With Dirt 4 how do you plan to broaden the appeal of off-road rallying motorsport?

Off-Road racing is an incredible sport to take part in, but watching it can be a challenge. Often events take place over a long period of time and are on TV channels that not everyone has access to, so fewer people are aware of how cool it really is.

To broaden the appeal, we have looked beyond our traditional core sports of Rally and Rallycross and diversified into Shortcourse Truck and Buggy Racing as well as offering players Joyride, which is all about skill-based driving over a course set out in a defined play area.

"We definitely didn’t set out to remake Colin McRae Rally, but because both games were striving to create the best rally game ever made, I think the feeling they gave the player was very similar despite the fact that they were released nearly 20 years apart."

So, Dirt 4 is technically a follow up to the exceptional Dirt Rally but it isn’t a direct follow up? Why is that?

We know that players who played DiRT Rally and took the time to get into it really enjoyed the experience, so we wanted to make sure that we maintained that for those players. That said, we also know that a whole lot of players were put off by the fact that DiRT Rally was unashamedly hard.

We’ve done so much more to guide players into the experience with DiRT 4. We start with a handling choice between Gamer and Simulation. If you are new to DiRT or returning after having played DiRT 2 or 3, then Gamer is probably the best place to start. If you love the challenge of simulation or you enjoyed DiRT Rally, then you should probably dive straight in with Simulation handling.

Once you make that choice, we take you through a welcome event and into the DiRT Academy, which is located at DirtFish Rallyschool in Washington State. This is a real place and the techniques you learn in game are the same as you would learn if you were to go there. Once you’ve found your feet you can then start your career.

Every event in the career is much more carefully curated than ever before because of Your Stage, our procedural stage generation system. It has given the design team better control over the difficulty of the stages and has removed all sense of repeating stages as you progress.

Ultimately, we want as many people as possible to enjoy our games, and so it was important for us to go beyond the core audiences that enjoyed DiRT Rally. Making DiRT 4 was the most logical thing to do.

Dirt Rally was perhaps the best rally game I have played in ages. In many ways it felt similar to the older Colin McRae games which I think is a fantastic nostalgic feeling. How do you plan to carry on that feeling with Dirt 4?

It’s interesting you say that. I was shown the original game design document for Colin McRae Rally while we were working on DiRT Rally, and if you put the designs side by side, the things they were setting out to achieve were incredibly similar.

We definitely didn’t set out to remake Colin McRae Rally, but because both games were striving to create the best rally game ever made, I think the feeling they gave the player was very similar despite the fact that they were released nearly 20 years apart.

"The coolest thing about Your Stage is that if you race a stage and enjoy it, you can rate it, save it to your favorites and then share it with your friends. I think this will really open up the online competition and ensure that people continue to be challenged by new stages a long time after DiRT 4 is released."

So Dirt 4 has infinite rally stages. How does it work?

Well, I can’t go into the specific details as that would be giving away our secrets, but suffice to say we use complex algorithms to run a route through a pre-existing landscape. The system chooses a starting point and then uses the algorithm to make sure that the stage follows an appropriate path, doesn’t fold back on itself, and obeys the rules of the landscape, such as not cutting through lakes and mountains.

It is an incredibly powerful piece of technology and this is just the start of how we plan to use it, however for DiRT 4 we wanted to ensure that the experience of generating stages was as immediate as possible for the player. As a result, we have allowed the player to choose the length of the stage and its complexity before they hit generate. It really is that simple and the possibilities are near infinite.

Your Stage seems like fantastic feature but players have some doubts. With only 5 locations, how do you plan to make it feel fresh?

I get their concerns, but we have always had a fairly limited number of locations in our games and each of those locations had a small number of unique stages in them. This meant that most players had seen every stage that the game had to offer after about three hours of playing through the career.

With Your Stage, that extremely limited number of unique stages has been blown wide open. We’ve been able to curate around 300 hundred unique stages through our career and in doing so we have been able to smooth the difficulty curve better than we have ever been able to do before.

The coolest thing about Your Stage is that if you race a stage and enjoy it, you can rate it, save it to your favorites and then share it with your friends. I think this will really open up the online competition and ensure that people continue to be challenged by new stages a long time after DiRT 4 is released.

The year is packed with big racing games and you will be going off against Gran Turismo Sport, Project CARS 2 and the next Forza. How will Dirt 4 stand up against the rest of the competition?

Well for a start, I think it is great that there are so many big racing titles out there for fans to enjoy. Some people have been saying that racing games have been going into decline, but it is great to see games getting released and the genre enjoying a real resurgence.

From our perspective, DiRT has always had its own unique feeling and personality and that has set us apart from many of the other racing games out there. It would have been easy for us to just keep selling the same type of game, but as a studio it is important for us to continue to innovate so that we can maintain our position at the forefront of off road racing.

"Perhaps the coolest thing about running your own team is that you get to choose your livery design and colors and sign contracts with sponsors to place on your vehicles. It’s an area of customization that we have never done in the DiRT franchise before and I think it is a really neat enhancement to make the career that much more personal to you."

The game features 50 cars…a decent number. But how do these cars differ from each other? Have you fine-tuned each and one of them according to their real-life variables?

Yes, absolutely! If you look at the types of cars we represent in DiRT 4, you could be forgiven for thinking that they would all drive pretty much the same. After all, they are mostly based on road going saloon cars, with similar engine sizes and chassis layouts.

That is actually where our simulation team has done such incredible work. By modeling the many different types of suspension and chassis geometry, by accurately simulating the way each type of differential works, you end up with every car having its own character and nuance.

We set every car up so that it exudes the character that it is known for, but you can dive into the tuning options and tweak the set up to your driving style if you wish.

Dirt Rally also featured some fantastic vehicle sounds. How are you upping it in 4?

Hah! We are turning it up to 11! Seriously though, our audio team loves to innovate and develop new techniques to ensure that the fidelity of our recordings is better than ever.

One of the most exciting things they have managed to do for DiRT 4 is to secure access to an ultra rare Lancia 037 Group B car. They covered it in microphones and recorded it driving around a test track. When we used the car in game in a recent livestream, our fans were blown away with how good it sounded. It’s such a unique car and one of the few rally cars that is supercharged, so it was important for us to capture that sound properly.

What kind of improvements have you made to track and environment details compared to Dirt Rally?

Much of the improvements come from the new lighting model. It allows us to showcase the environments in many more times of day and weather conditions than we have ever been able to do before. As a result, there is considerably more variety every time you run a race in the same location.

We’ve also found that because we are using Your Stage to procedurally generate our routes, we see some stages that we would never have dreamed of making if we had been limited to just a handful of courses in each location. They are awesome moments like coming over a crest and seeing the road snaking away into the valley ahead or times where you literally get a two or three miles of near straight road where you can just pin the throttle and drive as fast as you dare.

Weather wise, we have made a heap of improvements including changeable weather. So now you can start a race and there will be small droplets of rain but by the end you are in a torrential downpour. Likewise you can be driving a stage in overcast conditions and you suddenly get plunged into thick fog. They all make a significant difference to how you need to react as a driver.

Will it be possible for you to explain the career mode? How deep is it compare to say Dirt 3?

Making a more in depth career mode was vitally important for DiRT 4. We focus tested a number of players and they were keen to have a play through that took them about 15 hours but we knew also that there were many players who wanted an even deeper experience.

I think we have catered well to both groups with plenty in between. Once you have graduated from the DiRT Academy, you embark on your rally career in Michigan. You quickly find that you’ll then be invited to race in Landrush and Rallycross Championships around the world.

Another key addition is that we let you choose between being a driver who races for teams based on driver offers or, if you can afford a car, starting your own team and hiring your own engineers to compete. If you run your own team there are more management aspects to deal with, but you take a bigger cut from your winnings.

Perhaps the coolest thing about running your own team is that you get to choose your livery design and colors and sign contracts with sponsors to place on your vehicles. It’s an area of customization that we have never done in the DiRT franchise before and I think it is a really neat enhancement to make the career that much more personal to you.

What can you tell us about the game’s engine and the enhancements you have made for Dirt 4?

As I mentioned previously, probably the biggest enhancement has been to the lighting and the fact that it adds a significant amount of variety and atmosphere to each of our locations.

That said, we have made some really strong evolutions to the simulation engine that we developed with the help of our community during DiRT Rally. The key areas we have improved are; aerodynamics, the way we model the chassis geometry, and improvements to the asphalt tire model, especially the Rallycross crossply tire.

Finally, the other significant improvement comes from the introduction of our Gamer handling model. This was developed because we wanted more players to enjoy DiRT 4, but when we focus tested our simulation model on them, they struggled to keep the car on the road. We tried adding a load of assists but we found that they still struggled, and more importantly they felt that the game was not fun to play.

We took a step back and approached the problem from a different direction. The result is that we have an alternative handling model that requires less skill to go fast, but also feels empowering and a great deal of fun. It really is a very special thing and I’m delighted that more players are going to be able to enjoy DiRT 4 as a result.

"We haven’t got any plans to support Scorpio at the moment but it really is too early for us to be making any decisions about it."

Will Dirt 4 run at 1080p and 60fps on both PS4 and Xbox One?

60fps is the most important thing for us. Our aim is to run it at 1080p as much as we can, but we dynamically drop the resolution to maintain the framerate if we have to.

Do you have any enhancements planned for the PS4 Pro version? Can you reveal the resolution and frame rate for the Pro version?

The tech guys don’t like me answering this question as I will inevitably get something wrong, but suffice to say there are some improvements. Resolution-wise it will run 1080p still and the framerate will remain locked at 60fps.

The Scorpio has been announced by Microsoft but Dirt 4 is launching before it. Any plans to add support for it down the line?

We haven’t got any plans to support Scorpio at the moment but it really is too early for us to be making any decisions about it.

Scorpio is a powerful hardware and given the expertise you have with PC gaming, do you think its hardware will be able to support 4K/60fps for Dirt 4?

I think it will be interesting to try. We know many of our PC community enjoy DiRT Rally in 4k so it is theoretically possible. As I have said before, the tech guys won’t be happy with me making any promises so you’ll just have to wait and see.

Is there anything else you want to tell our readers before we let you go?

I’m looking forward to meeting some of them on the track when DiRT 4 is released in June!

Right as you boot the game, Dirt 4 gives you the option to select between two difficulty modes- Gamer and Simulation. Simulation, as the name suggests, is a difficulty that is catered towards rally simulation veterans, and for those who played and were able to master the mechanics of Dirt Rally, you’ll feel quite at home with this mode. For those who are not that deeply entrenched in the racing simulation genre as some others might be, though, there’s the Gamer mode, which takes the mechanics of the game and tones them down to a great extent.

Gamer mode is a great entry point for those who are looking for an accessible experience and don’t play too many rally simulation games. With plenty of driving assists, much more responsive, slightly arcade-like mechanics, Gamer mode lets you get familiar and eventually comfortable with the game’s systems. When you’re comfortable enough with what the game tries to be, you can finally jump into Simulation mode- not a choice you have to make, by any means, but definitely one that is recommended.

"Finding the balance between going as fast as you can but also being careful about not being bested by the track and ultimately crashing your car in the most devastating way possible is what makes this game such a thrill at its core."

Because it is really the Simulation mode where Dirt 4 is at its best. The game was obviously developed with proper simulation mechanics in mind, and while the difficulty levels of the game are extremely customizable and affect everything from the handling of your car to how intense the weather affects are in effect, the game truly shines when it’s being hyper-realistic. Because that is when the game almost perfectly simulates the sort of thrill and demanding action you’d expect a rally to have.

Dirt 4 is marvelous at simulating these moments, at making you excited about the next turn, the next bend, the next maneuver. Finding the balance between going as fast as you can but also being careful about not being bested by the track and ultimately crashing your car in the most devastating way possible is what makes this game such a thrill at its core. And that’s not even it- you’ve got so much to contend with- you have to take into account what kind of a surface you’re driving on; when it rains or when there’s fog or mist, you have to adapt your driving style to how much visibility there is.

When it comes to the actual act of driving and simulation, Dirt 4 nails everything almost to perfection. Thankfully, even outside of the act of driving, the game’s supporting features and mechanics are solid. The one that springs to mind almost immediately is Your Track, which essentially turns Dirt 4 into a game that has, in effect, an unlimited number of tracks. While the locations in Dirt 4 are limited, there is no limit on how many tracks there are in each of those locations.

"The fact that every track in Dirt 4 is procedurally generated means that the game always keeps you on your toes, and that thrill and tension that you should feel in an actual rally never leaves you, no matter how many hours you’ve spent with the game."

Dirt 4’s tracks, you see, are procedurally generated. There’s not a lot of player input required for this generation- with two sliders for each aspect, you determine the length and complexity of your desired track, and after that, the game does everything else by itself. The tracks it generates are always top notch in quality and seamlessly integrated, and you’ll never get the feeling that these are tracks that have been artificially cobbled together within just moments. The surroundings always look beautiful and authentic, and the tracks themselves have a wonderful flow to them.

The sheer genius of this move, though, is that no two races in the game are ever the same. While in every rally game up until now, players eventually stop relying on their attention, instincts and the instructions of their co-drivers and instead start relying on their memory of what the track they’re driving on is designed like – rote driving, if you will – the fact that every track in Dirt 4 is procedurally generated means that the game always keeps you on your toes, and that thrill and tension that you should feel in an actual rally never leaves you, no matter how many hours you’ve spent with the game. This also means that there’s no issue of the game having less content in terms of tracks- simply because there are literally infinite tracks to race on.

Outside of the tracks, the content department is still pretty strong, and offers a fair bit of variety for the players too. The career mode, for instance, is very well designed, and benefits greatly from the ingenuity of Your Track. Even outside of racing, the career mode features some micromanagement features. It sees you building your own team, and has you not only filling up your garage with more and more cars, but also things like sponsorship deals and what mechanics you hire to take care of your vehicles in between races.

"Add to that the fact that Dirt 4 also features daily, weekly and monthly Community events, as well as competitive online races across all of its modes – rally, Landrush, and Rallycross – and it can safely be said that the game is in no danger of falling short in the content department."

Outside of that, there’s Landrush, which puts you in the driver seat of buggies or trucks and lets you lose on sandy tracks, where you race it out against opponent drivers. Landrush serves as a nice change of pace from all the rallying. There’s a limited number of tracks in Landrush, though, all of them handcrafted, and that, coupled with the fact that there’s little variety in those limited tracks means that Landrush serves as nothing more than a pleasant, intermittent distraction.

Then there’s Rallycross, where you race against seven opponents on licensed FIA tracks. The races are much shorter here, and the cars you drive are absolute powerhouses, so this mode ends up being much more fun than Landrush, providing short, intense bursts of utter enjoyment. There’s also the Academy, which serves as a sort of an open playground where you can test out all of your cars, learn the ropes and even take part in some enjoyable time attack events.

Add to that the fact that Dirt 4 also features daily, weekly and monthly Community events, as well as competitive online races across all of its modes – rally, Landrush, and Rallycross – and it can safely be said that the game is in no danger of falling short in the content department.

"What helps its authenticity stand out, apart from its excellent simulation mechanics, is the fact that Dirt 4 looks and sounds great."

What helps its authenticity stand out, apart from its excellent simulation mechanics, is the fact that Dirt 4 looks and sounds great. The visuals aren’t the absolute best in class, admittedly, but they’re still pretty damn good. The tracks and their surroundings look great, the cars have a satisfying worn out look to them, with dirty windows and mud-caked tires, and the weather effects are top notch. The way the water splashes on your screen – or your windshield, if you’re in cockpit mode – and the way the fog rolls and swirls around and impairs your visibility is an absolute delight to look at. The cars, too, look really good, both from the outside, and from the inside while in cockpit view.

And they don’t just look good. They sound awesome as well. Whether it be while you’re revving them, or while you’re braking around a corner, or while you’re crashing into a fence, the game has some great sound effects. Your co-drivers, too, are almost always very reliable with their track notes, and you’ll end up relying on them a great deal, especially when the visibility is not all that good- as you should, considering that this is a rally simulator.

Dirt 4 is, ultimately, an excellent rally simulator, but it also manages to be fairly accessible to those that might not be too familiar with the genre. It does the impossible and manages to appease both kinds of players. It’s also brimming with content, and the fact that it has practically unlimited tracks means that you’ll never get bored, and it will never get repetitive.

This game was reviewed on the PlayStation 4.

DiRT 4 is due out later this year, and in a brand new trailer for it that Codemasters released today, they showed off the sheer breadth of off road racing that fans can expect from the new installment. Set to the track ‘Instigators’ by Grace Potter, one of the songs from the in-game soundtrack that has been created for DiRT 4 in an exclusive partnership with Universal Music’s Globe, the trailer showcases some of the 50 off road vehicles through history that will be featured in the game.

In addition to the 50 cars, there will be five rally locations with ‘millions of routes’, set across Australia, Spain, Michigan, Sweden & Wales. DiRT 4 is also apparently going to be the official FIA World Rallycross Championship, so you can race across licensed locations.

You can check out the trailer for yourself below. DiRT 4 launches on June 6 for PS4, Xbox One, and PC. Make sure to stay tuned for more coverage and information.