Fender-bending antics, speeds of escape velocity and more fun than a pogo stick on a trampoline. It's got to be Burnout...

Burnout is back, and not a moment too soon. The first truly next-gen instalment in the series has certainly morphed traditional Burnout gameplay befittingly. The open world structure of Paradise City is set to change the way you play event types you know, while laying the path for a range of new features and modes for the series. Burnout Paradise's Senior Producer, Nick Channon, took us down to the Paradise City.

TVG: There's a whole new game engine for Burnout Paradise. What's that going to bring to the fore in terms of the game environments and car crashes etc.?

Fundamentally, we've thrown everything away. There's no code in here from any of the previous games. While this is a risk, it allows us to then get the most of the machines. We've made a game here for next-gen consoles, no bones about it. This isn't an upgrade, it's a game made specifically for these machines.

What you're going to see is 60 frames per second in an open world driving game, which nobody else is doing. We've got great graphics, a great sensation of speed and the cars look amazing. We can actually deform the cars in ways we've never done before. We can crumple them, there're more particle effects and more visual effects than we've ever been able to do.

It's everything on a much greater scale. There's still that fundamental Burnout experience of incredible speed, aggressive racing and drifting through corners; all at 60 frames a second. That's what you're going to get.

TVG: The cars crumple up so much more realistically now. Is that all physics driven?

We've been doing crashes and deforming cars in videogames for a long time now, so it comes with experience. The technology now allows us to do a lot more with it, so it just comes with having been doing it for a while and having much better technology.

TVG: With this open game world, you'll just be able to seamlessly move into an online Paradise City from an offline one. How does this work with the servers?

What you've seen is exactly how it works in the game. If you're Freeburning online you'll get a game menu telling you which games you want to go and join. If you're joining games that aren't your friends', you just get an option asking which games. It's completely that easy.

That's such an important thing for us because it's so important to get the online game right, but in the past there've been such laborious ways of getting online. We want this game to appear to our core Burnout fans, clearly, but also to casual gamers. Burnout has always appealed to more casual gamers and we weren't going to have casual gamers online with the way it has been done in previous Burnout games.

It was really important that we changed that and made it as easy as possible to get online - it's probably the first game where you'll get online by mistake - and once you're in, you're playing straight away and you don't have to wait for anybody, because that's really frustrating as well.

TVG: So, once you're online you've got Road Rules (for example, timed records for individual pieces of track), classic events and Freeburn with loads of different things to find.

I played the PS2 Burnout Revenge game online and I found it quite difficult because I was playing against people who'd completed the whole game. This meant that they'd unlocked all the faster cars which I didn't have. Are the classic events still going to be that hardcore, or is it going to be much more casual this time around?

You've hit the nail on the head of what we're trying to do here. Playing online is not much fun when people have got things that you haven't and they get incredibly good at the game, which happens really quickly (typically, players will get really good within the first few days). So, what we do is that the default position is you playing with your friends co-operatively. You can then go and play with your friends in a race, or you can setup a race with people you don't know.

So, it's up to you: you're in control of who's in there with you. If you then want to go off and play with other people than that's fine but, fundamentally, the first thing that you'll choose is who you're playing with. If you want to go beyond that then it's completely up to you.

TVG: In Test Drive Unlimited, you could be driving around Hawaii and then arrange to meet one of your friends somewhere. Then you'd get there and realise that they're not there because you're on different servers. Presumably, with the friends menu setup in Burnout Paradise, this won't be an issue?

Absolutely. You're hosting it and they'll come into your world.

TVG: So it's based on invites, just as if it were Gears of War and you can invite friends to a private game?

Yep, absolutely, and the other thing is that we made a conscious effort to create a huge game world where there's a lot to find. However, it's only seven minutes from one end to the other (if you're boosting), which isn't that much in the sense that it's not half an hour. We made it big enough so it would keep you happy for weeks on-end, but not so big that driving across the map to meet up was laborious. Also, you can see each other on the map so it's not a big deal.

TVG: In Burnout Revenge the shortcuts opened up the Races, but Burnout Paradise's open world has opened it up completely, almost like in Midnight Club games. Midnight Club 2 is my personal favourite and it's great at doing that with a big, open city. Did you look at anything like that at all?

Yeah, everyone has asked where our influences come from but, fundamentally, at Criterion we play loads and loads of games. We look at everything and we want to become experts in everything. So, there's no one place, we look at different games and think 'they're doing this, that's very cool' and we get people looking at different games to find where the positives are and the areas where people are innovating. We just learn from it.

The other thing is we know what we want to do with Burnout. We have a very set vision of what we think the best next-gen Burnout game is that we can make. We stay very true to that and also look where others are innovating, where the market is going and see where the technology is going and how people are using it. Not just with racing games but from other games, and from films as well.

TVG: There are three different types of cars (Speed, Stunt and Aggression) and three different boost systems. Will these different boost systems be present throughout the game, in Freeburn for example, or just during specific events?

They're present throughout the game. The boost rules are constant and if you chose a Speed car then that applies everywhere.

They're not that different. With Stunt and Aggression cars, the way you earn boost is quite different but the way you use it is the same. The Speed system is slightly different in that you can only use it when it's full, but that was the same in Burnout 1 and 2. Burnout fans will be familiar with it and people who're coming into the gaming will quickly get to learn it as well.

There's also a full tutorial in the game where we really make clear how everything works, so there won't be any problems with that. We also use a DJ whenever you see things for the first time - we pause the screen and he tells you what it is.

TVG: But, in short, you've got a mix of regular Takedown boosts, chain boosts and trick based boosts?

It really makes a difference which cars you chose. For example, Stunt cars are really important for Stunt mode and then Aggression cars are very important for Road Rage and Marked Man. We've not had that level of depth in Burnout before and I think it makes a huge difference to the way the game feels.

TVG: I've noticed there's no Aftertouch this time around. Personally, I'm a big fan of it from the previous games. Is there any reason why you went in that direction?

It just didn't feel right. We have this very strong vision of where we want to take Burnout and it evolves every year. We add lots of things and we take things away, and it didn't feel right. If you look at Showtime, it's really all Aftertouch and we use it a lot in that area, but not in the other modes.

TVG: Around the game there are many side-tasks to complete such as 'knock down so many billboards' and things like that. There are 600 of these side-tasks... Is that right?

There are 400 gates to find, I think it's 120 billboards and 50 jumps.

TVG: So they'll be like Signature Takedowns from the other games? The type of things that will keep you going once you've completed all the other events...

Yeah, exactly.

TVG: What are the different categories of the online Road Rules?

There's two. There's the Road Rule record which is timed. So, you own a street by breaking the timed record for that street. There's also a Showtime Road Rule where you've got to do the most damage on each street by invoking Showtime.

TVG: You've got a unique take on the unlockable cars, where they appear in the game world and you'll have to chase after them and perform a Takedown for the right to drive them. How does that work exactly?

They'll either come from behind you, or come whizzing past you and pull a handbrake turn. Then you'll have to chase after them and take them down. And it also depends what kind of car you're in because you know that big truck I showed you for Road Rage? If you're in a really light Speed car, trying to take that out is really hard. You can do it, but you might need to change your car to go and get it.

TVG: So taking the new car down can be quite challenging?

They're not over the top, but you might have to chase a faster car around the world for a bit. It might also take a few attempts to take them down - it's not a slam dunk, if you like. We wanted it to become a chase; we thought the chase was cool.

TVG: You won't really have time to go and change your car then?

Well, not in that instant. You can change it for next time.

TVG: Burnout Revenge featured a nicely destructible environment for a PlayStation 2 game. In Burnout Paradise, the environments and graphics have obviously been significantly improved, but the destructible environment seems quite similar to Revenge. Would you agree with that?

We don't destroy buildings, but we do have lots of things to smash through and there are lots of destructible things in the world (barrels, boxes and stuff). The focus of the game is the cars and the world, so actually destroying buildings doesn't feel right - there's no point to it. Ultimately it's about car-on-car battling so it doesn't really feel right, that's why we haven't done it. It's not a technology thing, it just doesn't feel right in the game.

TVG would like to thank Nick Channon, Senior Producer on Burnout Paradise, for taking the time to speak to us about the game, due out on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 this January 25th.