Join the joyride.
Ahead of LEGO 2K Drive’s release next month, Stevivor sat down with Visual Concepts’ Brian Silva and Steve Ranck to discuss the latest evolution of video game LEGO.
While Visual Concepts might be known for groundbreaking work in basketball with 2K’s NBA franchise – and with getting things back together of late for its WWE offerings – but racing is another story altogether.
Not to worry, though – Silva, Ranck and their team boast an impressive racing pedigree, with both working on the classic racer Hydro Thunder alongside a host of other titles.
Silva — just because you must mention it or else hand in your press credentials — can also boast the fact that he provided the voice of video game mascot Bubsy the Bobcat in his first ever outing. But we digress.
“We had a number of people from our arcade days that have joined us at Visual Concepts,” Ranck told Stevivor. “We had all these people with this racing pedigree, and we put it to use.
“There are quite a few members of the core team that we’ve worked with for a number of years,” he continued. “Everybody knows everybody’s abilities and what we bring to the table and so it was a natural transition for us to just like jump in to do a driving game — a vehicle-based game — and a really fun, really exciting, really great opportunity.”
While Ranck and Silva mightn’t fully agree with our assessment of what LEGO 2K Drive is, we came into the interview thinking of it as Forza Horizon meets LEGO… which, obviously, has already been done inside that other franchise’s DLC.
“[LEGO 2K Drive is] definitely more arcade-like,” Ranck said. “You can build these wacky vehicles – and it doesn’t matter how you build them, they’re always drivable.
“You can go around corners at insane speed, don’t have to worry about, you know, tire friction and things like that,” he continued. “It’s more arcadey, much more family friendly, much more accessible.”
“We built the game from the LEGO perspective,” Silva added. “From the ground up… as opposed to the Forza Horizon expansion which was LEGO on top of an existing game.”
As you might expect, that means building is in play, and in a big way. Players will not only be able to customise their vehicles as they race around in an open-world, but transform their vehicles to suit different conditions as needed… including bodies of water just like in good ol’ Hydro Thunder.
“We came up with this mechanic where you can be driving your street vehicle and then go off-road and it automatically transforms to an off-road vehicle,” Silva explained, detailing something that was shown off quite a bit in the title’s announcement trailer.
“Originally we had that tied to a button — you had to hit the button and then [your vehicle] would transform [to suit the change from road to off-road, or off-road to water], but we just found that it just wasn’t very accessible. It was just too much for the player to wrap their mind around.”
LEGO 2K Drive has been built with families and accessibility in mind, so that feature was automated, though Silva points out that the hardcore can opt to make manual transitions instead.
That mantra really seems to be at the core of the title, which Silva really drove home. Pun intended.
“We really wanted the game to feel like an experience of playing with LEGO, and not just a LEGO video game,” he said.
“We wanted the experience of exploration, discovery and imagination that LEGO brings.”
I don’t know about you, but I’m ready to join the joyride.
Expect LEGO 2K Drive from 19 May on Windows PC via Steam and the Epic Games Store alongside Xbox One, Xbox Series S, Xbox Series X, PS4, PS5 and Switch.
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LEGO 2K Drive19 May 2023PC PS4 PS5 Switch Xbox One Xbox Series S & X |
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