Good afternoon folks! This past week over on our discord, we had an interesting discussion regarding the career mode of various racing games, including V-Rally 3. Since the release dates for V-Rally 4 have been confirmed to be September 6th for PS4 and XBOX ONE (September 11th for North and South America), and September 25th for PC, and the career mode for the game is set to be revealed later on, the members of the community got into a discussion about what we would like to see in the game, based on our expectations, what other racing and rally games have been doing, and what its predecessors did.
Contemporary racing videogames have featured a career mode which acts as the main course of their gameplay serving. The player is tasked with working their way up the ladder, usually with underpowered cars at the beginning. Through racing and winning at events, the player earns money to upgrade and purchase better cars and progress to the next category, which feature even faster cars and even bigger prizes.
As the difficulty of the events ramp up, so does the intensity of winning; the rivals prove a challenge, mistakes cost a lot more time, and victories over races are fought and not just awarded for playing. It is also at the same time that the career is nearly over. After the completion of the career, the player is free to race again in past events to unlock extra cars and prizes. However, by and large, the gameplay plate has been exhausted, and these extra prizes serve more of a dessert to an often very satisfying main course.
And it is a proven formula too; games from as far back as the 90s, with titles like Gran Turismo, used the same kind of progression system with an eventual ramping up of intensity and of rewards. The model has largely remained the same, and for good reason; not only does it provide a bigger sense of engagement, but it also adds a very personal stake to the player’s progression.
Comparing the GT career model to its contemporaries from the era, it is clear why it had such an enormous and lasting success; racing games from the 90s and the early 2000s, especially ones representing an official sport like Formula 1 or the World Rally Championship, had a largely static championship mode. The player was able to choose amidst their favourite driver, or create their own in some cases, then choose their preferred car, and then compete with all the official drivers in a season-long championship. The championship mode of these games was a more gradual approach, where whilst each win was a big positive, what ultimately mattered was scoring enough points to win the championship. There was a lesser emphasis on winning every race, and a bigger emphasis on strategic finishing in order to maximize the points gained.
The two approaches have positives and negatives, of course. A big positive of the GT model is the gratification and satisfaction the player receives from unlocking new races and prizes with each victory. There is a clear progression that is visible to the player, and it makes goals clearer for the player to follow; where to race next, where to win afterwards, etc. A thing, however, that this model teaches is to rely upon exclusively on victory as the only viable outcome of a race. The GT model can make losing dull and something to be avoided entirely.
On the other hand, the championship mode does make amends to the faults of the GT model, simply by making losing fun and part of the grander game. Obviously, losing is never gonna be welcomed with delight by the player, but by allowing them to make mistakes and have a larger goal to work towards is a net positive towards enjoying the entirety of the game. The fault of these is that this has a defined end state and the player has only one chance across a championship to get it right, otherwise they’ll have to restart the whole championship. It too suffers from the GT model’s issue, one of losing being made not fun, only it is more gradual as a championship features a lot more races.
V-Rally 3, on the other hand, had an offering quite different to what was seen before, or since...
The famous and legendary V-Rally Mode of V-Rally 3 was a different breed of career mode, unlike what had been seen at the time. Unlike other racing games of the time, V-Rally Mode pitted your created driver as a rookie, beginning their career from the junior 1.6L Front Wheel Drive category. At first only the lower teams of the junior championship offer contracts, but as the player drives and complete their objectives and excel, the top tier junior teams gather interest and offer drives in their cars. Winning the championship leads the player to have access to the big league: the 2.0L Four Wheel Drive championship. Once again, the player starts from the bottom and makes their way up in a considerably harder environment, contracting the teams they’re interested in, conducting mid-season tests and achieving the team objectives. In the end, they can be crowned champion of the big category... and they can continue the next year into keeping their title!
V-Rally 3′s major innovation in the career mode was decisively the fluid nature of the championships. The player has a lot of chances to prove themselves in the rallies, and even if they fail miserably, there will be a lower team that will offer them a seat for the next season, where they can pick up again and go on to prove themselves. The same also applies for the other drivers the player races against; not a single team remains the same after each season, especially if better drivers from the junior category make it onto the big league.
This leads to situations where the player’s goals align with a team and it is both in their best interest for the player to just try their best, and see if they can achieve that miraculous 10th place finish the team can never seem to afford. Then, as the seasons progress and both the player and the team become more focused and experienced, they can aim for 5th place, or even the podium.
This natural progression follows the player and motivates them to keep on playing and achieve even greater things with their career. It is a very natural way of portraying how the actual WRC works, better than single-season championship system of officially licensed products, or the loose GT model career of other racing games, where only the player’s progression matters.
So, did the industry collectively forget about V-Rally 3′s innovations? Not quite!
The games that better depicted a version of this mode are the modern Formula 1 games developed by Codemasters. Those games offer multiple seasons within their career mode, in which the player begins from a smaller team as a promising rookie and ascend through the ranks and the teams. However, those games never quite achieved the same level of interaction as V-Rally 3 did, simply because the focus is exclusively on the player, and the rest of the field remained stagnant and locked into place because of existing licenses.
So, that leads us to V-Rally 4, and its promised career mode. Honestly, this is a shot in the dark, mainly because we have no idea how it’s gonna look or play. Chief suspicions from the E3 demo booth and the overall look of the game so far indicate V-Rally 4 is gonna have a career similar to DiRT 2, one where the player will hop across multiple disciplines, unlock cars, and race them to unlock more cars and tracks. However, it is possible that V-Rally 4 may follow a different approach. V-Rally 4 features a lot of rally and v-rallycross events, 6 and 5 respectively, enough to create a main championship around those two; V-Rally 3, after all, had two championships, one ran with 4 rallies for the entire season and the other with 6 rallies. Thus, the other disciplines could serve as extra events the player could tackle to increase their worth, similar to how V-Rally 3 had the mid-season tests for teams interested in the player. That is, however, speculation on our ends, as nothing about the career mode of V-Rally 4 has been revealed yet.
It is important to note that Alain Jarniou, the project lead of Kylotonn, was the project lead and chief designer of the V-Rally Mode during the production of V-Rally 3. This is a big reason why here, in V-Rally People, we believe that the promised mode of V-Rally 4 will, indeed, be quite special.
This about wraps up today’s article. What are your thoughts on the subject? Do you enjoy the career mode as presented in games like DiRT and Gran Turismo, or do you prefer a good championship mode like it is found in the Formula 1 and MotoGP games? Let us know in the reblogs, or by joining our V-Rally People Discord Server and Facebook Group, or follow us on Twitter to receive the latest news on V-Rally 4!
