"We give people vertigo"

Game director Jason Avent talks to PlayStation.com about Pure, a new off-road racing game from Disney Interactive Studios.

What's the story behind the title?

The best racers from around the world come together each year to compete in the Pure World Tour. It's a chance for them to break out of the stadiums and take on the wilderness. They ride the most rugged terrain, the highest peaks and the biggest jumps to find out who is top dog.

It's interesting to see Disney Interactive Studios release an off-road racing game, is this the beginning of a new direction for the company?

Disney is a massive entertainment company that is under-represented in the videogames market. It deserves to be higher up the game publisher rankings than it is and it's only going to get there by making more original games, and Pure is one of the first. It broadens the Disney brand's target age range, bringing it closer to the core of the videogames market.

Why did you decide to focus on quad bike racing only?

Quads are the only vehicle to combine familiar, four wheeled handling with the ability to jump hundreds of feet in the air and pull tricks. There has never been an arcade, off-road, trick racing game before and certainly not one as extreme as Pure. I've never jumped so high in any game before.

What does Pure add to the off-road racing genre?

I don't think that Pure is just an off-road racing game, it's just as much an extreme action sports game as it is a racer. You'll spend 60 per cent of your time in the air pulling tricks. There really isn't a mainstream arcade game like it. It's all about going fast, gaining massive air and pulling mad tricks. We give people vertigo.

Which innovations in this game are you most proud of?

We've created very organic tracks that are epic in scale. We have developed technology that lets you see up to 30 km into the distance and the tracks are covered with grass, gravel chunks and twigs. There are no straight lines in nature so there are no straight lines on our tracks.

I'm really proud of the Build Your Ride feature too where you can build your own quad bike from scratch. With the hundreds of parts on offer, we reckon that players can build at least 60,000 unique quad bikes. Each component feeds into how the bike looks, handles and performs.

How many tracks will be available?

There are 36 tracks in the game.

The real world locations look accurate, how did you go about capturing them?

Our tracks feature deserts, deciduous forests, pine forests, jungles, beaches, volcanoes, mountain ranges and glaciers, so we had to do a lot of research. We really wanted to provide the player with incredible vistas and believable, organic environments. We've invested in some serious technology to allow us to do that.

In every frame of our game, there are around 300,000 pieces of grass, gravel, and twigs to really capture the messiness of nature. This not only makes the tracks look authentic, it also gives you a great frame of reference for your speed.

Is vehicle handling realistic or is Pure more of an arcade experience?

Pure is 100 per cent arcade game. It's very easy to get into and has a lot of depth thanks to the boost and tricks system. Performing tricks fills your boost meter and gives you access to better tricks. But if you boost or crash and the bar goes down, you can temporarily lose the ability to those tricks. The boost is a resource you have to manage carefully. This makes you think about which routes to take, when to overtake and your overall event strategy. It also creates a healthy fear of crashing.

What do you offer in terms of multiplayer?

We have four event types online and they're all completely different. Trick Race is focused on getting across the line first; Sprint is about short, intense racing with fewer jumps and shorter laps, so it gets really crowded and frantic with 16 riders on the track; Freestyle is all about pulling off tricks to get the highest score; Freeride allows you to roam with your pals, setting and breaking each other's records.

What kind of online features will the game have on PS3?

As well as being the first trick racing game to have 16 players online, we have extensive leaderboards and custom championships. At some point in the future, the Pure team may invest in PlayStation Home and Trophies. I think both have masses of potential.