A Test Drive Unlimited Sequel is On Its Way From WRC Developer Kylotonn

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MIE1992
Yeah, I didn't even have plans to get this, but I feel like including straight-up gambling is a good way to potentially get your game banned in a few nations. It'll be like Need for Speed Payback all over again, but at least that game was savvy enough to take place in a region modeled on Las Vegas.

I mean, if you're going to have a TDU game take place on an island with plenty of casinos, why not an island in the Bahamas? The only other locale that I associated with casinos is Monaco, but that's not exactly an island, is it?
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Macau. That would certainly be the maximalist cynic choice.
 
I don't get all the hate towards a cinematic trailer either. Literally every game ever gets a gameplay reveal at some point. You'll get it for this game when it's ready. No sense in complaining about a trailer being cinematic or not in the meantime.
 
AudiMan2011
Showcasing literal casino gambling in a game after the whole loot box scandal isn't going to make a good first impression
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For those unaware, Test Drive Unlimited 2 had a Casino feature where you could go and bet in game currency etc. This is a continuation of that feature. Hopefully it's not a loot box mechanic but I suspect it will be somewhat like it was in TDU2.
 
sirjim73
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Phew... I was very angry at first because in the thumbnail we could see of the end showed the Epic Store logo, but the Steam logo wasn't as easy to make out. Happy to see it's coming to Steam too.

And Switch too, that's nice (even though I don't have one). If it's good like the first, or at least decent like the second, it will be a great game to play on the go.
 
I have a feeling the game is not going to be pushing visual boundaries if it's also being released on switch. I mean...the game is being released on everything which kind of suggests it will be buggy and not optimized on anything.

edit: the number plates seem to suggest coordinates of 22 north and 114 east...which appears to be Hong Kong

zeP0WEH.jpg


2oASetA.jpg


being more liberal with the GPS coordinates landed me out in the ocean near Cabo, out in the middle of the Pacific, or in Western Australia. So I think Hong Kong is it folks.

edit 2: My earlier Macau comment might be apropos...I'd be willing to bet that its included too.

edit 3: if you interpret the first number plate as 0.2N rather than 22N, you end up on the Island of Borneo...but that's 287,000 square miles, so I'd rate that as highly unlikely
 
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The trailer is better than F1 2021’s. That’s always something.

Though I never understood the big deal with the Casino in TDU2. Looked boring AF and seemed like a waste of time. This one is most likely going to be monetized to hell and back too.

Eunos_Cosmo
I have a feeling the game is not going to be pushing visual boundaries if it's also being released on switch. I mean...the game is being released on everything which kind of suggests it will be buggy and not optimized on anything.
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I’m expecting the usual eurojank as its’ predecessors, both visually and gameplay wise.
 
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All this talk about clothing and jewellery and houses and gear you can bet the amount of brand deals that will pop up will be huge but also...incredibly, unbearable DULL! I don't give a F about my character, how they look, what they where, the CAR is the character in TD, not the person driving it. It's why I hate all the stuff in FH4 if they focused less on fortnite dances and golden chicken suits and focused more on I dunno...good engine sound design maybe, it would of been a better game.

Anyway, I am happy to let this rest quietly out the way for the next 18 months.
 
Krakenous
All this talk about clothing and jewellery and houses and gear you can bet the amount of brand deals that will pop up will be huge but also...incredibly, unbearable DULL! I don't give a F about my character, how they look, what they where, the CAR is the character in TD, not the person driving it. It's why I hate all the stuff in FH4 if they focused less on fortnite dances and golden chicken suits and focused more on I dunno...good engine sound design maybe, it would of been a better game.

Anyway, I am happy to let this rest quietly out the way for the next 18 months.
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Unfortunately, since the Unlimited series places a major amount of focus on living an ultra-wealthy life style, that's not the case. All of that cropped up way back in TDU1 minus jewelry; the series after all, tried to tout itself as a form of MMORPG.
 
Hong Kong would be disappointing considering the traditionally exotic island locales of previous games.
 
The extraneous numbers on the plates make me think I'm missing something. Not sure. What does the A mean and why is it 0222 and not 222? If you look at 114 as, instead, II 4 you could interpret that as 2.4. Mallorca lands at the meridian 2.4E. Idk..the fact that Hong Kong is almost exactly centered at 22°20'00.0"N 114°00'00.0"E and is known for luxury, extravagance, car culture, and gambling - as well as the fact that underground garages are quite common there, and that "project sunrise" would tend to allude to an eastern location, and that solar crown reasonably well matches with the climate of Hong Kong...there would have to be a lot of coincidences there.

I also think any really substantial/faithful 1:1 recreation (I wouldn't rate TDU1 or 2 as a substantial recreation) is going to be pretty limited in size, and Hong Kong seems relatively manageable. I think it's still plenty big enough for a fun racing game, particularly if the urban areas are well detailed. For reference - Hong Kong is 427 square miles, Oahu is 600 square miles, and the Forza Horizon 4 map is a paltry 30 square miles. Hong Kong isn't really an Island though, its pretty substantially connected to mainland China. So at the end of the day...who knows, maybe it's a red herring.
 
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Eunos_Cosmo
I have a feeling the game is not going to be pushing visual boundaries if it's also being released on switch.
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Depends on what you think of V-Rally 4, WRC 8, or WRC 9, because those were all the same deal.

Based on NintendoLife's reviews and screenshots, it seems to me the compromise is more on the Switch's side. I guess the ports do not get the same investment as more well-received Switch ports of multiplat retail titles.
 
Eunos_Cosmo
Hong Kong isn't really an Island though
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That rather depends on whether you're referring to the territory or... the island. Hong Kong is also an island within the territory, though it's barely 30 square miles.

That all said, I'm not convinced Hong Kong is a particularly good place to set anything right now, given the whole... thing going on there for the last three years.
 
Famine
That rather depends on whether you're referring to the territory or... the island. Hong Kong is also an island within the territory, though it's barely 30 square miles.

That all said, I'm not convinced Hong Kong is a particularly good place to set anything right now, given the whole... thing going on there for the last three years.
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It would be quite the undertaking to create such game in this place without being utterly and completely tone deaf.
 
Krakenous
All this talk about clothing and jewellery and houses and gear you can bet the amount of brand deals that will pop up will be huge but also...incredibly, unbearable DULL! I don't give a F about my character, how they look, what they where, the CAR is the character in TD, not the person driving it. It's why I hate all the stuff in FH4 if they focused less on fortnite dances and golden chicken suits and focused more on I dunno...good engine sound design maybe, it would of been a better game[...]
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That was always in TDU, and considering how it is in Forza, that's EXACTLY why I want another game to try. If a racing game is not set in closed circuits with the driver wearing a race suit, and you can see how the character looks, I want my character to reflect my style and kind of look like me (I mean, even if it is on closed circuits and with a race suit, I want to have a custom race suit too). Though this fancy luxury brand thing of TDU is not exactly my style, I can still find some clothes that I think look neat. And these not being a stupid RANDOM PRIZE feature certainly is a good thing. I was so happy when I won a PLAIN BLACK T-SHIRT in Forza 4, and that SHOULD NOT BE THE CASE. I keep getting clothes I don't care about, or some stupid show-offy dance.

I don't think after two games with decent systems for clothing that they would screw it up so bad with this one like Forza did. There's a chance, but I hope they don't.
 
Real world politics aside, Hong Kong seems like a brave choice for something a little different. Quite hilly outside of the CBD, isn't it?
 
VXR
Could offer the tighter roads us Forza Horizon players crave!
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It's an interesting point, and wherever the location ends up being, I hope this plays out. I'll caveat this post by saying I've never owned a TDU game and I don't think this is evidence of particularly high quality roads, but I was watching some gameplay of mountain roads in TDU1 and it made me realize something

edit: replaced video with better one


Despite being the best entry in the series so far in terms of roads, Forza Horizon 4 still does not really have fun roads like this. The road in the above clip looks way more fun than anything from the Forza Horizon universe. Look at the sharp elevation changes at or near corners, the car really moves around a lot. There's corners over crests. There's corners at dips. There's off and on camber corners. The road is genuinely bumpy, intentionally or not. The rollercoaster nature of that road is something completely missing in any FH road I can think of - all of FH roads are glassy, Hermann Tilke-like racing circuits....none of them feel responsive to real topography/grades. The switchbacks near ambleside feel so contrived - straight, 180 degree curve with X radius, straight, repeat. Even the switchbacks at Fortune Island feel way too smooth and uniform...designed to drift up without upsetting the car. Here's hoping the maker of a WRC game doesn't forget what makes those games so fun...
 
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@Eunos_Cosmo -- You've hit the nail on the head, and that is the other main reason (besides Forza's peculiar handling, per our brief exchange in that Horizon physics thread) why I have not been able to bring myself to purchase FH4.

FH2, FH3, and FH4 don't feel like the experience they ostensibly aim to provide. FH2 didn't feel like driving in Europe (I have a bit of firsthand experience on some German roads, long ago). I have only sampled FH3 and FH4, but FH3 seemed tailored for hypercar blasts across its expanses, and FH4's ribbons do not make me think of the UK at all. And FH4's handling is the same thing again, since FH2. It doesn't take long to figure that out when you have experience with the franchise.

The Horizon map that approached what I expect out of backroads was Colorado in FH1, largely because of its barriers that were so derided and quickly eliminated going forward. Barriers aren't strictly necessary -- more drag, more bumps, ditches...more of a penalty for going off-road would help -- but I think it worked out decently well in FH1's case.

On the subject of TDU1, my #1 complaint about its roads is that they needed more (collision) polygons. They were just unacceptably rough in spots.

Like you, if nothing else, I am counting on some of Kylotonn's experience with WRC's stage design to carry over into Solar Crown.
 
Hong Kong sounds like fun to me. I would love to explore the dense metro area and possibly trace the route that was in GT4. I would also love to see Chek Lap Kok and the former location of the notorious Kai Tak airport. I also hear that the mountain roads around Hong Kong are pretty good. As far as I'm concerned it has all the ingredients for a Test Drive game.
 
There was a thread going around earlier trying to figure out the setting using the original trailer.
I've quoted an enhanced photo of a tower in the background that was being used as a reference point to try and determine the location.
After discovering the island, comparisons were made between existing buildings and enhanced photos from Nacons Test Drive Live Stream and Trailers
building-enhanced-trailer-png.964161

View attachment 964161
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With the current theory that the license plates are coordinates for Hong Kong, maybe someone a bit more architecturally inclined than myself would be able to find a similar looking tower in Hong Kong?
To my eye, the rest of the skyline looks to be lacking a few smaller buildings that I would expect to see in Hong Kong but it's possible that the game isn't providing an accurate count of buildings (as you would expect from a game).

It's probably a long shot, trying to compare an obscurely angled, out of focus photo of a building in a game to a real life skyline to try and draw similarities, but I thought it might be an interesting detail to explore.
 
Only 3 requests to developers:
1. Do not simplify physics from WRC9
2. Do not reduce the size of the map TDU2
3. Leave the search for shops and car dealerships on the map.

linksracer
There was a thread going around earlier trying to figure out the setting using the original trailer.
I've quoted an enhanced photo of a tower in the background that was being used as a reference point to try and determine the location.



With the current theory that the license plates are coordinates for Hong Kong, maybe someone a bit more architecturally inclined than myself would be able to find a similar looking tower in Hong Kong?
To my eye, the rest of the skyline looks to be lacking a few smaller buildings that I would expect to see in Hong Kong but it's possible that the game isn't providing an accurate count of buildings (as you would expect from a game).

It's probably a long shot, trying to compare an obscurely angled, out of focus photo of a building in a game to a real life skyline to try and draw similarities, but I thought it might be an interesting detail to explore.
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International Commerce Centre Hong Kong 484 m
SPS Automotive Performance Hong Kong
https://www.facebook.com/SPS-Automotive-Performance-HK-Ltd-255106814564949/
 
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Lame trailer, and I'd be super disappointed if I had actually been waiting for it.

I think Hong Kong would make for an interesting location too, so I hope those hints are pointing to it.

Eunos_Cosmo
It's an interesting point, and wherever the location ends up being, I hope this plays out. I'll caveat this post by saying I've never owned a TDU game and I don't think this is evidence of particularly high quality roads, but I was watching some gameplay of mountain roads in TDU1 and it made me realize something


Despite being the best entry in the series so far in terms of roads, Forza Horizon 4 still does not really have fun roads like this. The road in the above clip looks way more fun than anything from the Forza Horizon universe. Look at the sharp elevation changes at or near corners, the car really moves around a lot. There's corners over crests. There's corners at dips. There's off and on camber corners. The road is genuinely bumpy, intentionally or not. The rollercoaster nature of that road is something completely missing in any FH road I can think of - all of FH roads are glassy, Hermann Tilke-like racing circuits....none of them feel responsive to real topography/grades. The switchbacks near ambleside feel so contrived - straight, 180 degree curve with X radius, straight, repeat. Even the switchbacks at Fortune Island feel way too smooth and uniform...designed to drift up without upsetting the car. Here's hoping the maker of a WRC game doesn't forget what makes those games so fun...
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Agree with everything except FH4 having the best roads in the series. FH1 had much better roads, and the Red Rock Canyon road is still easily the best in the series, although I suppose that's getting kinda off-topic...
 

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