Discussion for DRIV3R (2004)
User avatar
By helegad
Registration Days Posts Posts Posts Avatar
#59127
So, in Istanbul, Tanner is pulled up by Interpol who wants him for the murder of Dubois. Tanner escapes with Jones, and starts shooting the police officers chasing their truck. It's difficult to destroy the cop cars, so shooting for the cops themselves is the only option to survive this mission. This is a major plot problem, seeing as how Tanner is a cop himself and starts mass murdering them just because he doesn't want to come in and explain all the sh*t he's pulled by that point.

But then, in the final mission, after gunning down at least fifty of Jericho's henchmen, he stops himself from shooting Jericho, for a completely unknown reason. Is it the "oh, I'm a good man at heart" catharsis or does he really just like playing cat and mouse with adversaries? And then it backfires, and we don't even see what happens after his heart monitor flatlines. The defibrillators come before the flatline, so we basically saw more of the end in the beginning.

Tanner is a totally different person in Driver 3 than he was in the first two Drivers; he's just a ruthless asshole, no better than the guys he's gunning for. I find it very difficult to have empathy for Tanner in Driver 3, because of his ridiculous behaviour. How'd he ever get to be a cop anyway, with such an unprofessional attitude?

I really wish Driver 3 spent more time in development. Damn Atari. It was obvious Infogrames had so much more plot planned than what we got; Jones narrated over at least half the FMVs when the characters are talking, and Michael Madsen speaks maybe twenty times throughout the whole game. Whereas Driver and Driver 2 were stretching the plot pretty thin, they had a story that didn't feel comparable to swiss cheese.

Anyway, that's my little rant. I really did enjoy Driver 3 on PC, with all graphical options maxed out. I was surprised it supported widescreen resolutions even after I applied the latest patch. No compatibility problems either on Windows 7 x64. Good job, PC-porting team (Y)

PS: Who bought the cars anyway? They set it up to be a big reveal, and then... nothing.
#59143
helegad wrote: Anyway, that's my little rant. I really did enjoy Driver 3 on PC, with all graphical options maxed out. I was surprised it supported widescreen resolutions even after I applied the latest patch. No compatibility problems either on Windows 7 x64. Good job, PC-porting team (Y).
Oh yeah, real good job. Crappy DDS texture converter that spit all the textures out poorly compressed, z-fighting galore, various models with badly uvmapped textures or shading bugs....real good job.
Oh yeah, and that carcol variation bug.
User avatar
By Skylabh
#59144
They were too lazy to use the original textures, even if the development time was short (i'm pretty sure that originally, the game has better quality textures). Example: DPL has better textures. So why not Driv3r?
#59145
Skylabh wrote:They were too lazy to use the original textures, even if the development time was short (i'm pretty sure that originally, the game has better quality textures). Example: DPL has better textures. So why not Driv3r?
DPL's PC port has better quality textures due to the resources the dev team had and their schedule/timeline , D3's PC port dev team had guns pointed to the back of their heads more or less.
User avatar
By helegad
Registration Days Posts Posts Posts Avatar
#59150
PostalDude wrote:
helegad wrote: Anyway, that's my little rant. I really did enjoy Driver 3 on PC, with all graphical options maxed out. I was surprised it supported widescreen resolutions even after I applied the latest patch. No compatibility problems either on Windows 7 x64. Good job, PC-porting team (Y).
Oh yeah, real good job. Crappy DDS texture converter that spit all the textures out poorly compressed, z-fighting galore, various models with badly uvmapped textures or shading bugs....real good job.
Oh yeah, and that carcol variation bug.
I experienced no noticeable Z-fighting, and having only played Driver 3 on Xbox through a rear projection TV before now, I couldn't tell the textures were "sh*t". I've seen dozens of much, much worse PC ports. You're not much of a glass half-full guy, are you? You'd fit in well with the folks over at GTAForums who like to nitpick.

Every game has bugs, but not many games from back then supported anything other than 4:3 resolutions and I'm grateful for the team's foresight on this. Given the unfinished state of Driver 3 in general, yes, I reckon the PC porting team did a good job with what they had to work with.

What is the "carcol variation bug"?
By Wheels
Registration Days Posts Posts Posts
#59160
helegad wrote:You'd fit in well with the folks over at GTAForums who like to nitpick.
Oh good, I'm not the only one who thought the same.
User avatar
By helegad
Registration Days Posts Posts Posts Avatar
#59161
Skylabh wrote:
helegad wrote:...What is the "carcol variation bug"?
If i'm not mistaken, i think PostalDude talks about that the pc version has less colors for the cars, unlike the PS2 version.
Sounds fixable. Where are the colour variations defined?
User avatar
By Skylabh
#59164
helegad wrote:
Skylabh wrote:
helegad wrote:...What is the "carcol variation bug"?
If i'm not mistaken, i think PostalDude talks about that the pc version has less colors for the cars, unlike the PS2 version.
Sounds fixable. Where are the colour variations defined?
Here:
http://drivermadness.net/forum/viewtopi ... =86&t=3313

CarLuver69 made a topic about it. It involves some hex editing. After that, you will get more colors.
#59165
Skylabh wrote:
helegad wrote:
Skylabh wrote:
helegad wrote:...What is the "carcol variation bug"?
If i'm not mistaken, i think PostalDude talks about that the pc version has less colors for the cars, unlike the PS2 version.
Sounds fixable. Where are the colour variations defined?
Here:
http://drivermadness.net/forum/viewtopi ... =86&t=3313

CarLuver69 made a topic about it. It involves some hex editing. After that, you will get more colors.
I was the one who told CL69 about that bug, funnily enough.
User avatar
By Skylabh
#59169
bibidibabidibu wrote:In my opinion draw distance is very big problem on driv3r in ol cities. I tried to find a way to increase it but I couldn't :( Is there any way to increase?
Inheritance of the PS2 version.
#59253
helegad wrote:So, in Istanbul, Tanner is pulled up by Interpol who wants him for the murder of Dubois. Tanner escapes with Jones, and starts shooting the police officers chasing their truck. It's difficult to destroy the cop cars, so shooting for the cops themselves is the only option to survive this mission. This is a major plot problem, seeing as how Tanner is a cop himself and starts mass murdering them just because he doesn't want to come in and explain all the sh*t he's pulled by that point.

But then, in the final mission, after gunning down at least fifty of Jericho's henchmen, he stops himself from shooting Jericho, for a completely unknown reason. Is it the "oh, I'm a good man at heart" catharsis or does he really just like playing cat and mouse with adversaries? And then it backfires, and we don't even see what happens after his heart monitor flatlines. The defibrillators come before the flatline, so we basically saw more of the end in the beginning.

Tanner is a totally different person in Driver 3 than he was in the first two Drivers; he's just a ruthless asshole, no better than the guys he's gunning for. I find it very difficult to have empathy for Tanner in Driver 3, because of his ridiculous behaviour. How'd he ever get to be a cop anyway, with such an unprofessional attitude?

I really wish Driver 3 spent more time in development. Damn Atari. It was obvious Infogrames had so much more plot planned than what we got; Jones narrated over at least half the FMVs when the characters are talking, and Michael Madsen speaks maybe twenty times throughout the whole game. Whereas Driver and Driver 2 were stretching the plot pretty thin, they had a story that didn't feel comparable to swiss cheese.

Anyway, that's my little rant. I really did enjoy Driver 3 on PC, with all graphical options maxed out. I was surprised it supported widescreen resolutions even after I applied the latest patch. No compatibility problems either on Windows 7 x64. Good job, PC-porting team (Y)

PS: Who bought the cars anyway? They set it up to be a big reveal, and then... nothing.
About Dubois, i think Tanner was in a hurry and he knew that if he was arrested it would take too long for the Interpol to solve the hassle, and by that time Jericho could make it out from the country. I also think that Tanner took it as a personal matter. Looking from a more serious perspective his decision was over the top but I guess the guys behind the game wanted some explosions and action. I guess it could have been done in a different way (car chase without shooting maybe).

In my opinion he didn't shoot him because he wanted to end that case like a good cop, not like a bad one (like the scene when he kills Baccus, although it was accidental), Jones criticized sometimes Tanner's brutal methods, he said "How many times you gotta shoot someone?"

About the behaviour, in my opinion its a action movie hero, probably inspired from various films like 007 and similar. Maybe now we tend to look for more close to reality characters, more human and easy to empathize with. I wouldn't disagree of seeing a remake of the first three games from a different approach.
User avatar
By helegad
Registration Days Posts Posts Posts Avatar
#59257
I understand your point, but Tanner killing Baccus wasn't just accidental. It was reckless at best. Baccus gave up the car's location, and Tanner had already shot him once. He should have waited for the gun to come out before firing. Massacring a police detachment is a different level of bad-guy all together. It's like, just because Grand Theft Auto III did it, Infogrames thought it could fly with Driver 3 too, but the problem is that the two respective protagonists are fundamentally different people. Claude doesn't even have character; he's just supposed to represent the player. Tanner is a character however, and has two games worth of backstory, and a really angry, brooding disposition that wasn't present in the first two games. Whoever approved the character design and casting for Driver 3 made some bad calls, I think. Michael Madsen's abrasive voice just didn't sound right after the low, calm voice of Tanner in the previous games.
Crazy Copper Frenzy

https://youtu.be/xAE3QsULyB4

https://youtu.be/AxdGf3F0yIg

Driv3r "Nice Getaway"

https://youtu.be/CYkmGAPoO9s Lucas in Driv3r's Ni[…]

https://youtu.be/Yvc_xKrKhnc?si=k4I5kraarTXctHJp […]