And it’s Stephane’s on-going obsession with open world racing games that’s been driving The Crew’s development for the last seven years. It’s led by The Crew’s Game Director Stephane Beley, known by the team as Fergus, along with three other founders. Ivory Tower was formed seven years ago hot on the release of TDU, currently comprising of around 90 former team members of Eden Games who worked on TDU and V-Rally. I was invited to Ivory Tower’s studio in Lyon, France, along with six resident TDU fanatics from various corners of the globe who run renowned community fansites such as TDU DriveTime, TurboDuck, TDU-France and The Crew’s Reddit page for an exclusive test drive of The Crew, a behind the scenes tour of the studio and a chat with Creative Director Julian Gerighty, whom I’m ashamed to say I initially didn’t recognise due to his new-found facial hair. Its surprise unveiling at E3 2013 took the gaming community by storm, and expectations have been considerably high ever since. With its massive open world recreation of the entire United States of America, social team-based racing and co-operative play and deep RPG-like car customisation, The Crew aims to pick up where TDU left off and revolutionise MMOR games for the next-generation. That’s because they’ve been busy for the last seven years at their newly-formed studio creating their most ambitious project to date: The Crew. Part of the problem was that several staff from Eden Games who worked on the original TDU had no involvement with the slated sequel. Principally because it was fundamentally broken the moment it raced off the starting line – the frustration of being unable to connect online even a month after launch still stings.
But none of these managed to recapture TDU’s sense of unbridled freedom and community spirit – not even Test Drive: Unlimited 2, which was panned by critics and the TDU community alike. TDU went on to influence the current trend of persistent online open world racing games, from Need for Speed: World and Burnout Paradise, to Forza Horizon and Need for Speed: Rivals. Pity, then, that TDU’s online roads were closed as of September 2012. Set in the idyllic Hawaiian island of Oʻahu, we still have fond memories of basking in its glorious open world paradise of multiplayer motoring exploits, fueled by the passionate petrol-head community. In 2006, Eden Games’ revolutionary Test Drive: Unlimited pioneered the Massively Multiplayer Online Racing scene.
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