Forza Motorsport 2: Dan Greenawalt Interview
With Forza Motorsport 2’s maker Turn 10 just days away from product certification, it’s hard to imagine the development team thinking about anything more than sticking a fork in this baby.
Turn 10’s hard work and true car lust is about to pay off for racing game fans too, as Forza Motorsport 2 is scheduled to hit shelves on May 29th. With a build finally in our mitts, we can lead up to the start of the racing season in Forza Motorsport 2 with tons of coverage, including a look at the cars, tracks, and online components of this all-inclusive car nut’s dream.
But before we break the tires loose, we wanted to catch Forza Motorsport 2’s lead game designer Dan Greenawalt before he takes a well-deserved vacation after certification submittal. Dan has worked on racing titles like Midtown Madness and Rallisport Challenge in the past, as well as the original Forza Motorsport for the Xbox. Now Greenawalt’s knowledge of game design and physics, plus a huge love of car and car culture is about to pay off in Forza Motorsport 2. Let’s see what he had to say about the competition, working with next-gen hardware and his visionary plans for future racing titles.
![[IMG]](http://media.teamxbox.com/games/ss/1476/full-res/1177368563.jpg)
The most feared time attack vehicle in the land.
With the Forza franchise moving to the next generation of hardware, it seems like the sky is the limit in terms of what Turn 10 can do with this franchise. Did you accomplish all of your design goals in Forza Motorsport 2?
Dan Greenawalt: We did most of what we wanted, but this version, the next version and probably a version after that won’t get where I want to go. I really, really want to bring different groups together and create this vibrant community; where you don’t know if you’re offline or online, but you’re always learning about and loving cars. A changing world all the time. Forza Motorsport accomplished a lot of this, and Forza Motorsport 2 will accomplish much more, but I still have these strong visions in my head of where I want to go with the franchise, but the technology isn’t even there yet.
So what aspect of the much more powerful hardware pays off the most for a team designing an ultra-deep and realistic racing sim?
Dan Greenawalt: The biggest “pop” we get from a franchise standpoint when you go to the next gen is that you have to rebuild all of your tracks, rebuild all of your cars, rebuild all of your audio, etc. In rebuilding it, it gets higher res, better shading, better lighting, higher poly…and that’s a big pop.
But doesn’t this throw your production schedules all out of whack? That’s a lot of work.
Dan Greenawalt: Yes. Unfortunately it means you have to do less during development, or take more time. What you usually do is a little bit of both; you do a little bit less and take a little bit more time. That’s what we did. We had to cut some stuff because we have to rebuild it all. It’s basically like starting over from scratch.
So what were some of the focal points of this new project? You know, those areas that needed to be a big step up from its predecessor?
Dan Greenawalt: In the original Forza, I was not happy with how the U.I. (User Interface) turned out. The game is like twenty five percent U.I. too, because you’re upgrading, you’re tuning, you’re painting, and there’s all the Live stuff. So to have the U.I. not feel like a home base- a cool piece of car lust in and of itself- was a failure to me. I also didn’t like how the music turned out, so we redid all of the music, and would have done so even if we stayed on the previous-gen Xbox hardware. And we would have invested in Live features such as the Auction house and Photo Mode too [even if we weren’t on new hardware], as this helps get us closer to that ultimate vision of bringing together car enthusiasts.
Leveling up cars and players seems to be a big part of the racing game culture. What is your approach/philosophy to this process?
Dan Greenawalt: To me, this is like a psychology experiment. You want to give people enough so that they are excited, but take away enough that they’re wanting. It’s a constant give-and-take to keep people addicted. It’s really straight-up addiction. By having the player level and having the car level; having Achievement points, and having rivalries against the A.I., to me, they all blend together to create this addiction. One minute you’re like “I only need a few more credits to level up this car. I’ll do one more race.” And after that you’re like “Oh, If I only get 100 more credits I’ll level up my driver.” So you do that, and it unlocks a car, and “Oh, I’ve unlocked a part,” And so on.
![[IMG]](http://media.teamxbox.com/games/ss/1476/full-res/1177368565.jpg)
More tire telemetry than you’ll ever need to know.
I notice a lot of competitor titles floating about the Turn 10 offices. Research?
Dan Greenawalt: It’s different for different titles actually. I’m kind of obsessively hungry for info., and racing games are easy for me to devour in this way. But it’s really in games of a different genre that we learn the most. We have a lot in our game from Pokemon; the whole regional rarity thing is all straight-up Pokemon. I played a lot of Animal Crossing, a lot of World of Warcraft, Oblivion, open sandbox games like Crackdown and Grand Theft Auto. All of those really affect the design of Forza.
So what is being done with these copies of Rallisport Challenge 2, Midnight Club, and PGR?
Dan Greenawalt: For me it’s an obligatory “I need to know what they are doing,” because we are competitors for sure. And I need to know what are they good and where are they bad; so, where can we beat them, and where are we losing. Because of this, I end up playing a lot of bad games. All of the good games, everybody else plays them, and they let me know about the innovative features.
How do you make a hardcore racing sim like Forza Motorsport 2 be accessible to those that may not have 30 Weight rushing through their veins?
Dan Greenawalt: For me it’s about studying them and looking at other games that have been successful with them, and trying to blend chocolate and peanut butter, as in, how can we make that blend work? The Pokemon features, the driver assists, the car leveling and the player leveling all help. But some of it also is just having Ferrari, Porsche and Lamborghini, as well as your Honda Civic and your Dodge Neon.
So the mainstream cars help with the learning curve a bit, do they?
Dan Greenawalt: Most racing games are a bit arcadey. It’s not uncommon to jump right into an Enzo and have a good ol’ time. If you jump into an Enzo in Forza Motorsport 2, you better know what you’re doing, because it’s going to punish you. Like Eddie Griffin, as he learned, even in a parking lot an Enzo can be dangerous.
![[IMG]](http://media.teamxbox.com/games/ss/1476/full-res/1177368564.jpg)
55.602? Good luck!
Reading you loud-and-clear. My Time Trial with the Top Secret S15 at Tsukuba with no assists was a hard, embarrassing lesson.
Dan Greenawalt: Oh yeah. All of our time trials were custom-designed to be a unique challenge. In the original Forza the time trials went from low end to start out to high end. Not so in Forza Motorsport 2. Time trials in Forza Motorsport 2 prove your mettle, that is, “do you have what it takes?” kind of challenges. The Top Secret S15 was a drift car drifting on Tsukuba, so that’s where we put it. The HKS Time Attack Evo is on Tsukuba too, since that’s where it set its time attack record. The Nürburgring has the Porsche 962C So each one of these time trials is now a snap shot of some racing history.
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