Damage

EuroGamer has shared their detailed hands-on impressions with the latest E3 2010 GT5 demo, and it’s full of quite a few interesting and revealing tidbits of information. While I have covered the main points below, the full article contains more detail and is very well written, so head on over there for more.

As we’ve known for a while now, Gran Turismo 5 will include two different damage models – one for production cars, another for “race” cars. “Race” cars will show significant deformation and will have detachable hoods and doors, while production cars would show little more than paint scratches.

First things first: two independent sources have privately confirmed to me that the GT5 Demo Collection is real, and the original whistle-blower lherre has backed up his announcement with more screenshots. This collection is also providing a closer look at things we only got to peek at during the shows where these demos were originally featured.

Here’s an example of when bad driving turned out to be a good thing, as it provides a quick (very quick…as in 2 seconds) but somewhat interesting peek at the scaled-down production car damage in Gran Turismo 5. As you may recall, there will be two types of damage models in the game: one for racing cars and one for standard, production cars. While the damaged Subaru WRX WRC car, with missing bumpers and doors, has become a rather familiar sight, the less aggressive damage modeling has remained a bit more mysterious.

A writer with the Globe and Mail, Chad Sapieha, got the opportunity to try out the Gran Turismo 5 demo (the one that’s been shown off at shows, not the one we’re getting next Thursday), and he’s shared a fascinating conversation he had with a “Polyphony Digital delegate”:

One of the developers behind the latest iteration of Need for Speed, NFS Shift, commented on the Gran Turismo 5 damage engine shown off at GamesCom last month. Obviously, his words weren’t exactly glowing, but you’ll find he provides interesting insight into the creative restrictions placed on racing game developers:

While most of us are still getting over the shock of seeing a damaged car in Gran Turismo, many others criticized Polyphony Digital’s work for not showing over-the-top destruction found in other, often more “arcade” racing games. Apparently, Kazunori Yamauchi himself responded to critics in his latest French interview with GamesBlog.fr, but we missed it the first time around without a full English transcript.