The Payback and The Clutch

We have escaped from the perils of Geoff Keighley's presence for another six months, and the reward of that within our little corner of the industry is multiple new racing games have been revealed. It feels like the first time during the era of Summer Games Fest that racing games truly had their moment across the few days of press conferences and video reveals. An outsiders perception would be to say that racing games are back, but the reality has always been that you needed to escape the confines of the AAA-world that Geoff lives and breathes to see that racing games never left and a new generation are starting to take the reigns. But within that perceived rejuvenation there is a new, pure AAA title that has set lofty expectations about what it wants to be and where that end of the genre could go.

Maverick Games wants Clutch to be the new big dog on campus. The targets and ambitions were abundantly clear from the reveal video as well as the trailer. This ambition has been aided by the fact that the big names that previously made the mainstream racing games seeking that AAA status simply stopped making those racing games; after deeming them expendable since they didn't make enough profit for the ambitions of their shareholders. A vacuum got created when Need For Speed got mothballed, and Clutch looks to be the game to fill that and provide a true alternative in terms of a grander open world racing game while not being a so-called Festival Racer.

In these early days it's easy to compare Clutch to the Forza Horizon franchise. It's easy to compare it to a franchise that you should be boycotting for it's part in funding the Genocide of the Palestinian people and the bombing of Lebanon in lieu of a lot of the major staff members at Maverick Games previously working at Playground Games. A lot of the knowledge and expertise that allowed a franchise you should not be paying money for to thrive was immediately on display through what gameplay footage has come out after those initial videos. I feel like this much should be expected developers who knows how to make a free roam racing game will make another good free roam racing game. The difference now is that they don't have to deal with a forced, stale template that has been turned into a science over the last fifteen years. There is renewed potential to push forward: to make the game they want to make.

Some of those benefits of being freed from the grips of Microsoft will allow Clutch to try and have it's cake and eat it too in a more natural way. You will still get all the capability for free roam online multiplayer that has become mandatory within this style of racing game, but now without the compromises that a game that's become a simulacra of car culture seen through the scope of social media content creation has to deal with. A more narrative-driven experience means the roster of usable cars can be a better reflection of the environment, characters and stories that are wanting to be told: which is highlighted with the Fiat Multipla being used during flashback sequences and the roster of cars set to feature in the fictional R1K championship that is a major fixture within Clutch's story alongside the double life the protagonist is forced to live. The free roam world can be tuned in a way to work with the story and the mechanics that allow it to go from point a to point b: with the 007-style gadgets providing a whole new way to navigate a game world that hasn't been tried yet and couldn't be until someone tried again to attempt a more pure AAA racing game experience.

The big impression coming out of what gameplay footage there has been, sadly none of them being no-commentary footage, is that Clutch at a technical and a production level should be good. It's got all the right things in all the right places and I have little doubt that it's going to drive the part as well, with interior customization a welcomed addition after Gran Turismo 6 and Import Tuner Challenge last featured it two console generations ago. It'd be a problem if the development team with this sort of CV weren't able to make it happen, paired with Unreal Engine 5 being way more racing game friendly than it's predecessors.

But why am I not buying in to what I'm seeing? Why does it just feel ok?

We are a little more than a decade into the experiment of attempting to AAA-ify the racing game: to try and have them fit in with the new video game culture that is often championed by Geoff Keighley and his ilk which was brought into the spotlight with games like Uncharted and The Last of Us. It was Need For Speed that took those first steps out of the primordial ooze in 2015 as a part of it's second big reset in the span of eight years. The game itself drove horribly, was lacking basic features and mechanics, and generally felt half baked in parts where prior entries excelled it but it took a huge swing in terms of the scale and impact the game wanted to have outside of the streets of Ventura Bay. The involvement of some of car culture's biggest names helped set the stage of how the culture has been ever since in a game meant to be Need For Speed Underground 3, but the new conveyance of the AAA racing game had to keep growing. The next Need For Speed couldn't just be Need For Speed 2015-2, even though it would have done EA Gothenburg good to have a more familiar platform to built up from.

A different Need For Speed experience had to be on the cards, one that upped the scale even more. It was worth trend chasing with it's story-line based around a car heist gone awry: this was the time to strike the Fast and Furious iron while it was hot. Payback wore it's influences on it's sleeve, though it was hard to invest in a story that lost momentum after that initial heist after it reverted back to just winning races to beat the bad guy. It was hard to invest in a game that had too many microtransactions that impeded car upgrading and still didn't drive the part. It was hard to invest in a game that didn't go all-in on the story it was trying to tell and be able to suspend one's disbelief, while not being sincere enough about it's influences to where it came off as being too derivative and lazy. Those narrative issues got fixed in the right way with Need For Speed Heat and Unbound, but it's been along enough time since Payback for someone to give a more serious attempt at a story-driven free roam racing game a try, though it's influences are similarly on it's sleeve a little too much.

The usage of a blue and white BMW M3 GTR and a mid-engined supercar, in this case a Aston Martin Valhalla, driving out of a building before using a grappling hook on a helicopter was not lost on me. Clutch wants to be a new Need For Speed, Fast and Furious, 007 at the same while also wanting to have it's cake and eat it too in terms of those mechanics that allowed Forza Horizon to thrive beyond the samey social media influencer hellscape that is the Horizon Festival. It does feel like the right time for a racing game to try for a story in this vein with a much greater sense of intention and scale than was tried with Need For Speed Payback, but has how much runway remains for racing games that strive this level of seriousness when it's influences can't be ignored? Why do we have to be a racing prodigy that then gets into trouble when that diminishes any chances of relating to the character's struggle and conflicts? At the same time, what would a more narrative-driven free roam racing game look like that had a similar opening to a Pokémon game where you are on the first day of your journey away from home and beginning your new life? Why should I care about the story that Theo and Cass Martial are about to be a part of?

There is much more room for narrative racing experiences beyond just chasing the biggest money car-adjacent IPs out there in a AAA shell, but that requires going beyond those AAA names that remain or looking to join the space. There has always been runway for story-driven racing games, as was evident by Codemasters more recently testing the waters themselves between GRiD Legends and the Breaking Point campaigns within their Formula 1 games. There is still more themes and experiences that can be explored beyond the obvious environments and tropes that have defined such racing games since the original Need For Speed Most Wanted, but it requires going beyond the games stealing the headlines, seeing what independent developers are making, and seeing racing games go places not often traveled in the genre and will reward those for trying.

There is no doubt Clutch is going to be good, but what good is a racing game that doesn't have a soul of it's own? Especially after we just had a racing game released from a major developer and another on the way from a solo developer showing that story-driven racing games can have a heart and soul the same way that Ridge Racer Type 4 and R: Racing Evolution did.