Staff – October 1, 2019 at 10:30 AM
Though we might be inclined to care about the personalities of NPCs in RPGs or simulators, we rarely give them a second thought when playing racing games. Codemasters want to change that. In a typical racing game, the goal is never to make friends or enemies; it’s simply to win. But in Codemasters’ GRID, sharing the track with a loyal ally or bitter nemesis can have a dramatic effect on the outcome of the race. What results is a racing game that’s replete with opportunities for forming narratives and creating climactic moments.
Codemasters have been involved in the development and publishing of racing games since the late ‘80s. For them, GRID represents a culmination of learnings throughout their time working within the genre, using state-of-the-art technology to drive their ambitions. “Technology is always moving forwards, and as developers, we embrace the challenge to use that power and create compelling experiences,” GRID Game Director Chris Smith said.
When Codemasters set out to develop GRID, they settled on a vision statement: “Engaging racing for everyone, where every race is a motorsport story and every story is a chance for glory!” The key to cultivating stories within races, Smith explained, lies in the use of sophisticated and lifelike AI.
“When we were looking back at a variety of motorsport games, we realized they were predictable,” Smith said. The GRID team, which is comprised of many fans of real-world motorsport, sought to replicate the visceral thrill they feel while watching actual motorsport races. “None of these games had the team & manufacturer rivalries, incidents, or events that make real motorsport so compelling,” Smith said.
To emulate the emotional experience of watching real motorsport, the GRID team decided to introduce “loyalty,” “Nemesis,” and “Rival” mechanics to the game. These mechanics work in tandem with the internal stats possessed by every player, which determine not only their driving skill but their aggressiveness, defensiveness, approach to entering and exiting sharp corners, and so on. With 400 unique AI drivers and 74 possible teammates, every race contains an element of realistic unpredictability.
Rivalries are singular relationships the player has to racers who perform better than them. Rivals serve as useful measurements of how well the player has done in past races; if the player manages to beat their rival, they can be assured that their performance is improving.
Relationships to nemeses, on the other hand, form in a more complicated way. “If you create a Nemesis by repeated car contact with an AI, we change their personality by giving them a boost to their skill and allow them to initiate car-to-car maneuvers,” Smith said. Nemeses are much more ruthless, often acting out of spite even when it’s to the detriment of their own performance in the race.
This kind of nuanced AI behavior is rare in racing games. AI opponents often maintain a single priority above everything else: to come out of the race with the best possible standing. But the Nemeses in GRID act on their “emotions” instead, valuing your failure above your success. Having to avoid vindictive Nemeses who are willing to stop the player at any cost makes races much more exciting and, well, human. “Nemeses created a lot of memorable racing stories for us during play, and we can’t wait for players to create their own,” Smith said.
The same goes for the “loyalty” mechanic, which affects how willing an AI teammate is to obey your orders. Teammates can be instructed to perform strategic maneuvers like preventing an opponent from overtaking the player. As such, they can be particularly valuable assets to have during a race.
Players, however, will want to be sure to check their teammate’s loyalty stat before enlisting them. While loyal teammates will heed the player’s instruction without hesitation, disloyal teammates might be harder to sway and are liable to ignore the player’s calls altogether.
GRID could very well set a precedent for racing games with realistic AI whose emotional behaviors have palpable bearings on the experience of a race. The next time you play a racing game, you might want to be careful of who you bump; that person could be your next Nemesis.
GRID will be available for PC on October 11, 2019.
