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Architect of the Apocalypse

MotorStorm Apocalypse designer Simon Barlow on balancing gameplay with blockbuster bombast.

Dan Whitehead avatar
Interview by Dan Whitehead Contributor
Published on
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Eurogamer This emphasis on dynamic environments does seem more like the sort of thing you'd expect in an action adventure or an FPS. As part of Sony's network of internal studios, does that community help to inspire you to try new things within your own area of expertise?
Simon Barlow

We've got a lot of great internal studios at Sony. We're very lucky. We've worked with some great guys. The guys at Naughty Dog, the guys at Guerilla...Uncharted and Killzone, for me, are setting the benchmark in their respective genres, in terms of pure entertainment. And we thought, well, why can't we be like those guys? Why does racing just have to be about a bunch of cars on a track? It's been done, and it needs to be more than that now. Gamers demand more, and so we took inspiration from those sort of games, the design elements they use. Why can't we do that for a racing game? That's why you've got a story this time around.

Eurogamer Stories aren't usually a good fit with racing games. Can you explain how it works for MotorStorm?
Simon Barlow

To be honest, it's a fairly light story. It's not Uncharted or God of War, it's appropriate for MotorStorm. Maybe I'm doing it a disservice. It's not completely light. The city has a chronology, OK? Initially there's been a couple of tremors, maybe a couple of cracks, a couple of buildings have come down, but it's mostly pristine. Most of the people have been evacuated, but there's no threat of further damage. MotorStorm rolls into town and then the big one hits. That's when all hell breaks loose. So over the course of the game, the city is constantly changing, becoming more destroyed.

The game is fully 3D compatible, for those who like ducking imaginary rubble.

It's taken from the perspective of a guy called Cutter, a gonzo journalist who's embedded himself in the MotorStorm Festival, just to find out what the hell's going on. He's the player's eyes, effectively. We've hinted at the festival before, we've hinted at what goes on behind the scenes, but we've never explicitly showed it. Well, Cutter's now going to show you it. He's going to introduce you to these characters, this epic carrier that they float around the world on, this bold utopia of crazies. It would be pretty cool to just get on your aircraft carrier, self-contained, not worry about anything, rock up to another location, get your vehicles out and have a party. It's like Burning Man meets off-road racing. I can't be the only person who looks at it and thinks, I wish these people were real.

I'm not going to give too much away, because I want to see what players get from this, but it's loosely based on the story of man, from child to adolescent to adulthood and, eventually, expiration. It really fits though! There's this cool subtext, and lots of interesting stuff going on behind the scenes, but you don't need to know about that stuff if you don't want it. There are fart gags in it, for God's sake. If you just want to play it and enjoy it then it's all there, but if you want to read between the lines then there's stuff there. The stories mirror the destruction of the city, so it all ties together.