Colin McRae's name will live on: DiRT 2 announced

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