Pacific Drive is a run-based driving survival game with an ever changing, mysterious landscape

What inspired the mythology and the look of Pacific Drive?

Karrie Shao, Lead Narrative Designer and Writer: The Pacific Northwest is an extremely unique place featuring its own folklore, character, and atmosphere. Alex has always been drawn to these quieter places—oftentimes going on road trips of his own to explore abandoned industrial areas or find the most picturesque route through the mountains back home. The love of cars comes from his trusty companions on these adventures as well; the inspiration for our in-game actually exists as an old 80’s station wagon that’s taken Alex on many runs out into the Olympic Peninsula.

Considering Pacific Drive is a run-based driving survival game that sends the player on repeated journeys into an ever-changing Olympic Exclusion Zone, why was that genre choice right for the game?

Rosen: It was down to a number of things, really. Perhaps most significantly (and least exciting): production realities! After prototyping the core mechanics and moment-to-moment gameplay, we needed to sort out the structure of the game. This run-based approach allowed us to separate the game world into easier-to-build chunks, which meant we could avoid having to solve tricky technical and design problems like open-world streaming, massive contiguous terrain sculpts, and dynamic repopulation of resources for long term play.

In terms of design reasons, besides simplifying things in those ways, it allowed us to punch even more above our weight. We’ve got a relatively small team for the game we’re building and the run-based structure means we get more bang for our buck out of each bit of content that we build. It also means that we have a really clean point in the game loop to do randomization and variation to keep the game fresh for players over long periods of time.

Breaking the game up into these runs allows us to really lean into the anomalous nature of the setting, because we don’t have to worry about long term effects: within a short time, players will have made it to the exit, and are on to the next challenge. There’s tension and stakes, but the end is always in-sight. Lastly, because the garage provides a safe haven between each run, players will have a reliable moment to fix up their car and make sure it is road-worthy, which is a really nice ritual and helps to develop the relationship to the vehicle, and it even further opens up how wild things can get out there in the Zone.

Without spoiling too much, can you share some of the threats that players will encounter in the game?

Rosen: The Olympic Exclusion Zone was the site of all manner of experimentation for decades. By the time the player ends up there, it’s pretty thoroughly covered with anomalous activity. Most of these things aren’t necessarily hostile, but they are definitely dangerous if not treated with appropriate care.

I’ll leave most of the specifics for players to discover because that’s way more fun than being told in an interview, but I can say that there are obstacles you’ll have to avoid, things that wander around that you’ll have to dodge, things that give chase if you get too close, things that steal from you or stick to your car, and things that rain down from the sky (to whit: not just drops of water). These hazards take all manner of forms, some familiar and some not so much, and come in a range of flavors. You’ll contend with and equip your car to deal with a handful of different damage and effect types.

Considering Pacific Drive is a game about survival, can you talk about all of the ways in which players will have to survive?

Rosen: Although ultimately it is the player’s character that must be kept alive to keep your run going in Pacific Drive, most of the survival mechanics and related resources in the game are transposed onto the car. It’s a symbiotic relationship, though: if you take care of the car, it will take care of you. Functionally, the main aspect here is that as long as you’re sitting in the driver seat and the car is in good enough shape, you’ll be protected from incoming damage.

To maintain the car, you’ll have to take care of each part individually: everything on the car has its own health and can get status effects (plus the car can develop quirky behaviors that might crop up at an especially inopportune moment). And, of course, you need fuel to get where you’re going. So, the game mechanics and loops here will be familiar to veteran survival players, but you’ll be more on the lookout for items and resources to repair your car and keep it running, rather than materials to build a farm or something like that. A lot of the materials you’ll need can be gotten by stripping old abandoned vehicles for parts, but you’ll also be rummaging through deserted buildings and research sites, as well as making use of some of the stranger items that have started to appear in the Zone.

Can you talk about your approach to designing the interior and exterior of the car in the game?

Dracott: For both the exterior and interior of the car, we obviously start with the basics of an 80’s station wagon. Then, over the course of the game, we want to have the player’s car visually progress.

Initially, the player is improvising heavily. Taped together doors, improvised re-use of existing parts from the world—that kind of thing. As the game progresses though, the car eventually becomes that strange retro science machine that we’ve been showing, with parts created by the player for specific purposes.

For the individual visual designs, we do pay particular attention to how things are put together, even for the higher tier elements. For us, there is a goal of “exposed electronics” that we want our designs to have. A common quote around the office was “What if Doc Brown had been in a rush?” What that eventually looked like to us is that we want to keep it looking scientific, but still something that was improvised and done quickly.

Can you elaborate on how players will be able to heavily customize the car and touch upon how you implement car damage into the game?

Rosen: When you find it, the station wagon is in pretty rough shape—a missing door, a flat tire, crude parts, etc. Early in the game, you’ll mostly be restoring it to its former glory. But before long, you’ll start researching mundane, but essential, upgrades like elemental-resist doors, panels and bumpers, wheels that perform better on certain surfaces, and things along those lines. You’ll also be able to install new hardpoints on the car, allowing you to add similarly basic-but-useful things like additional storage, extra fuel capacity, battery generators, and flood lights.

As you reach the deeper areas of the Zone and find more advanced resources, you’ll get access to higher-tech parts that add abilities to the car, from the expected—a nitro boost—to more outlandish options. Every part that you craft can be installed in at least two locations on the car; a design pillar for us is “your car, your way.” In some cases, these decisions might just be aesthetic or simple preference (e.g. extra storage for spare tools goes on the rear-right window rack), but in others it might fundamentally change what the part does (e.g. installing a nitro boost on the front of the car isn’t going to get you to your destination any faster… unless it’s behind you, of course). Speaking of aesthetics: in addition to all of the above, there’s a variety of paints and decals to be found in the Zone if you want to give the car a bit of a facelift, and there are several types of cosmetic items that can be found and then equipped to the car.

As far as the implementation of damage to the car: we use an immersive-sim-style messaging system that allows us to "process" the incoming damage based on a variety of factors. Using this system, we can make sure that damage done to the car happens in a way that feels somewhat realistic, or at least makes physical sense. If you smash into something with the front right corner of your car, the damage will spread out from the impact point, dissipating as it gets further from the contact. And once the damage is applied, each part on the car will reflect that damage visually in a variety of ways, based on the incoming damage type and magnitude.

What made Unreal Engine a good fit for Pacific Drive?

Dracott: For a team of our size, the immediate thing that comes to mind is what exists in Unreal Engine 4 that’s available and ready to work with. From Landscapes, to Materials, and Blueprints there are tons of existing tools we’ve used to build Pacific Drive.

There are additional specific reasons that UE4 was great for us. When it came to designing anomalies for a driving game, we were in pretty uncharted territory, so the ability to rapidly prototype was key to finding the fun. On the technical side, we also took large advantage of Houdini Engine’s integration for our foliage system. Without that, we would not be able to build the game we have today.

Were there any particularly helpful Unreal Engine tools during development?

Dracott: One of the biggest pieces of tech from Unreal Engine that we’ve utilized as much as possible is Virtual Textures. Our landscapes are pretty detailed, especially considering the roads and some of the stranger things we’ve put into the game. Virtual Textures let us get away with some very fun shader tech that’s both sped up production and saved us performance.

The studio has mentioned it has leveraged Blueprints to construct the game’s surreal anomalies. Can you elaborate on that?

Dracott: We definitely utilized Blueprints to build almost all of the behavior of our anomalies. With the game being a driving survival experience, iteration and prototyping were key as we tried to “find the fun” and strike the right kind of balance between hazards that are both dangerous to the player in the car (and out), but also interact with our game’s systems to help create new and unique gameplay moments.