I actually thought the way cities looked in "True Crime" games was pretty bad. A; the buildings looked they where used a million times and the detail wasn't the greatest but was passable.
Now I could be letting gameplay experiences get in the way, vehicle handing and gameplay didn't feel right. The cities were very large which I thought was an interesting concept to follow, I've always enjoyed exploring places rather than having a larger variety of cars.
But when I say that, I mean more variety in possibilities of performing interesting stunts that couldn't be achieved on a small map without it feeling everything has been placed like that on purpose.
I was walking home the other day, like I do everyday for about 30-40mins and I noticed this large pile of sand on the side of the road. It was shaped like a ramp and a car could use it on the road with the possibility of ending up on the roof of the house. Seriously, because the house was much lower than the road. I wished I could do that in driver.
Being a big fan of large environments, you can tell I'm also in for more interesting and varied environments. I piratically liked driv3r having three separate places to drive around.
However Driver: Parallel Lines was great with the fact you don't have to load up an entire front end to change maps all time. However, like mentioned before including much more country side will help.
New York is a well populated, well known place. Perhaps something not as well known, something under populated, something dull, rusty like a small town where plays can explore lots of outback areas with long straight roads where players can use there cars at full speed using NOS speeding between cars.
Driver has been more about car chase experiences in urban streets, I think we need car chases with an outback style, straight long roads and I've noticed there are a lot of freeways out there in certain areas.
I recently watched, The Junkman. A movie created by the people who created the original Gone in 60 seconds and it's got some pretty interesting outback scenes reflections should consider implementing into the game.
Going back to the days of Stuntman, there were some pretty good outback action sequences too. I also think Reflections should use Google Maps Street View and spend lots of time looking into cities investigating their aesthetics.
I recon Utah would be a great place to have in the next driver game. It feels like it's got a fairly large variaty, also moving away from that urban feel. It's also something no other game developers have ever tried in a game that features driving. As long as they get the mountains looking in propotion it'll look amazing.
and don't they have salt lake city there, I remember seeing it in The Fastest Indian. It was used to drive interesting motorcycle like things as fast as they could possibly go on the salt lakes which is a very large flat plane.
Anyone else have any thoughts on this?