KT Racing’s last licensed rally game, WRC Generations, has been revealed and Kes had a chance to get his hands on the wheel and speak to creative director Alain Jarniou about all things WRC, Game Pass, and Test Drive Unlimited.Everything you need to know about WRC GenerationsIntroduction to our time with WRC GenerationsGetting into a force feedback driving-sim rig in a 31-degree celsius room in Paris to test out KT Racing’s all-new rally-sim WRC Generations was probably a mistake. You see, I had an interview with Alain Jarniou, KT Racing’s creative director, afterwards — the guy responsible for the WRC series and upcoming Test Drive Unlimited: Solar Crown. So, standing up after a wrestle with a short and crash-laden leg of what I assume was an Italian hillside, it probably looked like I had been involved with a rather involved swimming simulator instead. Peering through the curtain of sweat, though, my hands-on with Generations was wholly positive and Jarniou has convinced me this will be KT Racing’s most complete rally experience perfectly primed to put a cap on its time with the official WRC license. What is KT Racing’s vision for WRC Generations?Alain Jarniou, creative director on WRC Generations — KT Racing “KT Racing, our company, we worked on the WRC series from WRC 5. So, it’s been seven WRCs that we have made and this is the last one we make because the [World Rally Championship] license goes to [Codemasters],” says Alain Jarniou in our interview about all things KT Racing. “So, we wanted to do something big, something very good.” Elaborating further, Jarniou says: “It’s not just the last one — it’s the one that we want to be the best that we made. “So, WRC 5, 6… and until Generations, every time we make new content, we make the physics and the car behaviour progress. So, I think we are very proud of what we’ve made today with the WRC series. The company has also grown up with this game, especially. So, we want it to be the best rally game for the players and give them the best that we can.””It’s Generations because we wanted to put lots of content and to focus on what is new and what is happening in the Championship,” Jarniou said. “This year there is a change to regulations. It’s a hybrid system of a car, so it’s a huge change to competition. That’s the new generation of cars for a new generation of the game.”Gameplay impressions and changesThis year, the change has been to hybrid rally cars using 100kW electric motors and 1.6-litre turbocharged petrol engines using bio-fuel. In short, this means you get a serious pace off the line or out of a corner as the electric motor kicks in. I found out quickly that keeping that kind of torque under control was tricky. Straight off the line, slamming my accelerator down obliterated any traction I had with the gritty, rough road twisting through small, brown hilltop villages. The force feedback kicked in as the rear totally escaped me, punching me further left and… that is a streetlight. Despite my inadequacies, it feels great and the cars definitely have that ’22 season character. Jarniou laughs when I tell him how out of control I got. “Exactly! Like in the real world, you have a choice of what they call maps. It means you can have lots of power quickly, but not for long. And then you can change [the map] to 1, 2, or 3,” he explains. “3 is less torque, less power, for a longer time. So, you have to change your setup. You can imagine in terms of the kinds of roads you have to drive and that kind of stuff. It’s like in reality. When you when you get the power, for — depending on your mapping — something like 4, 3, or 5 seconds, then nothing. Then, when you brake, you get the power back and then you can reuse your energy. You will see if you play the game, the small blue indicators that show pull power for acceleration, then recharge when you brake.”The team at KT Racing had to set out early to get this right. “We’ve got a direct contract with the company that developed the hybrid system, which is Compact Dynamics,” says Jarniou. “So, we’ve got technical information on how it works already. We are really deep in the engine parts and the electrical parts: how it’s mixed, how it works. And then we have other reflections on ‘how do we make it enjoyable in terms of driving?’ What is the thing that we can change on this part of the car to make the experience the same as you have today in the real world?”Sitting upright in my chair, I get a sympathetic look from the PR who has just seen me make first contact between a lamppost and ’22 season rally car engine. He restarts the special stage for me to have a second try. This time, I’m a bit looser on the throttle, getting that grip in and waiting for the moment to put my foot down. The car reacts much better now with the lighter touch, though my reaction to the corner didn’t quite live up to the success of my second start. Even so, throwing the brake on, getting it around the corner with my co-driver purring sweet directions in my ear (we are very close), and feeling that torque hit the wheel and the surface just feels right. It’s a feeling you will be chasing for hours as you try and nail your sector times, as well. What are WRC Generations’ new features?WRC Generations’ all-new endless leaderboardsJarniou begins outlining one of WRC Generations’ big features: “A new league system that is online. It’s not playing online: it’s a competition with new events every day, every week, and people are ranked in leagues. Personally, I’m not a good driver. When I play a game and I go on a leaderboard, I am the 10,000th player. It’s not very rewarding for me. “So, we wanted to build a system that will reward the people of my level, on your level, and the best, of course,” he continues. “Every person will participate in a selection — a level to enter the leagues. Every week, you make challenges [on the league order] every day, [race] the events during the week, and every day and at every end of the week you have a new ranking. People can go up to a new league and they can just progress at their rhythm. You can stay at that level and be very happy to be the best in a smaller league than a big, big deal all around the world with esports players who are, of course, the best. You know what I mean? It’s human-size.”Exactly what does that mean? Jarniou says: “It’s special stages with a selected car. It’s two daily events and one weekly event. So, in a week, you’ve got something like 14 dailies and one weekly. At the end of the week, we give points to people according to their ranking in their league, and they can progress with a new league or they can go down.” As for rewards, the creative director explains that there is “a more developed driver card system. It means you’re you, as a driver in the game — it’s not only about the career mode [progress]. It’s also [the progress] you make in the leagues. That will give you experience and we’ve got 150 different levels of progression in the game. On every level, you get new rewards, so it’s liveries, titles, cars…”WRC Generations’ single-player modes”Single-player!” Jarniou exclaims after we both remember that is a vital part of the game experience. “The modification we made in career mode is the extended skill tree. Every year, we make enhancements and tweak this very important game mode. We also introduced, last year, the livery editor so you can customise your car. This year, we also introduced a catalogue so people can share their liveries with other players. You can push “I like it,” ranking the people that you download your livery from. So, it’s a very good step for something you can do solo, but share with all the community (which is very, very nice),” Jarniou concludes. Content and long-term supportHow much content is there in WRC Generations?Let’s talk content, then, because this game is looking rich. WRC 10 had historical rallies for the 50th Anniversary of the competition, and KT Racing has endeavoured to keep as much of that content as possible. “We still have the cars, the historical rallies,” says Jarniou. “We created special countries that were out of the championship last year we bring them back. All the locations that we made for our seven WRC games are in the game. So, you have more than 20 different countries in the game, which is nearly twice what you used to have in WRC games. Already, this is quite a huge number compared to what you got.” Jarniou clarifies: “Big content for players, in terms of cars, countries, and special stages.”How long will WRC Generations be supported?Interestingly, because of the licencing agreement whereby Codemasters have exclusive access to WRC for next year, Jarniou says: “We can’t update the game once we lost the license, especially with DLC that you have to pay — we can’t do that. But the game is designed so you can add new content in terms of competition, leaderboards and leagues for years, in fact. So, if people love the game, they can play it for years.””What we want is to give the possibility for the players that love our games, I mean KT Racing games, the opportunity to stay in the game and have a competition that will renew every week. So, you can group in a team and with a club system, so we can create competition not only using special stages but also worldwide. So you can configure and make your own competition with all the candidates that we have in the game: lots of countries and lots of cars.”WRC Generations’ achievements and trophiesJarniou was coy about achievements and trophies, only saying: “Every year, we have all these achievements that we adapted [for new] gradation and [we] integrate them into newer achievements. We also have an internal trophy system, an achievement you make in the game — not linked to the system of the consoles. We have a totally new showroom in the game and you can see your trophies in the scene, everything you’ve achieved in the game. So, that’s the kind of quick change we made this year.”Working with real car manufacturers”That was a long time ago,” Janriou says in relation to KT Racing’s previous work with Renault and Renault’s sporty subsidiary, Alpine. “It was something like nine years ago. It was just a prototype at this time and we made a kind of gamification for Renault. It was something like: you have the old Alpine and then with a button all the pieces [came off] and then they come back as a new prototype of the Alpine. “That was a step for us, KT Racing was not making racing games, but lots of different kinds of games as an independent studio. This kind of mission and game turned into ‘Okay, we are making racing games now.’ So, [with this] technology, you know how to make a car in 3D. It was very nice. “We also have a mission with — I don’t know if you know Valero? It’s a French company that makes gas and oil. They used our game — WRC 6 or 7 — to train AI to drive. For autonomous driving, they took the game and used their AI and the driving system to see how it would behave. It was totally new and unknown at the moment. It was very funny. They made the AI understand [a bug], for example, which was the best way to go fast on the road was to go on the barriers full throttle [around a corner]. It’s like, ‘Okay, we’ve got a problem with the way we manage the condition on the barriers.’ Very nice, very surprising! So, sometimes yes — we still work with a company like Renault, Valero.”WRC Generations and Xbox Game PassWhen asked if KT Racing was thinking about launching on Xbox Game Pass to keep those leaderboards lively, Jarniou was surprisingly forthcoming. “I would say it’s more of a publisher decision, but I think we are quite interested in this kind of system. This is the way I played Forza Horizon 5, for example. “[It] is very convenient, it’s very quick to get all those games, and I think people do like it. I think that it’s a quite huge success for Microsoft on that point. I can’t say anything for sure, but I think we are thinking about it and trying to integrate these technologies.”Any news on Test Drive Unlimited: Solar Crown?The team at KT Racing are taking on the mammoth challenge of releasing open-world racer Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown after WRC Generations. “You’ve will have news on that,” Jarniou says ahead of the delay announcement and cancellation of the last-gen versions of the game. “I can’t tell you more. We will, of course, provide more information about the game. It’s just a big game. We focus on making it now — so huge. It’s a huge part of the company [working on it]. “It’s Nacon that will talk about it, but I worked on TDU and TDU2 before this. I really love this game. So, we want to make it perfect for the fans. I know that many fans [love it too] and I know why — it’s a unique game. We want to make it good.”WRC Generations looks very promising indeed, and is slated for release on Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PS5, PS4, and PC on October 13th 2022. What did you think of the interview? The Game Pass news? Let us know in the comments!
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