While the original DiRT from Codemasters barely mentioned Colin McRae’s name that much and even had extreme sports athlete and rally driver, Travis Pastrana doing all the in-game voice, Codemasters have decided to keep his name a part of the franchise despite his tragic death in a helicopter crash last year.
This was made known when Codemasters announced the upcoming release of Colin McRae: DiRT 2. Gavin Raeburn, producer of DiRT 2 had the following to say:
“The decision was made jointly between Codemasters and the McRae family. His ventures into events such as the X-Games, Dakar Rally and the Race of Champions have inspired us to look at events covering the extremes of off-road motorsport. This is where we’re taking the series with DiRT 2 and Colin will play a part in that. DiRT 2 will be a great tribute, and we’ll be revealing more about this over the coming months.””
While they are referring to the game as a tribute, I can’t say that I don’t feel as if they are abusing his name a little here. I’m not saying that they are purposefully using his death as a major selling point, however they are obviously aware of the extra attention it will receive if the game is marketed as a “tribute”.
The first DiRT was received fairly well from gamers, although many (including myself) did not like the non-sensical magical driving physics that allowed rally cars to take hairpins at 180km/h as long as you let off of the accelerator.
Gavin Raeburn also comments that DiRT 2 will concentrate on “the extremes of off-road motorsport”.
I hope that they spend enough time polishing the physics before trying to add in some sort of 4×4 lawnmower racing series to the mix, although that would kinda rock.
source: Kotaku
Last Updated: November 20, 2008
gazza
November 20, 2008 at 09:04
Dirt was awesome, I hope they keep the conpletely unrealistic dirt driving physics as I found the first game real fun.
gazza
November 20, 2008 at 09:05
And lawnmower racing would be awesome!!!
Inferno888
November 20, 2008 at 09:08
Can’t say I agree with you there gazza, wasn’t a big fan of the origional, offline play was ok, but live play wasn’t so great for me, couldn’t even race next to your friends or see them racing… Will be interesting to see if someone would give number 2 a bad review now though…
Fox1
November 20, 2008 at 10:02
“4×4 lawnmower…” 😆
easy
November 20, 2008 at 11:01
as a motor sport fan, i have the highest respect for colin macrae and am happy that codemasters has decided to pay tribute to him, and by proxy his son.
i don’t think its codemasters intention to abuse his name.