When it comes out on November 3, EA Sports WRC by Codemasters will be the first fully approved FIA World Rally Championship simulation. It will have 18 rallies. Even though five of them aren’t on the official WRC list, they were added anyway. It will also have 78 cars, including ten new models for the 2023 season and 68 old ones. If you think that needs to be more, you can make your car by choosing where the engine goes, what parts it has, and how it looks on the outside and inside. If the constant chase for speed gets too much for you, you could join a regular run, where success is measured by how well you can keep a steady pace, not by how fast you go. That’s a lot to talk about for the first episode of a show about a sport. Dirt Rally 2.0 came out with six rally locations, while the first Dirt Rally only had three at the start. Both games’ single-player careers were pretty simple, with only a few simple ways to handle staff that could be used as a quick break between driving sessions. The longest particular stage in either game was 10 miles long. The most extensive WRC trials, on the other hand, are 20 kilometers long. Because Codemasters switched from its long-running, exclusive Ego Engine to Unreal Engine, these time-consuming strategies became possible. WRC is a considerable sport that can’t be argued with. Even more impressive is that Codies didn’t have to do any of it. It is the most complex game that the team that made the Colin McRae Rally and Dirt games has ever made. Add the rallies and competing cars to the calendar for 2023, and you’re all set. Use that people know your name and your relationship with the best rallying to coast. This is how most sports video games work, like NBA 2K and EA’s Madden NFL. The group, however, had other thoughts. Ross Gowing, the Senior Creative Director at Codemasters, says, “We’ve got the 14 official WRC locations—13 on the disc and one through an update—plus these five bonus locations.” We had started working on the extra places before we got the WRC license, so we thought, “We should make a game with everything in it!” And now, a few years have passed. Tom Henderson of Exputer said in 2021 that “sources familiar with the publisher’s plans” told him that EA had decided to cancel a third Dirt Rally game already in development at Codemasters. This was done so that Codemasters could focus on making the first WRC game. After that, a lot of extra stuff would make sense. It made a game that fans of rally racing hope will have the effect they were looking for. Even though Codemasters doesn’t have the WRC stamp of approval, it has been in the business since the late 1990s and is known for the physical strength of its off-road racing simulations up until now. But even though Dirt Rally was known for how hard it was, the WRC license got more attention than it may have had before. Many stages in EA Sports WRC are true-to-life recreations, with winding roads, dangerous crests, and other trackside dangers that make rallying the challenging sport that fans love. Some people are starting to wonder if the first game in this new age of Codies’ Rally will be more accessible to players. Even though the team worked hard to find and train new drivers, our experience will be as challenging and honest as a sim racer could want. “We’ve kept much of the help from Dirt Rally 2.0, and we’ve also added a few new ones,” said Game Designer Jon Armstrong. One is the speed clamp, which helps new players jump right into the game and hit the gas. It stops them from doing so in an authentic way. Armstrong is a valuable and one-of-a-kind part of the WRC team that works to improve it. Like Colin McRae did many years ago, Armstrong is a real-life rally racer who gives his experience to Codemasters’ computer game. The man from Northern Ireland recently fought in the Rally3 division so he could move on. As a creator, he has made suggestions to improve the game’s Dynamic Handling System, make its real-world stages more realistic, and add instructions that a new player might find helpful. Armstrong said, “Our Rally School mode took a lot of work.” Rally School has 12 classes that are all meant to teach new rally players how to play rally games and rally in general. That teaches you how to drive in a race, hear pace notes, and everything else you’ll need to know. For example, the simplified pace notes system removes some parts of the pace notes design that are harder to understand and replaces the numbers with more detailed notes. Therefore, you As a result, instead of “six right,” you’ll get “easy right” and “medium right.” You are the only one who can master it, but all the tools are there if you need them. When it came out seven years ago, Dirt Rally surprised everyone by being a big hit with a wide range of people. Racing sims that are hard to play tend to turn off new players instead of drawing them in. Even though it was hardcore and had few things to do, the game was attractive because it had a rewarding driving system and a unique challenge: you against nature. Codemasters has used the lessons it learned from WRC. Gowing laughed and said, “It’s following up.” “That’s the problem, isn’t it?”
