Will Paradise be Perfect?

The teaser trailer released this week on the Xbox Live Marketplace looks stunning. Especially the speed in the last few seconds. But it doesn't give much away. What will Burnout Paradise be like? How will the Open World work on-line? Will there be Traffic Checking? I have so many questions. So I took a look back at a few Alex Ward interviews to see if I could get some answers. The Alex Ward quotes (in bold) come from his interviews with Newsweek, Eurogamer & CVG, I have used some artistic license.

Burnout Revenge on the 360 is a great online game, what can we expect from Paradise Online?

I think all games are moving towards heavy online gameplay. We've certainly got some great ideas for that area.

Cool, well I like the sound of that, but what kind of great ideas?

How you use the controller is key, how you play the game online, how you use the HD Eye toy and the 360 Vision Camera online is really important. But the game is totally free and totally open.

Woah! Hold the phone. . 360 Vision Camera? in a Burnout Game?? I can't wait to see what that means. But about the game being totally free and open, hmm tell me more, it's not going to be like TDU is it?

The big problem is that I think some people are thinking we're doing a big Test Drive game, some sort of MMO. But we're not. We're doing Burnout.

Phew! that's a relief. So, what can I expect from an open world environment?

For starters, it's Burnout. So the action is always around the next corner. We feel that sometimes this style of world can lead to a 'find the fun' factor where there isn't much to do. In Burnout there is always something to do. Like ploughing into cars for example.

Aaah so Traffic Checking is still in? I thought it maybe removed - it's a bit of a controversial feature.

It's going to look a lot more realistic, and a lot more real than ever before.

Aaah so Traffic Checking is out? I'm not sure either way now, and to be honest I haven't decided if I want Traffic Checking in or not? I know that I like driving dangerously, and the risk of crashing is what makes it fun. The graphics on the teaser trailer look great, but there aren't any big crashes, what can we expect?

But the graphics are just one part of it. We've spent a lot of time on the handling of the cars and how they smash. Some of the defamation we can do now is way, way better. We're actually simulating the car accidents better than ever before in Burnout 5. The first crash you see has got to go way beyond everything you've ever seen, beyond anything that we've ever done. Because every time we put our game out, people say, "It's the best crashes ever in a game." We've got to go beyond that now. We have to go beyond a game, and we have to go beyond a game car crash.

Paradise has progressed far beyond Burnout and I can't wait! :-)