Video games usually take a very long time to make. “One of the reasons I joined the team is because it’s challenging.
The game’s design has a big appetite for content, all of which must be created within the production schedule of the TV show. We have the perfect reason to do these things because the TV show does them,” he adds.įollowing the beats of one of the most expensive TV productions today is a huge, and hugely intriguing, challenge. “A lot of other games, they work hard to try and spin these stories and make it non-tenuous. “We don’t have to force players to grind out the best cars in the game – within a few minutes in our game you’re driving the McLaren P1 – some games you end up there after 30 hours of play.”Īnd there’s no requirement for the game to setup a reason for all this driving, such as Forza Horizon’s festival schtick or Gran Turismo’s endless fictional championships. “You drive five or six different cars, in five or six different locations, very very quickly in our game,” Sullivan says. In just the first 20 minutes of the first episode the variety is startling. It’s immediately apparent when playing that TV moves at a lightning pace compared to most video games. “We actually have to say ‘get ready’ because it used to shock some people, we’d have the seamless transition of the car driving through and sometimes you don’t notice it’s the game,” he explains. Sullivan found that they had to warn players that the transition to gameplay was coming. We found the balance of watching and playing to be just right, but if you’re more interested in playing the game than watching the TV segments then there’s a very neat skipping ahead function, accompanied by Clarkson shouting a belligerent: “Get on with it!” So to play it from start to finish is about 60 minutes – we’ve aimed for it to be about the same. “The TV episode is 65 minutes long to watch – we obviously cut out the footage where they are driving and you drive instead. “So you were just playing The Holy Trinity ,” Sullivan tells us. "I think I’m justified in saying that we’re the first video game team in history to make a game that launches day-and-date with a weekly live airing TV show."Īnd that bears out in play, with the live footage and the gameplay flowing along without a stutter or hitch – it feels as natural and effortless as watching the show does. When you start playing an episode we really embraced the idea of perpetual motion.”
“So we looked at it and said: ‘Right, what do video games do, what TV shows do and where where can we start to blur the lines?’ So as you will have seen there’s no traditional static screens in the game. “We really wanted to embrace the idea of ‘play the show’,” Sullivan says.
There’s no single fancy effect, it’s just all done right, cutting from the live action footage to the driving game seamlessly.
The game itself is an impressive blend of footage from the show, which introduces each section of gameplay, and driving action. The remaining content will roll out day-and-date with season three, which was recently unveiled with a first-look trailer. The Grand Tour Game will be sold as a digital season pass, for Xbox One and PS4, with two episodes of initial content based on the opening episodes of seasons one and two of the show available at launch.
What that means in practice is that the team will be delivering episodic gameplay alongside the weekly release schedule of the next series of Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May’s escapades.