Will there be any car damage in Gran Turismo 4? Surely the more realistic the game gets the more a lack of damage sticks out like a sore thumb, undermining this realism?
Kazunori: The simple answer to your question is: no. We are not planning to include any visual car damage. However, we are considering something, although we are not 100 percent sure... For instance, you saw the Grand Canyon course with the car running close to the ridges of the canyon?
If the driver messes up and misses the course, we might show the car jumping off the cliff, but we won\'t show it falling into pieces at the bottom. We\'re still considering that and we don\'t know how far we can go with it.
Instead of visual damage, we are considering some kind of a penalty system in which players will be penalised for trying to run corners along a wall, as they did in Gran Turismo 3 for instance. Also, pushing against opponents\' cars, again seen in previous GT titles, will be penalised. We\'re currently trying to find the best solution.
Do you foresee a time when you will be able to include car damage in a GT game?
Kazunori: One of the reasons it would be difficult to include damage is that, because Gran Turismo is a real driving simulator, we would have to consider damage to be real. I have dome experiments, and a very high percentage - maybe 80 percent - of crashes in Gran Tursimo will cause the car to fall into pieces maybe two inches big.
Current specifications of the hardware will not allow us to represent this fully. If the specs are higher, then maybe, but then again, there are also other issues with manufacturers, licence issues and so forth, which keep us from doing this. There are many hurdles we must jump over.
It\'s not all manufacturers, but there is a trend generally speaking that manufacturers have become a little bit more lenient towards the direction we would like to head, in terms of allowing for damage on cars in games.
You do see that in other games - there are ways - it\'s just that with the range of cars we have, it\'s more difficult.
Will GT4 be the last PS2 game you make?
Kazunori: Maybe! [laughs]
Can you highlight what got you into cars and making car games in the first place?
Kazunori: There\'s no specific incident in my life that triggered the passion. I feel it\'s an instinct a lot of boys have - it\'s just natural for boys to like cars and that\'s where it stems from.
And are there any other racing games which have inspired you during your career?
Kazunori: One of them is Winning Run by Namco and also Microprose Grand Prix.
Can you tell us a little more about the online side of things?
Kazunori: With online, the reason why you haven\'t heard much is that there isn\'t much we can talk about, unfortunately. But my main area of interest is not actually the racing element of online, for instance, where people will compete against each other online. My main interest is to find a setting where players can come to share knowledge of cars - just car talk. Car talk is endless: you can talk about tyres, you can talk about oil, car parts, modification... "I did this! Was it good?" "Yeah, it\'s alright, but I tried this!"
This kind of communication is what I value the most and would like to implement somehow in the online segment.
What about a kind of online garage where you can buy, sell and trade motors?
Kazunori: Technically it\'s possible, but we\'re currently in the middle of examining all of our options.
Will you offer voice communication via the USB headset?
Kazunori: During racing? No, because Gran Turismo 4 uses the specs of the system to the max. Unless you would be happy settling for a 30fps frame rate? But I\'m sure no-one wants that.
How about beforehand? When I played before, I picked an interesting looking car, but couldn\'t see what the other player did, who just picked the fastest of them all creating a real mismatch.
Kazunori: What you\'ve brought to our attention is absolutely right, but that is only because we were very limited in time preparing for E3. For the finished game, there will be a system in place so that players know what each other has chosen, otherwise it wouldn\'t be fair.
I think most of you will have experienced the demo downstairs and noticed in some of the online competitions that you might see an opponent car in front of you moving a little bit awkwardly. This is a technology problem due to latency and cannot be eliminated 100 percent.
But the team is very, very smart and knows what it\'s doing. They know the problems, but they also know the solutions. It\'s just that due to the network, there are hurdles they cannot overcome. So you will always see that, and the further you are away from someone, the more "off" that will be. If you\'re closer it\'s not that bad.
There are so many areas we need to study if we\'re to say we\'re comfortable with where we\'re going. The biggest problem for me is that the images that players see will no longer be the standard of Gran Turismo, and that\'s the greatest concern for me we have in terms of taking the game online.
I don\'t think that problem will ever be solved. No matter how hard the team studies the programming side of the game, there will always be a network-related problem in which the quality of the gameplay will be decreased when seen in relation to the potential of the rest of the game.
Being the perfectionist that I am, this will always be a problem in my mind, and I will have to continue examining it.
Maybe if this were another game - no specific names - it might not be such a significant point. But because it\'s Gran Turismo and because of the quality we\'ve had, once we take the online step, we\'re afraid it won\'t be the Gran Turismo that we all know. That\'s not the way we would like to move forward.
Considering its accuracy, have you ever thought about commercial uses for Gran Tursimo in the sense of teaching people to drive particular cars, or will it always be a game for entertainment purposes?
Kazunori: We have been approached by a number of car manufacturers and we are looking into some of those possibilities, but we haven\'t actually taken the step into taking action in terms of creating some kind of training simulator.
We\'re not as interested as the manufacturers at this point.
