Grid Legends hits the tarmac next week, and many of you will soon be slaloming your way through the Grid Legends achievements. If you’ve already taken a peek at the list, you’ll be happy to see that you won’t need to spend hours upon hours driving a total distance that’s equal to Earth’s circumference (a little over 40,000km), unlike in Grid. We had a chat with Grid Legends’ senior game designer Paul Lovell to find out how Codemasters designed the game’s achievement list and how the team learned a lesson from one of the most controversial and time-consuming achievements out there. Grid Legends has 50 achievements, which according to Lovell, have all been designed to offer players a fun and “hassle-free” achievement-hunting experience. “There is nothing too grindy or hugely time-consuming,” Lovell tells us. “A good number of them have you set up specific scenarios or types of events, which does a nice job of showing off the flexibility of the game modes and Race Creator. You will also earn a good percentage just from natural progression through the game, so there’s a nice mix of requirements in there that we are really happy with.”This ethos Codemasters is taking with Grid Legends’ achievements appears to be in direct contrast to the last entry into the series, 2019’s Grid, which requires a ridiculous amount of grinding to complete. The Around the Globe achievement asks players to drive a total in-game distance of 40,075km, which is equal to the total circumference of the earth. Unlocking the achievement takes so much time that players have had to resort to Cronus scripts or slapping an elastic band around a controller to grind out the insane distance, and even then they’ve had to resort to leaving the game running for days on end, doing the same 99 laps on one circuit over and over again. Lovell says the Grid team learned a lesson with this achievement and have even paid homage to Around the Globe with a cheeky nod in Grid Legends’ list. “You won’t be surprised to learn we received a lot of feedback on that particular achievement from Grid,” Lovell laughs. “We thought it would be amusing to bring it back, but this time give players a much easier time earning it. You won’t need elastic bands stuck to your controller and endless laps of Indianapolis this time! We hope this significantly easier version of Around the Globe makes up for the time it took to earn last time.”When designing the achievement list, Lovell says the creative process runs alongside the game’s development, with one person on the team coming up with the game’s various achievements. However, people within the design team go back and forth on ideas on what they’d like to see in the game. “We start coming up with ideas for them whilst the game is being developed,” Lovell says. “As vehicles, tracks and modes become playable, we start to think about what interesting and cool things we could do with the achievements.” However, sometimes the name of an achievement will come first, or something very specific is chosen for an achievement, like how the team wanted to acknowledge the iconic supercar, the Ferrari F40LM, and the unique Mazda Furai in the game. “We had lots of fun coming up with the names of [the achievements] in Grid Legends,” Lovell says. “There are nods and references to some of our personal favourite racing games that we love dearly and are close to our heart. We liked the idea that players may read them, understand the reference, and get some enjoyment out of them too. Who doesn’t want to be a Reiko fan club member?!”One of my favourite cars in the game is the Mazda Furai,” Lovell continues. “I feel extremely lucky and grateful that we were able to get the car for Grid Legends. It’s a very special and unique vehicle, so I thought it would be pretty cool to create an achievement around winning it.”As for further steps in the design process, Lovell says they will “discuss with the code team on the complexity of [the achievements] and work with art with regards to icon design. If needed, licensing/legal is involved if real-world vehicles are mentioned in the names and descriptions.”Once the team has the achievements in place, it’s time to test them and make sure they work and unlock correctly for the player, which, as it turns out, is one of the more significant and time-intensive steps in achievement design. “This is definitely the most time-consuming aspect of the process,” Lovell says. “The more complicated the unlock requirement, the longer it will take to implement, and of course, it then needs to be tested on multiple platforms to ensure it unlocks as intended.”Lovell tells us it will take players roughly 50 to 70 hours to unlock all 50 of Grid Legends’ achievements (cue sighs of relief from the achievement-hunting community), which is significantly shorter than Grid’s completion estimate of 200+ hours. Lessons have been learned from the previous entry into the series with that achievement, and it’s great to see that the Grid team and Codemasters as a whole are open to feedback from the community on the topic of achievements, so put down those rubber bands, people! You won’t be needing them this time.Grid Legends launches for Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PS5, PS4, and on PC on February 25th. All revved up and ready to go? Let us know down below!
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