Paradise Cities: The Crew Has Lots Of Game Modes

There's a narrative arc to my interest in most racing games: at first they seem to support my interest in driving and exploration, and then slowly, bit by bit, these racing games reveal themselves to be dependent upon racing. So it is with this trailer for The Crew, Ubi's looming open world racing game set in a shrunken, greatest-hits compilation of the entire United States. Open world! Exploration! Drive about and stuff! And then comes the missions, the modes, the multiplayer; joyful things for someone, but not for Sunday drivers like me.

Still, the game remains the one I'm most excited about, which is just straight up weird. Come watch the informative trailer.

I do quite like the look of Climb, in which you drive to the top of the game's various mountain peaks. I'd be doing that anyway.

I wonder how this world has been built. FUEL enabled the size of its world by setting rules for different kinds of environments, and then generating that terrain at runtime for a seed. That meant that its huge, open terrain didn't require enormous amounts of space on DVDs or hard drives, nor enormous numbers of artists to craft its vistas full of mesas. The Crew is considerably higher detail and built by Ubisoft, who are no strangers to smashing bodies against problems till they're resolved, but does that mean it's going to be a ridiculously vast install? Or is there something procedural under the hood?

Let's email them and ask, eh. The Crew is being developed by former Test Drive Unlimited devs at new studio Ivory Tower, with assistance from the makers of the excellent, bizarre Driver: San Francisco, Ubisoft Reflections. It's due out November 11th.