Interview met Chris Bowles, Lead designer van PURE.

Onlangs kregen we bij X-Power de mogelijkheid om Chris Bowles, de lead designer van het spel PURE, te interviewen. We hadden net een hele voormiddag het spel kunnen testen met verschillende andere journalisten. De kers op de taart kwam dan nog in de namiddag toen we op kosten van Ubisoft getrakteerd werden op het rijden met echte Quads (of ATVs) in het zonnige Durbuy. Na deze vermoeiende dag kreeg onze reporter nog de kans om hem onderstaande vragen te stellen:

X-Power: Why did you guys decided to call the game PURE?

Chris Bowles: Well, we spent a long time thinking about the name for this game. We sat in a big room trying to describe the emotions that we have when we play it. We were saying that it’s PURE excitement, PURE adrenaline, PURE fun and then we realized that everything we were saying we were saying with PURE. So we thought: “Hey, let’s call the game PURE!”.

X-Power: Can you tell us a bit more about the different locations and the tracks in the game?

Chris Bowles: Sure, with the PURE World Tour, which is the main game mode, there are 50 events set across 10 stages. We have set those in 7 different environments around the world. These go from your classic kind of Glamis and Archetillo, which are based in America. And then we go around the world, so we have tracks in Thailand, some in New Zealand. So there is a big spread of environments there.

X-Power: A big part of the game is doing all those sensational tricks. Can you explain to our readers how that works?

Chris Bowles: In PURE we wanted to make tricks really important for the racing. So as you are going along initially you only have access to the basic tricks. If you pull of a few of those you can unlock the next tier of tricks. But also every time you do a trick you earn a little bit of boost. So you can choose to use this boost to get ahead in races or to unlock the bigger tricks as you are playing.

X-Power: Can you briefly explain the difference between all the different play modes in the game?

Chris Bowles: Outside of the PURE World Tour, if you get to the single events, you have 3 game modes. That is the Race, which is the traditional 3 laps of these beautiful tracks set out in the wilderness. Then we have the Sprint tracks, which are like a shorter version of this. With 16 players all on the track is gets very busy. So it is all about who gets the best racing line. And with a game where we have all this crazy tricks and stuff we know that there are people who want to make the big combo’s and the big high scores. So we have the Freestyle mode for that.

X-Power: OK, sounds great. So I saw that new ‘build-a-ride’-feature in the game. Can you tell us about all the possibilities?

Chris Bowles: When we made this game we didn’t want there to be just like 12 ATV’s that you unlock as you play through. So we have built a thousand parts and we allow you to build your bike from the frame up. We think that there are over 80.000 combinations, so when you play online hopefully no two bikes will ever be the same.

X-Power: And what about the multiplayer?

Chris Bowles: We are very proud to say that we have 16 players online. Which makes it a really fun and exciting racing experience with a really busy track. In your online lobby you can scroll to a different player and see his bike and rotate is so you will know how further ahead in the game they are then you.

X-Power: Can we expect a demo anytime soon and when will the game be released?

Chris Bowles: PURE is released on the 25th of September for Xbox 360, PS3 and PC. The demo will be on Xbox LIVE and PS3 network early September.

X-Power: And Chris, which is your favourite console?

Chris Bowles: That will be the Xbox 360.

X-Power: Correct answer, thank you!

Chris Bowles: Thank you!