Afterwords With Driver: San Francisco

Driver: San Francisco took the series in an unexpected direction, adding an element of the supernatural to the arcade racing game. As I wrote in my review, it was also one of the most surprising games I've played this year. Once you get past the ludicrous premise of a comatose John Tanner who's able to transfer his consciousness into other drivers, it's a lot of fun. I did have some questions about the game and the Shift mechanic, and creative director Martin Edmondson was kind enough to answer them.

Which came first: The actual Shift gameplay mechanic, or the coma story hook that made it possible in the game’s story?

We developed and even prototyped the Shift mechanic (in an extremely rudimentary form) before building the whole story around it. It wasn’t worth worrying about the story until we were confident in the feature itself. It didn’t take long to be happy with the mechanic though so the story quickly followed.

Was there ever a point when the team thought the story was too insane to possibly work?

Obviously we knew the story was a bit "out there," but we also knew the mechanic was so original and so fun that we had something pretty special and innovative. We were adamant that the Shift feature be properly integrated into the story in a meaningful way, and not exist simply as an unexplained game mechanic. We always knew that though it may sound insane on paper, when you play the game to completion and the story threads tie up at the end you realize that it is not actually that insane at all ! It was actually more of a challenge to communicate it effectively to the outside world during production than it was to make it work within the game. In fact the creation of the game was really interesting dealing with the crossovers between reality and what was going on inside his head. Allowing his schizophrenic situation to be reflected in the craziness of some of the things he was doing, and so on. But then at the end of the day we knew that it wouldn’t be to everyone’s taste but those that didn’t enjoy the story would still be able to enjoy the game and the Shift feature that the story had allowed.

Is there any explanation in the Driver: San Francisco lore why Tanner is unable to Shift into his opponents in races or other rivals in missions?

Clearly the game would simply break if you were allowed to shift into any opponent in any race, chase or mission at will, so we knew we needed some limitations there. Originally during the concepting phase each car involved in a mission had a willpower value floating above it. Effectively this represented that character’s willpower or mental strength. If it was stronger than Tanner’s then he could not shift into them. The problem was the amount of visual clutter (in addition to already existing damage bars and locators and so on). To be frank it was a confusing visual mess! So we decided to keep the concept but remove the on screen numbers. Now at various points in the game Tanner talks of highly focused people (i.e. those focused against Tanner) being ‘too strong’ and he can’t shift in. So hopefully it is explained though not in such an overtly visual way.

Were there ever any reservations about Tanner essentially commandeering civilian cars and turning them into missiles—with the original driver left to suffer the aftereffects?

Yes there were, and we spent a long time discussing this and worrying about it in the early stages of development. But at the end of the day we asked ourselves “Are we really going to limit the huge fun of this feature based on Tanner’s concerns in a world that isn’t real at this point?”. At the end of the day it is a game and the primary function is to provide fun and entertainment. Of course you never want anything to be genuinely confusing, but if you worry too much about everything you will quickly strangle the fun. So we decided that Tanner would acknowledge what he had done verbally but do it in a lighthearted/comical way which is in keeping with the feel of the whole game. He is certainly more than happy to ruin some of these people’s days!

Shift is incredibly fun. Does Ubisoft Reflections see it as something that can only logically be used once, or is it possible that Tanner’s coma may have somehow left him with this ability for later use?

It’s far too early to say, and another single player story revolving around Shift would be a challenge! But the feature is something so new, unique (at the moment), and fun, it would be a shame not to exploit it further clearly.

Along the same lines, did having that pseudo supernatural storyline let the team incorporate mission types or gameplay elements (other than Shift) that were never appropriate before in the series? If so, are there any good examples?

Absolutely! In fact, [it happens] toward the end of the game in one mission when Tanner starts to realize that this is in fact playing out in his head and whatever he wants to happen can happen then things go completely crazy. Cars are literally thrown at him and he can throw cars back at Jericho. In another mission, he is driving as Ordell in a Hummer in first-person view whilst at the same time he is also controlling his own Dodge Challenger up ahead. It sounds insane on paper, but in gameplay it is really fun and challenging. That is a completely new driving mechanic that I don’t think I have seen anywhere else before and makes sense only because of Tanner’s situation.