Criterion Games Dev Talks About Burnout And Much More
Alex Ward, the Creative Director at Criterion Games, spoke in March about an idea that he had for a game called Burnout Vs. Road Rash although nothing ever came of it. He has been quite active on his Twitter account today where he has been talking about how bikes were put into Burnout Paradise as a test and how Road Rash would only be a good game if it were tied in with Burnout:
We put Bikes into Paradise as a sort of test to crack the camera/handling. Turned out well.
— Alex Ward (@AlexanderJWard) July 31, 2013
As I said to @DMC_Ryan earlier this year, I feel the concept should be Burnout Versus Road Rash for a truly great game.
— Alex Ward (@AlexanderJWard) July 31, 2013
Apparently Criterion never actually started a Road Rash game but EA North West (previously know as Studio 33) did, although it eventually got cancelled because it was sub-par:
We never started RR. EA NW tried it years back. We gave them the Paradise codebase. Project was sub par and NFSU lite. It got cancelled.
— Alex Ward (@AlexanderJWard) July 31, 2013
We also won’t be getting a new Burnout game but Alex Ward did tease a new Criterion project which also isn’t part of the Need for Speed franchise, although some of the Criterion staff are helping out on that franchise a bit:
@DawarNadeem Some Criterion staff are helping out, mostly art staff. Some of us moved out to do…something else.
— Alex Ward (@AlexanderJWard) July 30, 2013
So it will be a while before we find out what this mystery project is from Criterion and I’ll be very interested if it turns out to be a non-racing game. What type of game would you like to see next from Criterion? Would you have preferred them to stay true to the racing games for which they are know or branch out into a new and exciting IP? Please let us know in the comments below.