you earn for multiplayer.

DLC will factor into the title, but the exact plans have not been put in place yet for its distribution.

We at Aeropause would like to thank Disney Interactive Studios and Black Rock Studios for inviting us in on the conference call.  Also, we would like to thank Nick Baynes for taking the time to talk up Split Second for our readers.  As for when you will get your chance to play Split Second?  That happens on May 18^th, 2010 on Playstation 3, Xbox 360 and your Personal Computer with Windows.