Seems to be just going back to the previous publisher, which didn’t exactly release amazing rally games when they had the license. Maybe they’ll surprise me, but I suspect Dirt Rally 2.0 and Richard Burns Rally will continue to be the main options for a while longer.
I wouldn’t hold your breath. Word is, those recent EA layoffs hit a lot of the Codemasters people, including the teams working on their rally games. They mostly kept the F1 team because that series inexplicably sells tons every release (never been an F1 fan myself, but there does seem to be an appetite for those games). Anyone not on the F1 team was moved to another internal EA team whose name escapes me at the moment and they’re working as a support team for others.
I was talking about Nacon (the new/old WRC publisher) not EA or Codemasters, but agreed.
But isn’t that a good thing for this? It means the old Codemasters team is no longer at EA, and maybe they’ll find a job here now.
In a perfect world, sure, but I only know of one time when most of a team stayed together after being laid off and that was when Sony shut down Evolution Studios and around 80% of them were picked up by Codemasters. It’s not likely to happen again and the Nacon has multiple fully staffed racing teams, including the one that made the WRC games before EA bought Codemasters and destroyed them.
Yeah, it’s not likely to happen, but still EA wasn’t making good use of them. I always hate to see layoffs, but making people with knowledge available, especially when other studios end up with a demand for them, is good. I’m sure they won’t pick up the entire team, but I’d be surprised if some of them don’t end up there.
EA rarely makes good use of the devs it consumes and destroys, unfortunately. This isn’t even the first racing team that I was a fan of they’ve destroyed. Hell, it’s not even the first British racing team they’ve destroyed. They’re truly a plague on the industry.
While I definitely hope the people laid off all land on their feet, having a handful of people from a large team show up at another studio doesn’t really do anything for us. We’ll never get another DriveClub or OnRush or Dirt 5 because the magic that team made has been scattered to the winds.
We’ll never get the same thing, but I’m always hopeful that some of the people have the knowledge, resources, and desire to spin up new studios at least, where they can make the games they’ve always wanted to make but weren’t allowed to. Certainly they won’t all end up at the same place, and only a few with this studio, but their experience now gets spread to new places outside of EA where I think we can expect better things.
We’ll have to wait and see. Hopefully we get cool indie experiences, like The Art of Rally, as well as more expensive projects, like whatever the WRC game becomes.
I loved Grid and Dirt 3, but haven’t really played any of the games since. I played Grid 2 a little bit when it went on sale. I’m interested if this new one is as good as those were.
Dirt 3 was absolute garbage. Dirt Rally was great, if not a bit spartan, and Dirt Rally 2.0 is what I can recommend as possibly the best rallying game since Richard Burns.
Dirt 2 is still one is my favourite racing games. It just gives me the right vibes. 3 felt lonely in comparison
I will not hear this slander, Dirt 3 was awesome! Dirt 4 and 5 were meh though.
When they were making DiRT 4, there was probably a meeting where they said: hmm, DiRT Rally was too good, how do we make it worse? And then they came up with a lot of suggestions and implemented all of them.
I’m not sure what crack this other dude is smoking but dirt 3 was awesome. I loved all the drifting time trials. Totally reminded me of Project Gotham racing.
I loved Project Gotham too!
Well count me interested. I could really go for a version of Dirt Rally 2 with more multiplayer versatility
How was the EA/Codemasters WRC title compared to the Dirt Rally titles? I didn’t buy it because it has Denuvo DRM, even on Steam.
I have both. EA WRC looks, feels and runs WAY worse compared to Dirt Rally 2.0, and that’s on my fairly beefy 5800x3d / 7800 xt desktop machine. Dr2.0 also runs perfectly on my steam deck, while I haven’t even bothered to try running EA WRC on it (it would run like shit if it ran at all, plus the install size is like a gajillion GB).
On the upside, the tracks are way bigger / longer in EA WRC, some of them are a bit more interesting, and there’s a cool pseudo-roguelite mechanic in the campaign mode where every week you choose what to do (main race or side race to appease the sponsor, recruitment of team members, resting, etc.). That said, I couldn’t bring myself to finish a single season due to how pathetically janky the driving is.
Well, you wouldn’t get far even trying to run EA WRC on the steam deck, as they added kernel level anti cheat after launch so it’s now incompatible with Linux.
Yikes! Good to know, thanks! I’m doubly glad I didn’t buy it now. I still have to buy DR2 anyway.
Interesting about the stages and mechanics. I love long/realistic stages, but that’s not enough to overcome the other issues.
Be sure to grab it (DR 2.0, that is) before it’s inevitably delisted, it happens with all heavily licensed games. Even the original Dirt Rally is still fantastic if you have an older rig IMO, and it was going for two bucks years ago.
Yikes, good point! I do have the original Dirt Rally and don’t want to miss out on 2.0.
Seems to still have Denuvo and even has EA anticheat, which means no Linux support, even for single player.
Bleargh, I’m glad I didn’t buy it. I’m making preparations to move to Linux.
Couldn’t tell you I’m afraid, I also haven’t bought it. I grabbed DR2 because I saw it really cheap on sale and just wanted a rally sim rather than seeking out a specific one
Cool, no worries. I keep meaning to buy DR2 on sale too. I will, eventually.
If you’re able to, get the version with the all the DLC. I think I paid £5 for that vs £3 for just the base game. The extra stuff is well worth getting
Will do, thanks!
Won’t be long and codemasters will end up like all other legendary studios like Maxis, Westwoods, Origin and many many more… On the EA graveyard
I have not played a wrc game in years I might have to check this one out.
Eeeew, Nacon. No thanks.
Is this the same Rally series as Top Gear Rally on N64? I loved that game.
I’m afraid not. “Rally” is just the generic term for this kind of motorsport
