Producer Christophe Laboureau Discusses Test Drive’s “Unlimited” Possibilities

by Louis Bedigian

“I was just driving on the roads, looking around, without any kind of purpose as you could in real life.”

Test Drive Unlimited is a unique racer for many reasons. In addition to being the first MOOR (massively open online racing), it also features concept cars that may never end up on real roads. TDU has the usual array of gorgeous lighting and reflection effects, but it’s the way the picture looked on a widescreen television that impressed me the most. It doesn’t merely stretch the picture – it actually feels like it was designed to be played on a wider screen.

Next to the online aspect, the most impressive thing of all is unquestionably the environment. “We thought of a lot of locations,” said Producer Christophe Laboureau. “Hawaii is great for two reasons. For landscapes, you have beaches and mountains. As it’s an American island, the diversity of roads is incredible. If you compare it to islands in Europe or Asia would also have great landscapes, but [only] small, mundane roads. Which is cool, but you also need straight roads to test the feel of your car. Hawaii is great for that. You have these huge highways in Honolulu. The size is just right.” 

What made you guys come up with the housing/apartment system? Was it done specifically to increase the number of vehicle storage space?

Christophe Laboureau: Not really. We wanted the player to feel what it was like to be a guy with a passion for cars. You land on the island, and then you really live a life. You first rent a car – a small one but quite nice one. Then you have to buy your first house and of course fill it with cars. It’s not just car one, level one, and you’re allowed to drive this one and that one… Here you can just start driving without doing any kind of challenge. When I played it myself, I played long enough to acquire [a specific vehicle] and then I was just driving on the roads, looking around, without any kind of purpose as you could in real life.

For the terrain: did you get satellite image from Hawaii? How did you go about designing the landscapes?

CL: You’ve got all kind of data that you can collect. We got satellite data, mainly for the island maps. We got data for the types of grounds so that each area is faithful as a forest, city, suburbs. Each square mile is real and accurate compared to Hawaii. We also had an artist go to Hawaii to drive and get for how it looks from a road point of view. We had cameras inside the cars. If you know what the other cars on the road look like, things like the scenery, even small things like trash cans, signposts… So it’s not just the satellite data, it’s what it really looks and feels like.

The first thing I noticed when I started playing was how wonderful the cars drive. Tell us about the process of putting the controls together.

CL: That was the most difficult task. There are a lot of different players obviously, and they are all searching for different types of games. As we wanted to appeal to a lot of different people, we wanted you to be able to enjoy it in a relaxed way. Not like an arcade game, [Test Drive] is really different from arcade games. We also wanted the hardcore players to enjoy learning each car. I think we succeeded quite well at this.

One thing we have is an electronic system [to help with the controls]. You can turn it on, and turn [off each part of the system] one by one until you’re comfortable with the controls. 

Let’s discuss the concept cars. Was this a situation where you went to the car company and said, “We’d love to have this car in our game.” Or was it the other way around?

CL: It depends on the car. But all of them we really wanted in the game. It was not a very thoughtful thing. If we really liked a car, we tried to discuss it with legal and find out if we could get the rights. We just made sure it made sense for the game. It had to be real dream cars. But even the smallest one, and the performance cars, they all had to make sense for Hawaii. So as many cars as we put in there, they all had to fit the game design.

I just began playing the game, but I’ve seen a lot of cars and I’m wondering – are there other types of vehicles in there as well?

CL: There are motorcycles. As we’ve got the most powerful cars, we thought it would be interesting to compare them on the different roads to sports motorbikes. Sometimes the bikes have the advantage. But when you have small, distant turns, sometimes the cars can get the advantage. It’s very interesting. You don’t pick your most powerful vehicle and stick with that one. You really have to choose based on your opponent. Your vehicle collection will make sense, and you can use all of them depending on the challenge.

Thank you for your time.